Hildreth — It is term time again people; kids skipping back at School, University freshmen drunk off their faces, woeful weather back here in Great Britain land (still no Giant Panda at Edinburgh Zoo, it has been 3 years already!) but the biggest thing of all is the start of the new ETF2L season being announced. Season 10 is finally here (technically 11 but nobody counts AFS because TCM won) with a whopping 312 teams in Divisions 3-6 for me to sink my teeth into. Elsewhere, Excello open ended so no news as the big boys take centre stage though as I type this article the only Division 3-6 player participating; The Sucker saw his team fall victim of the emphatic Epsilon, better luck next time champ. Wireplay brings along to the party 72 teams from Division 3-6, though the 2nd Division is equivalent of Division 2-3 in ETF2L in terms of skill. Nevertheless week 1 is well underway throwing up a ton of interesting games already and once again proving the spectacular dedication of the lower divisions with some teams already into their week 2 matches.
Season 10 divisions finalized
It has been a controversial time for some people above Division 3 the usual pre-season grumbles about Division placements occurred. Thankfully those in my criteria aren’t the fussy, melodramatic kind who care strongly enough about where they play to go on the public record and risk reputation for the sake of a computer game. Although my mumble buddies Swimp definitely should have been In Division 3 and not just because Enef gave me a hug at LAN, though I guess this gives movie editor extraordinaire BoneS an opportunity to gather up plenty of good footage in Division 4 next season (you best win the division chaps and prove me right).
Some teams reacted quite strongly when they saw their division placements this season.
Now last season wasn’t the best for the world’s biggest TF2 league so the ETF2L admins have a few ideas to try and combat the high amounts of drops. Vanilla being the big dairy product of changes to try and keep the top level interest flowing but it does raise massive concerns for how the newbies to 6v6 will like the format. I am a half-full pint type of guy so I like to think it won’t stop the ducks coming to the pond for their daily slice of competitive TF2 and the scene will continue to grow in the coming year or so. If not there is always Highlander to come for the crazy unlock loving amateurs of the game. Another notable change is the reduction of team limit per division going from 10 to 8 teams. This change is designed to cut the season from around 11 weeks to 9 weeks hoping that the shorter season format will reduce the numbers of teams that drop. My biggest concern will be the reduced number of teams will play against the plans of the admin team and we might see some divisions drop 3-4 teams and have an incredibly short and unproductive season. Like I said though, I am a positive guy who blindly applies faith into the TF2 community on the hope that people will try to do what is best for the game by sticking it out through the rough patches and not drop.
Predictions
It is the ‘prediction’ time of the season for us, rather than any actual games taking place yet although big shoutout to these guys playing the first game of the ETF2L season this Saturday. Everyone will have their eye on the top level but who really cares about them anyway? Division 6 is where it is at! As I can’t possibly cover every division from 3 to 6 I figured it would be best to recruit somebody else to but the effort in and take all the credit. Naturally I knew the perfect guy, ex- LZ.Orange medic Ritalin who knows the EU TF2 scene like Scotty knows the Enterprise. Sadly the UN Human Rights laws prevented me from forcing Ritalin to cover all 39 divisions from 3-6 so I had to settle with some excellent previews of Division 6a-6f (have no fear I will get to your division in the coming weeks). Huge credit for Ritalin for taking the time to write these:
6A.
The experience of the ex- Genocide players like scout Catman will surely be massive for Catman’s Girls. They will be expected to have a fairly solid season, so I will put them down as winners for 6a. Season 9 proved tough for the guys of deFend and Science!, the latter of which only picking up 2 wins in their previous division. If they can stay motivated and practising I expect them both to place well this season. Fresh off the streets are the gloriously named Fck That Sht, Helix Gaming, Start the Game Over, # (who promise airshots everywhere!) and New Order (great band), all of whom will be looking to make good starts in their first ETF2L season.
6B.
. Full Aim Control have experience that extends to ETF2L season 5. Only time will tell how valuable this will be to their promotion chances this season. Definitive Gaming are a bunch of UK/Sweden player(s) heading into Season 10 with the very awesome Acky changing from Medic to Demo. Jeez, no wonder they start in Div 6. :D 8U Gaming will a familiar name to anyone who followed Norrla (now of Team Decerto) and Fantoman’s fun-to-watch team in Season 8. This time however, 8U come in with a roster which is completely brand spanking new. I expect these three teams to dominate the division. Big welcomes go out to the new teams; No Actual Quality, all-Slovakian Ich bin eine Katze, Aamupelit and forum dwellers Subreddit. Good luck!
6C.
Seasoned veterans, Sense return to ETF2L after what looks like a very extensive list of personnel changes in their roster. They will be looking to improve on their strong finish to Season 9 so I expect them to finally win promotion and take first spot. I won’t feign to know anything about the rest of the teams in this group; as far as I can tell, they are all new entries for Season 10. I’m going to go with Nordic Reign to be the best of the rest in this one, purely for the fact that they are Scandinavian and as we all know, Scandinavians are probably the best at everything.Winner of the 'corporate sell-out award' for Season 10, watch out for them in Division 6o.
6D.
The 9 Men community have been involved in ETF2L since Season 1, and here their Lite team are kicking in to action for their 3rd straight season in the lowest division. After crushing everything in S8, and some no-so-great results in s9, I honestly don’t know what to expect here. Lithuanian team Shooting Guards are a mixture of players who actually beat 9 Men Lite in 6E last season. The optimist inside me hopes for an exciting, super intense rematch, which I think will decide the division. Watch out for Trolling Bunnies, who have a great scout duo in Nambo and BODLAK so these additions could see them knocking on the door of Division 5. Normal guys have only 5 players in their current ETF2L roster. Their 6th was Zero, the UK scout who this week got stopped by the cheat police. The AC team got down and laid a soft, steaming 1 year Wallhack/Triggerbot ban on his chest. How this will affect them we have yet to see, hopefully they won’t drop.
(Shoutout from Hildreth to isaninja’s with Bean, the best Demo in Division 6 and by far the hardest – seriously I hear he could break your neck and re-attach it in 3 seconds!)
6E.
Yep, 6E contains the very first drop of the season. No sooner had the tables been announced, the players of the aptly-named Fools Team all rushed to leave the roster, which is a shame because they looked to have a few experienced players, and would have been expected to finish near the top of the table. Taking over as favourites for the 6E crown will probably be Anonymous, and I only say that purely because there is a name in the team that I actually recognize. The Head Honcho of TF2 Match Making system, Nigh will be hoping to lead his Romanian friends to victory here. I simply don’t know anything about the other teams here, so I apologize to you guys and wish you luck in destroying my non-existent reputation for predictions.
6F.
. Six Silly Somethings and Not Neutral are the two names that stand out in this group. Plenty of ETF2L experience for these two sides, so they’ll both be hoping for good results. Immortal Sons might have a good run with old school player cf on Demo (will have been registered for 1000 days on ETF2L the day after this article is published) and dunkye who was last month bigging it up in the ex-Dignitas Relic team! Ok, not really actually in it… but it is still technically true! However, I think it will be Finish team Nahkela Bosse that beat them to the top this year, only losing 3 of their 10 matches in Season 9.
Wireplay
It doesn’t matter who you play as long as you play officials and Wireplay is the only place in town serving up those rage-filled, keyboard-thumping, desk-banging tense encounters. Early days yet but some of our Divisions are roaring with activity and great games to go with them, with the first week maps being Badlands and Snakewater respectively. Division 3a sees the worst Division 4 ETF2L team Swimp topping the tables early on by comfortably beating Guru Gaming, last week’s interviewees Continuity snatched a tense 3-2 Snakewater map off Unstoppable who earlier had lived up to their name with a 5-0 win on Badlands. Team Dakka and Yummy Elite Sausages shared the game of the week with a narrow 3-2 and 4-3 in favour of the Russians. 3b sees yet another Russian team living up to their name as Domination rolled over Semper Idem, Useless don’t live up to their name by beating Rasta TF2 5-0 and 3-2, the second map being Snakewater so far throwing up a lot of close games. Finally Clanda came so close twice to getting a map win as they tied Snakewater 1-1 and got edged out 4-3 on Badlands by n2o Injection.
Keen teams alert. Strong start for Swimp and Domination leading the way.
I would like to take this opportunity to feature some more exciting tense games by encouraging teams to post some screenshots so I can shoutout to the guy who carried the team and name a ‘player of the week’. I would also love to see some of you guys upload a SourceTV demo of a tense game on this website and who knows, maybe ask Salamancer from eXtv to commentate on the game on his tremendous Youtube channel, we all live for the e-fame don’t we?
Next week I am away on Holiday so to make up for not being here I plan to be lazy and release this week’s interview with Team Colonslash next week (sorry Spike!). Feel free to contact me over IRC by typing /q Hildreth1 on Quakenet or find me in #etf2l if you want your team/community to be interviewed.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-09-23 by Hildreth.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.