Hildreth — Last week I ventured down the alphabet to the ‘T’ section of my friends list to talk to some of the rulers of the Team Colonslash Empire. Due to this interview being so long with a lot of information and me being away next week on Holiday, I decided I would delay the release of this extensive and brilliant interview (much to the despair of the TC people). Now though it is finally their time to shine on the Div 3-6 review.
The obvious man to put the questions to is Spike Himself, the original ‘Rupert Murdoch’ of the TC community who has watched over so many teams that he decided to take a breather from full-time management of his merry men and sit on the side-lines for a while. But now after a break from the game, the original dictator of multi-gaming communities is back to support more teams and try to heal his way up the divisions to Prem.
Spike might be a god but he isn’t the only man running the show so to add to his unique wit (“Porn is Good” – Spike Himself) I got 2 of his disciples: leader extraordinaire Oxy and part-time Scottish Cyclops, .OwnagePie as we talked about the how TC took over TF2, forming of TC.Academy and why .OwnagePie no longer braces the airwaves with Gamer FM.
Good day to you chaps – Spike let’s start off with you, how did TC start off?
Spike Himself: The name originates from a project I was working on, long before I knew TF2 existed. It was to be an irc-based RPG game and it was to be called Colonslash. I was recruited in a team lead by Mailbawx, shortly after I joined it folded and we made a new team. Mailbawx was still leader at this point but he very much liked the team name I suggested – “Colonslash”. Mailbawx had some weird playing hours – he had to leave at 7 or 8 or something, so we went out to find a new Demoman. Eventually Mailbawx left and I was made leader, at which point I renamed the team to Team Colonslash – because it sounds just that much more awesome.
One day I created a thread on the ETF2L forums where I announced my search for a div6 team I could merc for every now and again to try and improve my main calling. This lead to Harky, from Upgrade, messaging me, and through him I met Oxy and the other guys that were in Upgrade at the time. A few weeks later I figured it’d be awesome if we could expand; make our name famous and get more awesome people on our mumble. My terrible memory doesn’t remember who the first team were. Anyway later on we did add Oxy’s team, and they became TC.Upgrade. In the weeks to come, we had some teams coming and going and were maxed out at 4 teams using the Team Colonslash name, tags, avatars, etc. Recently I had a break and delegated the whole lot to Oxy because he’s awesome, and when I came back we had 3 new teams!
Oxy and .OwnagePie – how did you originally get involved with Team Colonslash? Can you give us a brief history of your TF2 career as well?
.OwnagePie: I started TF2 as a pubber, but quickly got into the comp. scene. I think the first team I joined was called Blighty, led by none other than ex- LTG leader Looski. I joined reHash Gaming (formerly Nemesis Gamers) for about a year, where I basically learnt how to play the game properly, after leaving re#, because I felt I could do better in another team, I stumbled across Upgrade (before it was TC.Upgrade) and trialled, didn’t make the grade, so i went clanless for a bit, tried other teams but didn’t fit in then about 3-4 months later, I came back and trialled for TC.Upgrade then got in basically since then I’ve been playing mostly as backup Demo..
Oxy: My TF2 career originally started in the amazing world of Xbox TF2 with a few competitive teams in 8v8 and 6v6 play. I knew the world of PC TF2 was miles better but couldn’t afford a computer until i saved up enough money from working. However 2 years ago now I managed to get enough money together and made the move across. After about 6 months of general pubbing and running a pub server I knew I was ready to make the move back into competitive play. I started this by becoming scout for a team named ‘umad?’ which folded a few weeks after joining. However I had met Harky in this team and we decided to form Upgrade which folded at the end of our first season due to a lack of suitable Medics and Demomen. After a season away for some of us the core of the team (Me, Harky and Heffron) reformed at a time when there was more players available and eventually picked up the players that we play with at the current time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SINtjlUJrHA
Spike can only dodge Russian soldier's rockets as this video shows.
Watch out for the worst Pyro EU.
How many teams do you currently have playing under the TC Tag? Can you name each line-up for us?
Oxy: We have 6 teams at the moment, TC.Upgrade (my team), TC. Fest, TC.Classy, TC. Pokemon, TC.Academy and last but not least Spike’s new team TC.Reditio.
I sometimes like to mix with TC.Pokemon guys; they are a great group of people with some potential to go big. What do you think of their team? I remember Zealos and Spelling like to do work as Scouts and Cunning owns it up on Soldier.
Oxy: Actually they recently switched things about a bit by putting Zealos on medic to solve their main calling problems and personally I think is working much better for them. Spelling is also an amazing scout and doesn’t know this own ability (he’s and ex-upgrade lad who I helped move to competitive TF2) and their Demoman Toxic infact lives about 200 metres down the road. Overall I think that now they’ve sorted out there problems and recruited some strong players they stand a much better chance of doing well in div 5 this season.
What is the community spirit is like between each team, you all have your own mumble channel but do you mix together a lot? Hang out in mumble and play other games?
.OwnagePie: Yeah, we mix between teams, play other games with each other, just cause we’ve all got our own teams or whatever, doesn’t mean we separate ourselves.. It’s quite rare to not see someone playing for another TC team…
Spike Himself: We’re all friendly folks, we get along really well. We do indeed often spend time playing other games, such as Worms: Reloaded (shoutout to Quotey!), Left4Dead 2, StarCraft 2, to name a few, also double mixes etc we have a general chat channel where lots of us hang out before games just to have a chat and a laugh.
Will we see a TC team or two at the next i-series event? I would love to meet you guys in person.
Spike Himself: Yes, there are plans to bring the entire community, or at least the majority of it, to an I-series event soon. We haven’t decided on which one yet – oxy can fill in on this as he has more details
Oxy: I believe we are currently looking to go to i46, but that’s a long way off, at least all of Upgrade including some backups is up for going so far.
The million pound question is…will we see a TC community team in the upcoming Highlander league on ETF2L? TC.Fest aka ‘May Contain Nuts’ came 3 rd in the ETF2L Highlander challenge.
Oxy: I currently am in a highlander team called ‘The Hypnotics’ which has been around for about a year. However I am unsure we’d enter such a league because of the commitments of all of our players to the 6v6 whom all have different playing days. This isn’t to say that a TC based highlander entry isn’t possible; I’m sure we can muster up enough people from our current teams.
Do you guys have any opinion on all leagues going Vanilla + Medlocks this season? How do you think this will affect Comp TF2 at the entry level?
Spike Himself: I’ve been in favour of vanilla+medlocks for a while. Not so much because some weapons may or may not be overpowered, underpowered, annoying, or whatever other arguments some people have managed to come up with, but for the simple fact that having a set amount of weapons is on an equal level with the reasons behind disabling random crits and random damage spread – it ensures that nothing is left to chance. On a slightly related note, I feel people need to chill out when it comes to rules like these. Fair enough if you have an opinion on things, but the whole unlock spectacle has been taken to amazingly ridiculous levels.
Oxy: Personally I couldn’t give a damn about the finer details of the unlock rulings. I will be here regardless of whether a equalizer is allowed or disallowed and people who refuse to play because of stuff like this is just a let down to the community. A lot of bigger teams need to realise that the game has developed a lot since its release and allowing unlocks would be a way of making the competitive side of the game look much more appealing to pubbers and I think that getting new players into this part of the game at the moment is more important than ever.
.OwnagePie: Well as a Wireplay admin, I personally favour the Vanilla + medlocks. Not only does it keep the game fun, but it then won’t create the confusion of new weapons midway through a season. In regards to entry level, the Academy team I’ve helped sort out was built on vanilla + medlocks, even though no league confirmed the rule set. Personally, I can’t see a problem because the teams, especially Academy, can now develop without prior knowledge of whitelists.
You just mentioned TC.Academy, brings me to my next question – since TF2 went Free-2-Play, we seen a lot of efforts to raise the profile of 6v6 and one of the things TC did was recruit a brand new team from the IDK/ne newbie mix group. Tell me about how that started?
Oxy: Basically I had thoughts about such a thing but at the time was still busy reconstructing Upgrade’s team lineup. However, OwnagePie came along and suggested something very similar to what I had in mind and with someone else to help I decided that we should go ahead with the plan and therefore TC.Academy was born. We then picked up our first two players within the next few days whom were very dedicated towards getting better at the game and things just moved on from there.
.OwnagePie: Well, although I wasn’t a “founding member” of the newbie mix group, I was one of the first admins to become from it. After a few games I thought it’d be good to see some teams develop from this, instead of mixing all the time, so I had a chat with Oxy who agreed. So we started by “secretly” forming a dream-team from 4 or 5 mixes, then we started asking those from the dream team to join, sadly the medic we had our eyes on was recruited into another team, so our search continued when we came across someone we’d not met before, Swedish Santa who is pretty special.
Oxy: We certainly shouldn’t be taking all the credit though; there has been a lot of work put in from other members of the TC community which we’re very grateful for, in particular shoutouts to Octane and TurboTabs on that one .
What do you think of the current TC.Academy team? I noticed they won their first map in Division 6b of Wireplay. Do they practise a lot with the aim of going huge?
Oxy: Yes the current TC.Academy line-up seems to be working relatively nicely. They have a good team spirit and Swedish Santa has the highest dedication to learning I have seen in a long time. They also seem to have patience at the moment and know that things aren’t going to fall in place inside of a couple of weeks and that’s important for a team full of new players.
.OwnagePie: They are a very committed team, and while they keep their aims realistic, they do try the hardest they can to be the best. They were chuffed to get that map win in Wireplay, although everyone in Source TV was a bit on edge.
Ownage, I got a few questions just for you now. First off your name is extremely awesome, how did you come up with it?
.OwnagePie: About 8 years ago, my bro and I got an Xbox and we went to sign up to Xbox live, but we couldn’t think of a user name, (didn’t know you could have multiple) so I said “OwnageBird” or something bad, but he said “no, I don’t want something that makes us sound better than everyone else” anyway, about 1 year later I got my first PC and I needed a username for things, and i remembered the “OwnageBird” but thought it was crap, I just changed it around a bit, and lo-and behold, .OwnagePie was born, the “.” came about around 2 months ago, when i decided to have a bit of name decoration. :D
Spike Himself: Yet he makes fun of Pancake’s (from TC.Academy) -= & =- punctuation on his name.
I also remember ages ago doing a TF2-themed quiz on GamerFM when you were a radio DJ. How did you get into DJ’ing for GamerFM? Do you still DJ and If not how come?
.OwnagePie: Well I was playing on a UKCS server, which had the GamerFM plugin installed, and thought, “I’d be interested in doing that” so i registered on the forums etc, and applied, and sure enough I got myself a regular slot and before long I was climbing the ranks, from junior presenter to manager and soon became a good friend of the owner. Unfortunately, due to some mishaps at an i-Series the owner left, and a reshape of the station came about, which I personally didn’t like, so I left mainly for personal reasons, but also because I didn’t like the way the radio station was heading.
Last question, what are your aims for this season for your teams in TF2 and for your community personally? Do you have a pub server, website or a growing Steam Group you want to shout out?
Spike Himself: As it stands Team Colonslash is just going to continue what it has been doing; we’re all competitive players so we all intend to improve. We’re very happy with the teams we have now so I don’t currently see a need to change anything there. I do hope that our teams will improve to a level where it is feasible for them to take on mentoring projects, so as to help out new players and teams. We’re all about giving to the community, the way the community has given to us.
We do have a website which I have been working on for ages now. I’ll refrain from lying about how it’s going to be done soon – shoutout to web designers/developers to contact me! Other than that we do have a public ‘friends and fans’ steam group which can be found at here and of course our IRC channel #TeamColonslash on QuakeNet.
Oxy: I suppose that the most I would expect from my teams is that they try to finish as high up the table as they feel possible. I also suggest to them they try not to set themselves targets; just try your hardest and see where it takes you.
Finally any shoutouts?
Oxy: Shoutouts to Datenshi, MoZz, Scotteh, Sicariidae, Mr.Sam, TviQ, Cunning (aka best div 3 solly in div 5 who didn’t tell me to write this) and the rest of the TC community, big extra special shoutouts to Octane and TurboTabs for their help with academy.
.OwnagePie: Yeah, firstly to TC Academy, secondly to WPTF2L, and thirdly to Spike and Oxy for the whole of Team Colonslash, can’t say I’d be here if it wasn’t for them. :) And I would like to make love to Numlocked, best Demoman ever.
Spike Himself: I have a huge list of people I want to mention but I’ll try to keep it limited. First and foremost, Mailbawx and Swift, which whom I started the team that eventually became Team Colonslash. A thank you to Mads (formerly known as EvilDinner) who has carried us from Div6 to Div4, another big thank you to TviQ, wai and spence who have carried us beyond Div4, also thank you to MoZz and Datenshi for doing some great design work, which consists mainly of all our avatars. And of course I wouldn’t want to forget the people that have helped us out in whatever way: DIEHARD, minimoose, huhy, Admirable, Si, Fish, SteveyJJ, kona, skeej, Chris, Pyyyour. Last but definitely not least, the ETF2L admin team for doing amazing work and providing us with the best TF2 league in the world. Free BeaVerN!
Way to keep it limited there Spike.
So that was Team Colonslash and the week in review for our Division 3-6 teams, until next time I hope to go over Division 6f-6j’s first week results in ETF2L, Division 4 of Wireplay and some more interviews! 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 2011-10-03 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.