Hildreth — First off for legal reasons, I should try to make it clear I am not importuning here for some sexual adventure (much to the disappointment of my love reject TheSucker) but rather introducing the name of the team I talked to this week, who have so far filled up that gaping hole in my week reserved for amusing anecdotes involving team names (see image below). With this cleared up I can get on with the business of pouring through hundreds of matches that have taken place in the past 2 weeks that I haven’t been here to watch come in from the sea of mass fixtures.
Easily the best name match-up I seen since Bacon vs Onomom
ETF2L
We’re already into week 2 and at the time of writing this I can see my half of the competitive scene is fruitful, having fun and full of life with majority of teams playing their games on time or making the effort to schedule them on time and not leave it up to CanFo to do it on a Friday evening. Despite the ratio of games on time outweighing the games dragging behind the calendar, I still feel obliged to put up a general reminder to teams the benefits of arranging your match early. You should start discussing the game with your opponents at least a week in advanced (so if you haven’t contacted your week 3 opponents yet, get to it!) and a general reminder that each week starts on a Sunday and every Friday the week before is the schedule deadline, so you will have to get your games scheduled by then or otherwise you’ll get a default date.
If you can keep up with the deadlines, be reasonable to your opponents and play with the right spirit we can all join together in TF2 harmony forever and ever until the next default date comes along with a dramatic match dispute. I would love to go into detail with some of the match disputes I have seen so far, I feel it is in bad taste to call anyone out due to my scrupulous position pretending to be a hard-working Admin but what I can see is these disputes could easily be avoided with a bit of patience, maturity and sportsmanship. Being reasonable about technical issues and delays can wreak rewards for both teams, especially when it comes to the day you have a problem connecting and your opponents show you the grace of sovereignty you never gave to that other Russian (Yes, Russians have feelings too) team the time they were hindered by issues. Very rarely teams actually deserve to be defaulted or warned due to their attitude so a little co-operation is greatly appreciated by everyone and it will avoid situations like this.
Results
Last time I looked at the league there were no games taking place, a week offline and there were bloody hundreds. This is exactly why I decided to rotate through each division so we have an ETF2L (and Wireplay) season where every Division is mentioned at least once on VanillaTF2. Last week we saw Ritalin sweat over predictions in Divisions 6a-6f, this week I promised I would cover the latest from Divisions 6f-6j which gives me a unique opportunity to use my amazing ability of hindsight and scrutinize Ritalin’s predictions for Division 6f. He decided to back Nahkela Bosse but Immortal Sons were so insulted by this they played their hearts out just to prove our little prediction penguin wrong by taking them down 4-3 and 3-2 on Badlands plus Gullywash respectively in my game of the week. Okay he may have been right about Not Neutral who five-zeroed Kokoko in consecutive maps but Dragon Head shocked Silly Six Somethings in their first season of competitive TF2 by taking Badlands off them 4-2, needless to say the Russians didn’t look like they practised Gullywash at all, going down 5-0. The last game was sort of a rematch of the Nations Cup final; Chill it versus Team Manic, although this time the Fatherland came out on top with a roll on each map – exactly what would have happened if nvc had played.
SalTV brings one of the featured games this week from Division 6J, don’t scroll down if you want the result to be a surprise!
I am only kidding Ziggy fans, don’t hate me – I put that one in there to make sure we were still paying attention as I summed up the results from 6g. kpA Gaming scored their first scalp of the season, Israeli’s Team Public who returned the favour by dropping to make all the hard work from the Lithuanian’s mean sweet F-A. I do love a matchup where teams live up to their names: Hans & Tryhards turning over No Talent 5-0 on both maps, though one does not like default wins which happened in the next game, eureka winning over Omicron. Final game of the division ended in a thrilling golden cap win for Ascending to Valhall over So famous Gamers, who took the first map convincingly.
The best thing about Division 6 is the names; there are a lot of funny ones, a lot of awesome ones and a lot of names you can just make dreadful puns out of. Without further ado, let’s look at Division 6h (see image). We discovered that Crabz (with the cutest avatars in ETF2L) are naturally stronger than War Crocodiles of Nigeria as the two map victory has proven; Lethal Zone Pink came very close to passing out against Overdose, taking a 4-3 Golden cap win on Badlands but losing out by the same score line in regular time on Gullywash. TeDaRabia got taught a lesson on the Digital Playground losing both maps by 5 rounds whilst 404 not found discovered the errors of their ways with a 2-1 win on Gullywash after losing 5-0 in the first map to eXe.
Division 6h: What the hell does TeDaRabia mean?
Don’t worry, there isn’t any more to come, you can unscrew those faces for 6i with Palooka winning their first match against Livetowin2 (oh the irony), Black Rose.TF2 darkening the spirits of Soupy Twisd! – okay I lied there was still one more bad pun left to come – taking both maps comfortably. 6i is beginning to look like the division of spelling mistakes with eXitus game against ‘Bottom Gameng’ not played as of today, come on guys, don’t be like LTG (‘Late To Game’) get it on! Finally, Obscure Spirits came out 5-0, 5-0 winners over TF2 Wiki: Sparklebros, the former team sounding like they were named to haunt Byte about what he has done to cp_obscure whilst the latter team being a community team from the great TF2 Wiki. So onto the last division of the week, 6j and already I sense it may be a bit one sided with the talented Orange rolling the Lone Wolves, watch out for Gozo on scout for them. Don’t Forget to Smile giving themselves the best advice as they lost out by the big five O on both maps to Superstina whilst Unknown Command got off to a great start with a convincing win against Xtreme Esports, dropping only 1 round each map. Last but not least, professional voyeurs F*ck For Fun! Lost 5-2 on Badlands and 4-2 on Gullywash to redux Gaming, putting up a fight at least in that match. That just about wraps up the results in ETF2L for this week, I hope some of the teams featured comment below and tell us more about their game or at least explain some of those wacky names. Next week I will finish of Division 6 with 6k to 6o getting the spotlight, so for those teams play hard this week!
Wireplay
Tempting though it is to go through every result in Division 4 of Wireplay, I fear a relapse in repeating the same formula I have just done with 48 teams in ETF2L so I figure it is time for a change of format. Thanks to the magic of screen prints we can have a peak at the league tables and check out the teams on top at this moment and call out those who haven’t played any games yet. Once more, like a grandfather I sit gloating to my neighbours about the success of my offspring I can delightfully tell you nobody from outside of Division 1 of Wireplay has dropped so far this season, proving the fabulous dedication of my Div 3-6 dandelions.
NO DROPS SO FAR! I dare say TF2 is alive.
Division 4a shows Exe.cute leading the pack after 4 maps by just 0.02 points as Team ARA curse decimals and bonus points. IDK – cheers Byte also take advantage of the bonus system to edge out Deadman’s Shift, Don’t shoot the Panda losing their opening fixture is obviously a crushing blow to the TF2 community but at least they played a game unlike Colin McRae and Backdraft, not sure of the story of why but neither of these teams has any matches played, though they are ahead of We Don’t Care who are down at the bottom, I can foresee them involved again some good name match-ups in this division with IDK – Cheers Byte and Dstp.
4b has 6 maps played for each team bar two and it has been a great start for Vier//blu and Insane Dynamite Monkeys, although Click it Down are in hot pursuit only 2 points off the pace. The bonus point system continues to confuse me as Who Dares Wins are ahead of CiC despite the latter having a -2 round difference compared to WDW who have a -13 difference. War For Honour and Constellation have a late game with each other soon and both are suffering in the rankings down in 6th and 7th place respectively though not as gloomy as Drunken Angles Unstoppable who are yet to get a win this season.
4c is a distinctive division in this league being the only one that goes down to the third letter of the alphabet. Although IDK Dynamic are leading the way, Energetic Esports look strongly positioned having 2 maps in hand of the leaders. Nervous Energy Blu will say they are in with a shout just behind them although they have already been well-beaten by Energetic Esports. Judean People’s Front are the draw specialists, tieing half of their maps as they hold onto 4th with Evil Empire Headquarters clawing on their backs. The longest name I have ever seen - Audere Semper eSport Diamond TF2 team who actually take up 2 lines in the league table follow up the Ruskies in sixth position, only winning 2 out of 8 games. No doubt n2o is Fancy will definitely…fancy their chances of going above them with 4 maps in hand, although Proton Continuity need to kick start their season losing all 4 encounters so far. Wrapping up that then Wireplay is in full flow, lots of close competition going on and teams being as keen as ever to win that glamorous looking server as a prize; I can’t wait to see who takes that by being the overall division winner from the playoffs!
Interview time
So as I exclaimed to you earlier whilst giggling precariously to myself, I said ‘Hi panda’ to the Division 5f stalwarts, team ‘Fancy A Bum?’. The answer to that of course is I might depending on the romance in the evening, so for now I will take a rain check. With keen interest still I looked up their leader Crazyman who insisted we couldn’t have an interview without the lovable team founder famed for drinking and shooting your feet with a rocket launcher (also wanted in 13 countries for loutish behaviour) Kugs so I caught up with them both, making especially sure I did it before our man Kugs hit the bottle for the evening.
Good day to you two, start me off with why your team name is…what it is?
Kugs: We often spam each other lots of links on mumble pregame. This is one I spammed to Crazyman (from a Balls of Steel sketch) which kinda stuck. We’re all slightly camp anyway, so it makes sense.
That clears that up then. Now obviously I know you guys mostly originated from the GTFO community, the same one I originated from. So question is what made you to make the step-up to the competitive side of our beloved Hat-simulator?
Crazyman: : I was just bored of pub, wanted a bit more of a challenge, and I played a lot with Orv and Father Dougal on the GTFO servers, that sort of grew to lobby, and then a Wireplay team. It didn’t last very long though, and the team soon sort of dropped (sad panda) but then Kugs made Fancy a bum! I think we all like fun games with a few mates but we like to win as well :p
Kugs: We’ve all been playing tf2 (and comp) a while. We started with highlander, and shortly afterwards decided to go into 6v6. I still really enjoy playing on pub servers, but a lot of our team don’t so much. I think we just outgrew pubs and needed newer challenges.
Not sure if this is actually Kugs or not in this gloriously made team avatar.
Of course I played with you guys in the ETF2L Highlander challenge with team Wat? That was an interesting time, I remember you guys going from average to spectacular in a matter of weeks thanks to Byte’s mentoring.
Kugs: It was great playing with Byte and he really helped us out a lot with calling and tactics and just understanding the competitive side of the game. I’ve played in a few highlander teams with a lot of the same people (sadly not Byte again), and we’ve done pretty well.
Yes! I remember winning the UKCS cup with the GTFO team!
Crazyman: There were two GTFO teams though, one where you won a final, and one where I was engy.
Kugs: We won that, but it wasn’t much of a challenge. The other teams weren’t the most organised. :P
Still more Highlander coming up on the horizon, I’ll have you know I been promoting the ETF2L’s first attempt at a league in the 9v9 format and I expect there to be a couple of GTFO teams. ;)
Kugs: We will be there. We might have to make a few changes to our last team from the Commft tournament due to people getting into other games, but we should have a pretty solid experienced team. Hopefully can get Cyber before SNSD snatch him, but we still are all pretty solid in all classes.
Now we have a new dawn for competitive TF2 with the Vanilla ruleset. Tell me how has your team adapted to it? What is your personal opinion on unlocks?
Crazyman: About the rules: It has both good sides and bad sides. Personally I would’ve kept the Equalizer. It did make rollouts more work for me as a Medic :( On the other side, I know have 2 sollies that know rollouts, and it also helped with their jumps in general. So all in all, it’s a good thing for now, but I hope maybe in the future they might revise it again and add a few items (Equalizer, Dead Ringer for instance)!
Kugs: I’m not all that happy with the unlocks. I know a few amazing soldiers that are bad at jumping, and having the equilizer avaliable to them made a lot of difference. The pyro is one class which kinda needs his melee unlock (the axetinguisher) to make a difference. It hasn’t made much of a difference to our team, but I don’t think it’s been that helpful on the whole. I’d really like to see the paintrain in as well. And I dream of the gunboats, but that won’t ever happen :P
Crazyman: You’d finally be useful Kugs!
Word on your team now, you got Sir on scout who is one of the most devastating snipers I have ever seen and Father dougal who has absolute beast deathmatching for a Demoman. I know about these two but tell me about how the rest of you play as a team?
Crazyman: Well, Sir and Father Dougal are the veterans as you could say. I’m “quite new”, but I’ve done enough mixes now to be worth a damn! We have 2 relatively new players, Plodge and Gash. Gash was the medic with the successful GTFO Red Highlander team, he now switched to solly. Plodge is new to the comp 6v6 scene, but not new to 6v6 as scout. He’s been mixing with us for a really long time now and also comes from the GTFO community.
Kugs: Sir and Dougal are outstanding players, and play every class well. We’re very lucky to have them and will do our best to keep them. Crazyman is one of the best medics I know, and a real anchor for the team. He spends a lot of time viewing tactics and getting mentored, and he’s only going to get better. Gash (our pocket) is a suprisingly good soldier. I really didn’t know how good he was until he started playing. Plodge (scout) sings to us a lot and is a solid scout. Kind of our lucky mascot. Me (roamer) I’m ok. I mostly play pubs with a bit of training as well. On a good day I’m pretty good, but on a bad day I’m really kinda awful.
Final word – what is it about GTFO Lazytown server producing sensational Demomen? There is Cyber from Yoyotech, Dougal and of course the best of them all, me! I only spent 1000 hours on that map as Demoman.
Kugs: Lazytown is where all good demos start. It’s a horrible horrible spammy map. It’s also a great one for snipers, our backup scout coffin stuffer – the second best sniper I know mostly lives there. The map has a really good community, and most of the people there are really good at comms. Some Soldiers come from there too such as myself! I had to stop playing though and relearn soldier. Picked up lots of bad habits on that map.
Crazyman: Spend enough time on 32 man instant respawn server on a map with more chokepoints then a corridor, and there’s bound to be a boatload of good demomen coming out of it.
A screenshot I took whilst playing on cp_lazytown.
That is good, promote your local pub server! Any Shoutouts?
Kugs: Buttnose – the guy who introduced me to most of my huge group of 6v6 players by asking me to mix everday at 1am. Love this guy to death. Dharma – the chick who introduced me to Buttnose. Coco – one of the best scout/sollys I know, and makes great vids as well! Slair/ Funkadlic – best EU sollys, they scare me :/. TheSucker – weird weird guy. Byte – imma Byte fanboy. Nuff said. Cyber – other than Hildreth, best demo in tf2. Bear – best tf2 player in the world.
Crazyman: Shoutout to Hildreth for doing this! Shoutout to the entire FAB? team (Kugs, Plodge, Father Dougal, Coxy, Sir, Coffin Stuffer, Gash and Willyfxp)! And Shoutout to Fish for all his awesome mentoring. And to close up, I hope people will realise after this interviews (and the many more to come) that the excitement is not only found in the higher div games. Sure, we won’t have as many cool airshots but the games are still played by people that love the game and just want to have fun, while becoming better at TF2.
Well said there Crazyman. So ends this week’s episode of Div 3-6 review, I have re-acquainted myself with my old community friends and seen so many game results I nearly choked at the idea of giving every division a mention this season. (keep an eye out next week Division 6k-6o). However I feel haunted that there are hundreds of people from all over Europe with a community and a great team out there without me knowing who they are! I would really love to hear from people who fit this category, message me on IRC by typing ‘/q Hildreth1′ on Quakenet or find me in #etf2l.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-10-08 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.