Hildreth — So I have managed to write two parts of a three part series of articles in about 5 days, then work took over and I needed three weeks to complete this part 3, YET it has taken Torden a good nine months, and counting, to finish part three of the Unicorn man series. Not a criticism of the man, I just want to know what happened to the Unicorn man, it is like a TF2 children’s book to me. Having been informed by CanFo about a potential spot in the eSports Yearbook for my article, I owed it to the man to keep it professional and eliminate all my TheSucker being bad jokes. Unfortunately I failed on the professionalism part in the first sentence of the article, so we’re stuck with bad puns and more Sucker truth bombs.
So anyway we’re back with four more months of TF2 coverage, from the lonely hills of Telford, Shropshire to the heat and humidity of Dallas, Texas the big TF2 LANs kept rolling in. Meanwhile the most active and competitive period of the year – the Autumn season had officially kicked off in Europe.
TL:DR Disclaimer – This article is long, I can sum it up by saying ‘stuff happened’ and also, those of you with a sensitive disposition to TheSucker I advise you do not read this article. Thank you.
September
Summer was over, people went back to their lives of trolling each other behind a keyboard opposed to in person and TF2 hit the pre-season pickup period. We saw new teams form, players ride the roster merry-go-round and old faces leave the scene to do something presumably more worthwhile (like school or Brink). I43 champions Epsilon eSports finally settled on a new roster taking in rising star Randa in place of the retiring Extremer as well as officially recruiting Knoxx who had been playing with the team for some time already. With news of Wltrs not being replaced by LAN merc quad, it would be great news for Infused as not only were they guaranteed a free round against Epsilon with Knoxx officially joining but they could also pick up the Danish pistol machine. Qun stepped aside which meant sadly for all no more Infused comms, though it would come in handy for me to tune up on my German. The i43 runners-up also decided they needed to compete in ETF2L so dropped the banned boomeh and picked up the only other top class British soldier who had recently gone clanless in Flisko – it seemed that the loss to Infused in golden cap was too much for Byte to handle as TCM cut solly pair Flisko and Pena to fiddle around with their roster again. Team Thermaltake were in the market for new scouts as Fisshu quit to commit to Uni and bash ‘mysteriously left’, the loss of two scouts of such ability would eventually see the end of one of the great TF2 teams. Thankfully there was no TF2 apocalypse as THE best European TF2 team, old Dignitas ( Darn, Agron, Ryb, Rebeli, Bybben, Haza) decided to return to the game recruiting upcoming talent Larsa to replace the semi-retired Haza. ESL champions K1ck folded and reformed under the Crack Clan tag with the same line-up bar Matnun to replace Mike and Psunfragga on medic, although the first lady of TF2 would soon step down to a backup role allowing Royze to rejoin. To complete the pre-season madness, Broder returned with most of their old team as well as adding a few new faces to the brotherhood.
No news came from ESL about a new season as they made an appeal for new Admins which left only ETF2L and Wireplay as competitive leagues for the Autumn season, the latter having a PR nightmare with a lot less signups than it should have gotten (under 100). ETF2L was stronger than ever with all 360 spots filled and plenty of teams on the waiting list so the only thing left to do was host a pre-season tournament to give us all an idea of who was the team to beat. Excello and Zowie teamed up to bring us the Pre-season showdown – exactly what we needed. The tournament had two brackets; open and invite with the prize for the open bracket a chance to play with the big boys in invite. Crack Clan would win the open bracket and move on to the invitational tournament. The top 4 of previous months gone by – Epsilon, Infused, Team Dignitas and TCM – would prove too much for the upcoming Prem teams that were Yoyotech, Relic, CKRAS and Crack Clan in the first round. Epsilon beat Infused in the semi-finals, no i43 revenge for the Brits whilst Team Dignitas were too much for the new/old TCM lineup, Haunter returning to the team. A few days later Epsilon came into the final hot favourite despite missing their superstar soldier GeaR – santa mercing – and won over three maps, even though they lost Granary 4-3, they took Badlands 3-1 and won the decider map 6-1 on Gullywash taking the pre-season favourite accolade.
Other notable events:
We all thought ‘TF2 is dead’ rants were…well dead but with the news of Stage LAN(aka ‘Catman LAN’) not going ahead with TF2, the old hue and cry returned. Catman for those who don’t remember him was a chap who put a lot of time and money into the scene and tried to give TF2 a huge LAN with prize money up to $20k. Sadly it never happened, whatever the reason the result was another blow the TF2’s “e-sport” aspiration.
In actual LAN news though, ESEA season 9 concluded in its usual fashion – with a LAN! Classic Mixup , The Experiment , Area 51 and Prophets ft Dashner (Dashner = Peter Mansbridge , Prophets = former eMg) fought it out for the ESEA invite trophy (now engraved with a hoof mark) and some cash monies. Area51 were the underdogs and showed it by being eliminated first but the game of the tournament came between Community Fortress sponsored The Experiment and Classic Mixup in the lower bracket final; the latter pulling out a surprising 3 map victory to set up a Grand final matchup against Prophets ft Mansbridge. The final itself was a bit to one-sided with the Prophets storming through Snakewater and Granary 5-2 on both maps – clockwork having a particularly great LAN, taking MVP.
TF2 is a game carried through by certain individuals willing to put a ton of effort in and a bearded Ferret-loving American named Salamancer started up his own casting channel on Youtube called ‘SalTV’, making Sal one of the most popular figures in TF2.
TF2 coverage had a good month, not only was Salamancer casting like a man possessed but Admirable was writing on Cadred like a man possessed. He made a pledgeto cover TF2 once a day for as long as he lives…if he were to break this pledge could it be the end of Cadred coverage for TF2?
October
ETF2L season 10 and the Team Dignitas Alienware cup #14, it was a busy month for European TF2. In North America teams were gearing up for the new ESEA season with the usual pre-season roster rush. Crack Clan started ETF2L positively beating Relic, equilibrium, Team Dignitas and taking 1 map off Infused and Epsilon. Old boys Relic had a decent month too, taking down Dignitas and equilibrium as well, joining Crack Clan in the play-off places with the contenders Epsilon and Infused also strutting their way into the top 4. Dignitas had a disastrous time this month losing all their ETF2L matches although they managed to salvage some internet pride by making it to the final of their own sponsored Alienware cup, beating off new German reformed side Adrenaline Rush – Brink went too huge for Marco – who themselves knocked out CKRAS in a game so methodically slow-paced you would think you were trying to teach Shifty the definition of “irony”. Qun found a new home with Adrenaline Rush, really helping me to brush up my German skills on QunTV. Epsilon won the Alienware cup, knocking out Infused in the semi-final and defeating the struggling Dignitas in the final, winning Slick more money to buy his handsome cream.
After months of typing essays worth of text discussing the highlander league – only for RaCio to come up with better ideas – we finally saw the ETF2L Highlander league come into creation launching its inaugural season. Of course the league wouldn’t start until next month) but still it was a landmark day for our scene as hundreds of new players joined competitive TF2 for the first time…and TheSucker could play a class in which he failed at but nobody cared because SNSD would still win. Meanwhile, in North America, things were hotting up for the start of the next ESEA season. Former eMg and ESEA Season 9 champions ‘Prophets featuring Dashner’ were picked up by Quantic Gaming. The best team forming to challenge them for the title of ‘best at using overpowered sticks in their gameplay’ award – aka ESEA Season 10 champions – were Classic Mixup who shuffled Harbleu back to Medic with TLR on pocket soldier to revive the successful x6 pocket combination of 2 seasons prior. Platinum switched the Demoman having had a fairly good LAN and Nations Cup campaign playing the class along with an overpowered Scout combo of death matching, movement and intelligence in Enigma plus Moose. In the words of Pyyyour, ‘this is the team to watch this season’. The top 2 was unquestionably these two teams but the other LAN spots appeared to belong to The Experiment who were suffering ‘post TLR syndrome’ (a condition only curable by an intake of Sugar cubes) and Area-51 who switched one of TF2’s most deadly snipers, Justin to pocket Soldier. Anything could happen.
Other notable events:
Ashkan was back and he bought more TF2 and internet “celebrities” with him – and some female gamers to escort him to his Swedish palace – to participate in the Valve Highlander mix up match. Robin Walker stepped up once again to represent his favourite gaming love child along with a select group of top level 6v6 players, community contributors and some random public players given the opportunity to shine with one particular pubber called ‘TheSucker’ showing great promise as a Heavy. Inevitably if you have Yz50 on one team and an inebriated Darn on the other, it would get a bit one-sided – typical Robin Walker team stacking – however it was entertaining.
Meanwhile TF2 celebrated its 4 th birthday on October 10th, finally becoming old enough to go to Kindergarten and wear the big boy pants – check out this timeline on VanillaTF2. Community spirit was high on the agenda this month with Razer and Epsilon hosting a 24 hour charity competition which made insomniacs of many TF2 players all in the name of a good cause – I think the good cause being greed to win items in TF2 but it sounds better if we made it out that they cared more about the charity.
Popular competitive map Gullywash finally found itself an official Valve map with the release of its newest and most likely final version Gullywash_final1. Although many community maps, even those played in 6v6 across the continents have become official, map-maker Arnold deserved the accolade having contributed 2 stock competitive maps to the scene – and making Crossaint which finally gave me a shiny gold medal. Enjoy the stamp money buddy.
The early season roster shuffle was still commencing on both sides of the Atlantic. First off Team Dignitas saw two of their players Punpu and Mafu officially leave the team, feigning a lack of interest in the game! Although we all know the real reason is they wanted Hymzi back on Demoman like the old Power Gaming days but the lack of Premiership level scouting talent meant Longas would eventually be drafted in and see Dignitas use all-English comms. Old-Dignitas superstar Haza also joined the team but it would still be a tough month for the Finns/Spaniard. In other news Infused medic Flushy left to focus on University meaning a fight off between the smooth-talking Dunc and just plain-talking-all-the-time Byte as medics, eventually won by Dunc.
November
By far the busiest month of the year in terms of official games with the ETF2L league running 6v6 AND Highlander, with Excello and ESH holding a cup either end of the month. There is no doubt TF2 has had a lot of healthy competition online this Autumn but the mega big LAN the hardcore players were crying out for wasn’t coming as i44 took place with its expected small turnout, although talk of Winter Assembly would soon initiate. Nonetheless Infused took home the guaranteed prize money and Chris took home a wheelchair and a bag of vomit. The eSports Heaven Sapphire challenge took place over 2 days with the brackets throwing up some interesting semi-finals, the ‘big 2′ in Europe Infused.Tt plus Epsilon faced up once again but with the roster shuffling on Infused Epsilon took a reasonably easy 2 map win. The other semi-final saw veterans Relic face upcoming Yoyotech…well TheSucker is on Yoyotech so I think we know how that went. To the final then and with £300 up for grabs (enough money to keep Slick in shampoo for a week) Relic and Epsilon met on good old fashioned Badlands which was a fast paced encounter with little separating the sides and lots of individual brilliance shining on both sides – it reminded me of the Old Dignitas in the i40 final against Epsilon. Nowadays though, new-Epsilon are the team to beat and proved themselves once again with a clutch Spy cap by Stefen deciding the map – VOD HERE. Granary was more of the same with scores tied at 2-2 until Epsilon turned it up a GeaR – it could be worse I could have put ‘Knoxx’ – and in the words of Greg bought out the ‘Standard Darn ragequit‘.
So some great TF2 action to accompany a busy month of coverageon VanillaTV with ETF2L in full flow, Epsilon beating Relic again 6-0 along with Portuguese strugglers Equilibrium. Infused did take down the ESH Sapphire winners taking GravelPit 2-1 and Granary 4-3 with golden cap decider. Crack Clan’s earlier performances in October had more or less guaranteed them a playoff spot so their solitary ETF2L game verses CKRAS ending 3-3 didn’t affect the points but it seemed Crack Clan had lost some of their flair of late, especially after a disappointing loss to Relic. The ancients of TF2 themselves booked the 4th play-off spot by beating CKRAS 5-1 on Granary, the second map golden cap win on Obscure being the icing on the cake. Reaching two cup finals though for Relic was the cherry upon the icing on the cake, with a close loss in the ESH cup out of their minds they got through Yoyotech (this is too easy come on) and Crack Clan whilst they once again faced their old MGO Team Dignitas for cash money but much more importantly – Finnish/Swedish bragging rights. Diggy were on a roll though, knocking Epsilon (who beat the ‘Open’ cup winners Exotic Island) off their perch in an epicsemi-final after taking down CKRAS over two maps and looked in the mood early on Gravelpit, winning both rounds as Relic’s lack of practise was looking exposed as they failed a lot of B pushes. With both teams having between them most of the players from the olden day Team Dignitas (Relic of today) vs Power Gaming (Team Dignitas of today) it had that feel for nostalgia, but the days of Relic’s dominance were long gone as once again bad pushing let them down in the 2nd map which they lost 3-0 on Badlands. So Diggy might have missed out on the playoffs but their new scout combination of Longas and Cookye (who didn’t play for the team in the Power Gaming days) was starting to mold into shape.
Other notable events:
There were 2 other LANs this month other than i44, one being in Russia as the TF2world.ru #3 LAN took place in Moscow with a large amount of players from the Russian and Eastern European community attending. Cegth[etw team (don’t type that with a Russian keyboard) would take home the prize beating mix team Y U KNOW WIN In an entertaining 3 map finale. The other LAN was in Poitiers, France as the French TF2 community gathered for GA’lloween 2011 with Division 2 team LDLC.com taking the first prize of €300 + 6 tickets to Gamers Assembly 2012.
With the 6v6 regular season more or less wrapped up ETF2L announced its play-off structure to decide promotions, relegations and the overall winner of Premiership for Season 10! 4th placed Relic would play 3rd place side Epsilon eSports with the winner going on to face 2nd placed Crack Clan for a spot in the Grand Final against Infused who had booked their place in the final by winning the league.
A month or so after the last mixup match, the third Mixup match took place ‘behind closed doors’ so to speak with post production VOD released afterwards With teams of community contributors, Valve staff, top level players and…girl gamers went head to head in a relaxed match aimed to be more promotional opposed to competitive. Meanwhile streamer extraordinaire CUBE was working overtime posting VanillaTV insight videos, you can check out some great videos with the point of view of a high level player plus their team’s communication throughout the match, showing you how to play (or in TheSucker’s case – how not to play the main competitive classes and even throwing in a couple of Highlander ones later on.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/{ID_VIDEO}
- Meanwhile across the pond, the MGE cup had reached its conclusion with the two strongest teams in the North American scene, Classic Mixup and Quantic Gaming going up against eachother to win some prize money. Quantic picked Snakewater for the first map and despite being 3-1 up at half-time they lost 4 rounds in a row to lose the first map 5-3 (remember yanks like to play first to 5 caps opposed to win difference of 5 caps). The second map was one of Mixups strongest in Viaduct_pro where they managed to complete the job, taking it 4-2 and snatching the prize money out of cup funder and Quantic medic CB’s pocket. Check out the VOD.
December
So we’ve made it to the last month of the year and things are certainly reaching their climax as we begin to say goodbye to 2011. The first order of business would be the ETF2L 6v6 playoffs with 4th placed Relic facing off against 3rd placed Epsilon in a good old fashioned top level TF2 clash. Epsilon may have finished behind Crack Clan and Infused but they were still seen as the favourites to win ETF2L but who knows what can happen when Relic are in the mood. However the most successful TF2 team ever were nowhere near their best as they got humbled by Epsilon 6-1 on the first map Badlands and although the second map Granary was a lot tighter (Granary being legendary for being Relic’s home map) but with Darn throwing ‘haxusations’ out, Epsilon squeeze through winning 4-3. Perhaps this defeat might have been the last competitive match we see Relic playing together, finally the end of the kings of TF2? It wasn’t just the Prem winner being decided this month; Broder and Yoyotech would fight it out in the ‘winner gets promoted to Prem, loser gets promoted to Prem a bit later‘ play-off matchwhich went in favour of Broder who got promoted to Prem….along with Yoyotech…who also got promoted to Prem at the expense of equilibrium. Both teams would change their line-ups as they prepared for the new season – broder seeing their scout Fanva step down and replaced by ex-Thermaltake/Fakkelbrigade Soldier Dr Leon . Yoyotech meanwhile dropped Origo in place of Droso and kicked TheSucker after gaining some sense…wait, they didn’t?! THEY GOT RID OF CYBER INSTEAD? TF2 is dead to me now. Well at least they managed to pick up one of the best Demos in Europe (2nd best in Northamptonshire) in Kaidus. Elsewhere Blight Gaming picked up the new German team Made in Germany aka Adrenaline Rush although Marco leaving the scene once more along with Bash leaving for Crack Clan later one would lead to the team’s quick demise, so no chance for Blackfoger to break any LAN funding promises.
Blight gaming like many new-born pandas have a short life-span
In the other TF2 competitive format, SNSD (Sucker jokes…even I am fed up of them now, I will make TviQ hacking jokes now) would run away with the inaugural ETF2L Highlander season, smashing all that lay before them thanks to their immense knowledge of the format, individual skill and TviQ’s aimbot. UGC European champions Turbopoop eSports took 2nd place, May Contain Nuts got the bronze once again and Colony scraped and escaped relegation coming in 4th place leaving the ‘Highlander specialists’ as the real winners of Season 1. Back to 6v6 and ETF2L’s playoffs were in a bit of doubt before it got announced that the 2nd versus 3rd playoff match between Epsilon and Crack Clan would go ahead 2 days before the Grand Final. In the same week community idol Byte would ‘forgive’ ex-TF2TV caster ThePledge as a kiss and make up session turned into a public event for all to ridicule. Good news for us viewers was ThePledge would be straight back casting Crack Clan and Epsilon battle it out for the spot in the final yet the match itself would be one-sided due to Crack Clan having lost EstaniS to real life and definitely losing their earlier jive, losing 4-1 and 6-1 on Granlands.
So the Grand Final would be Epsilon v Infused for about the fourth event in 4 months and Infused losing all the finals, only beat Epsilon once during ETF2L’s regular season. It would turn out to be a memorable match in more ways than one as the first map, Badlands would see Epsilon take a 3-0 lead and be pushing Infused’s last point with 10 minutes on the clock. However an unlikely push back to Epsilon’s last commenced over the next few minutes and despite Infused looking to have screwed it up – Quad came in and got a cheap backcap giving Infused some hope and momentum which they carried through to tie up the map with 2 more cheap caps by their scouts. With Epsilon losing caps without putting much a proper defence, Infused took the adrenaline into the golden cap round and against all odds turned the map around, taking it 4-3. Most teams would capitulate after being 3-0 up and pushing the last point with 10 minutes left but Epsilon haven’t won 5 out of the last 6 meetings with Infused by licking their wounds and put the game out of their mind and duly demolished Infused 5-0 on Snakewater. Infused were simply outplayed on the map but they still kept the belief that they could pull out the win on their home map Gullywash which would be the decider for the ETF2L season. After one round restart, the map officially got underway and Infused took 2 rounds within 10 minutes to take control but a hard fought 3rd round went in favour of Epsilon who were battling hard to stay in the game – the tension was as soaring through the match with 15 minutes left, Infused pushing last. Push after push for Infused seemed to fail and the clock slowly ticked down to 12 minutes left, 10 minutes left, Epsilon get back to middle but Infused push them back quickly to last, 8 minutes left, 5 minutes left and Infused held the 1 cap advantage still pushing Epsilon’s last point. Then it all happened so fast: Wltrs managed to get through the lines unopposed and position himself for a backcap as Infused pushed into last, committing everything to getting that 3-1 scoreline – it backfired resulting in a huge swoop in momentum as Epsilon took the crucial heartbreaker round. 3 minutes left and Epsilon charged into middle and killed 4 Infused players to put them onto their last point, although Infused’s medic Dunc survived it seemed like it would be a nervous 2 minutes of ‘parking the bus’ for the i44 winners but instead they did the weirdest attempt at a push out 6v5 which is hardly worth it with 2 minutes on the clock and got backcapped by wltrs, securing the cap that would ultimately be the decider. The drama didn’t end there and Infused went all out on the next middle and forced Epsilon to their last point with 30 seconds left to make a push, they came in uber v uber but in the panic both GeaR and Stefen spawned as Heavies which is against the classlimit rules (you are only allowed 1 heavy active) prompting Infused to initially dispute the incident as time ran out and Epsilon were declared winners. Thankfully after a lot of discussion and the mandatory flourish of community members giving their monies worth to the debate, Infused accepted that Stefen did not influence the outcome and Epsilon won their 3rd ETF2L title!
Other notable events:
Winter Assembly 2012 was in doubt as M0re tried to bring attention to TF2 which was coming behind other games in terms of interest from the event organisers. However with CKRAS, Epsilon, Infused, Team Dignitas and Relic – 5 of Europe’s finest planning on attending, surely this would be one of TF2’s most competitive LAN’s ever? Why shouldn’t we get a tournament for WASM, it is in the bag right?
On the TF2 discussion front, the biggest community contributors from the world of TF2 Highlander gathered for the first evercommunity discussion. This event involved people from VanillaTV and ExTV, representatives from major TF2 leagues that have hosted Highlander events such as UGC, ETF2L (why only me), CEVO, OzFortress as well as Community Fortress. As a participator in this event I would like to say it was one of the biggest wastes of time ever and I felt sympathy for anyone who actually tried to get something insightful out of it.
One the more entertaining and less formal discussion front we saw competitive TF2 podcasts reborn with Pirate Radio coming into fruition, hosted by Greg from Infused along with some wannabe Div 3 medic plus an unfunny American (this is my application to be on the show Greg). Good fun involved for all.
2 places of interest for any competitive TF2 fan closed down this month: the first being My Gaming Edge after its creator CB decided to shut the project down after failing to get suitable content on a regular basis. MGE had been a subscription based website for the community which aimed to provide high quality insight videos from top TF2 players. It’s influence on the community, especially the high standards of the videos and casts they have done will not be forgotten. Also shutting down its TF2 news coverage was the gaming website Cadred.org which many had seen as TF2’s main chance to show its appeal to wider eSports audiences, a major loss for the community? I shall let you decide.
And my final notable event of the year will be….well of course it has to be LTG winning the Crossaint Highest Bracket! I mean what is more important than winning virtual medals on a map no-one except a weirdly obsessed man named CrashSite knew about? Nothing, absolutely nothing my friends…go go LagTastic Gaming – may we rest in pieces. (“Top level TF2 coverage”, eh? – Ed.)
So that is it ladies and gentlemen, that was 2011 for TF2. We had highs and lows, LAN successes and disappointments, drama and boring days, we had controversies and unity within the community – we had everything from coke spills to LAN thrills and lots and lots of TF2 kills. Finally we had many new faces appear on the scene and some older ones fade away but all in all we had a GREAT year for competitive TF2. I look forward to doing it all over again next year (haha no). Have a great year TF2 people and Torden, finish the Unicorn man.
Big thanks to Rinta for helping me out with the archives and other stuff and to Leftism for help editing.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2012-01-25 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.