beach — As the off season draws to a close with ETF2L’s Season 15 due to begin in little over a week’s time, it’s time to look into how the Premier Division is shaping up for the coming season. Let’s begin at the top:
Roster
Medic – Knoxxx
Demoman – numlocked
Pocket soldier – Mike
Roaming soldier – GeaR
Scouts – schocky and basH
The team who have dominated European TF2 for the past few seasons really need no introduction. This season sees the return of German powerhouse GeaR to the roaming role, leaving Season 14′s top roamer Mike to return to the pocket soldier position in which we saw him dominating during Season 13. I would suggest that this is definitely an improvement (if perfection can be improved upon!); GeaR was on fantastic form in Season 13, so if he can return that form, Epsilon will no doubt be cruising to another Grand Final. Epsilon remains unchanged for the rest of the roster and still maintain an unbeaten record despite finally losing a map to broder in the Season 14 finals. The only question is can broder go one better this season and take the title?
Roster
Medic – Mirelin
Demoman – ryb
Pocket soldier – Zebbosai
Roaming soldier – Jukebox
Scouts – cookye and bybben
After coming second last season, Zebbosai’s group of BFF rejects look to continue a strong run of form after a closely-fought final. The only major change is the switch from backup to main roster roaming soldier for Jukebox, with tek leaving the team because of conflicting plans for the summer iSeries. Broder have recently taken a three week break and are looking to return ahead of the coming season refreshed and ready to contest Epsilon for the top spot. They came oh so close to victory last time, so they will certainly be out for blood this season (and hopefully won’t leave it until the Grand Final to give the fans a show versus Epsilon!)
Roster
Medic – 2nuts
Demoman – Brego
Pocket soldier – ipz-
Roaming soldier – T-mac
Scouts – TviQ and smzi
Similarly, Crack Clan look to continue their chase of the top 2 teams with ipz- at the helm after
Admirable announced he would be taking the season off due to time commitments. 2nuts makes the step up to take over the medic job in his absence. With Crack Clan losing that Irish charm for the time being, they will undoubtedly lose some of their huge female fanbase, but never fear, they’re still on the hunt for a silver, or even gold, pixel trophy to give the fans what they want – a Crack Clan victory!
nerd party (formerly BFF)
Roster
Medic – skeej
Demoman – kaidus
Pocket soldier – Daleth
Roaming soldier – flisko
Scouts – kiler4fun and BeaVerNKaidus’ team is the highest seeded team to have considerable changes this season. The off season sees Hat leaving due to waning enthusiasm for the game (again), hocz unable to commit time and quad being dropped from the roster, allegedly as a result of inability to attend LAN as well as lack of motivation, availability and perhaps crucially, punctuality. As of yesterday, the roster is once again complete with skeej taking over as Medic after parting ways with SOLAR, flisko returning from a long period of inactivity and rising star kiler4fun taking the remaining position as scout. These changes mean Daleth goes back to his role as pocket soldier, seen last in Damage Control/Decerto/Doctrinal in Season 13. After these major changes, nerd party have had mixed results in practice games, dropping a map to furbo pandas as well as securing wins vs Crack Clan. However, as always, practice games only tell you so much and it remains to be seen which side of this new lineup we will see in the coming season.
Roster
Medic – Vanilla
Demoman – Lalli
Pocket soldier – hycz
Roaming soldier – qnx
Scouts – maidu and cor
The first new arrival into Prem this season is SOLAR, who stormed their way to a Division 1 victory last season, gaining automatic promotion to the top division. Since then they have parted ways with their Skeej and shuffled their roster around to accommodate the changes. Vanilla moves back to Medic after enjoying some success as part of the scout pair last season and backup cor moves into the main lineup to take his place. SOLAR too have had mixed results since the end of last season and have recently struggled to find the form they had at the end of last season versus teams such as WebOne and Reverto. However, notable PCW results include close games against Crack Clan. I think it’s safe to assume that SOLAR are not expected to pressure the top teams in the coming season although with the best efforts of upcoming player of Season 14 hycz, there is no reason to suggest they can’t cause a few upsets.
Roster
Medic – ZooZ
Demoman – kounaa
Pocket soldier -tek
Roaming soldier – Pomme
Scouts – fl1p and droso
After qualifying for prem by beating a broken Quarantine, WebOne have enjoyed some reasonably impressive form in the off season, recently beating HYS’ TLR reform before the project was stopped and also beating SOLAR, who they struggled against in last season’s official. Luzzu recently resigned from his position as pocket soldier and has since been replaced by tek in what most would consider to be a massive upgrade. Hopefully WebOne won’t go the way of PyRo|GEN last season, although with rumours of additional changes to the roster before the season begins, who knows how stable this team will be.
That’s it for the teams that are definitely in Prem next season – watch out for another article coming soon detailing the Premiership playoff teams and predictions on how they are expected to fair in the playoffs and, if they make it, in Prem. Huge thanks to ilike2spin for the info; I’ve been a bit out of touch recently!
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2013-04-26 by hippole.
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.