Hildreth — An update in the Highlander world and for many of us avid long time 9v9 players, it is a sad one. I regret to write these words, but the legendary and long-time standing Highlander team, who are one of the oldest and best known names in the European Highlander scene have announced they will be folding after 3 and a half years of being in our competitive scene. From a team of pubbers hailing from the Rocket Blast/Lokalen server, Colony (known as :E, get it? GET IT?) were on the first organised teams to brace the 9v9 game and go from Pub Heroes to being watched by 1000+ people in the ETF2L Highlander Community Challenge. Having played every season of ETF2L and the old tournaments of the CommFT days, they have been around since before the 9v9 format was popular and their influence on the European scene has been massive in terms of providing a place for the HL community to live; providing a mumble server, regular double mixes via their Steam Group / Spreadsheet mix and a place to arrange HL pcws for all teams.
Read on for a statement to why they have finally disbanded and a look at their highs and lows from their long history:
In a statement from the team’s Spy and Captain, SabaSaba regarding why they have finally decided to lay their heads to eternal rest:
I don’t want to lead a team of Légion étrangère, I would then be the only one left from the Highlander Community Challenge main lineup.
Losing Furbo, zoob and rouhe in the same week was the last straw. Noretus, mente, s3 and J0rmund had already retired. Letq, Mrlate, mInd, fraggen and Septique played with colony like once a month or once during the whole season, which is not enough for premiership. Some of the players were simply too busy to play or just didn’t have the spark for serious TF2.
The core of SabaSaba, yonus, nappr, kissakala and kkaltuu wasn’t strong enough to hold on it’s own. Arc and Rouhe never got play an official match with colony. I did not want to recruit any more new faces and maybe start in a lower division. Colony has always been premiership and will never go lower!
I can hardly call it Colony anymore after losing our most deadly death matchers and the creators of this legendary team. Replacing the likes of Furbo and Zoob is almost impossible. It was spanking a dead horse, really.
So in the eyes of their leader, losing some of their best players was the catalyst to the team dying, but it had been in the works for a long time with the original players losing interest in the game and going inactive. A state of affairs so familiar with so many different teams over the history of TF2.
A Rocketblast from the past
The first appearance of Colony came all the way back in the Spring of 2010 when they faced the well known and popular 6v6 team, Broder in a 6v9 showmatch. This match was in order to gain publicity for the much famed ETF2L Community Highlander challenge, a tournament best known for being the largest ever in competitive TF2 tournament with over 900 teams participating. Colony formed themselves from the public community server called Rocketblast/Lokalen, a popular place for Swedish and Finnish people to play their TF2, the team being majority Finnish having a couple of Swedish players on the roster. The HCC (as it is abbrevaited) turned this group of pubbers into one of the big players in this community tournament designed to bring fresh talent to the competitive scene as Colony spent the next few months practising for this event, playing in the ETF2L Ladder with a record of 9-2 and by the time the (much delayed) event came about, Colony were one of the favourites to win.
Colony brushed past the Group stages in the Autumn of 2010 and went on to beat various community teams in the 7 proceeding knockout rounds, from Vier Highlander to my own American based Lazytown regulars and the Twistedplay Circlejerk and set up a final meeting with SNSD. In the match itself, Colony fell short on a DDOS’d affected Dustbowl decider, despite winning the first map that was Upward’s, they lost Badwater in the 2nd but that intensely close encounter would be the first of many heartbreaks they faced against SNSD down the years. For the team, a year of tryharding was exhausting but they still turned up to play the CommFT tournament – One that ended in disappointment after forfeiting in the Higher Bracket, they lost to 8 Mates and a Ginger, generously allowing the likes of ALX, Cyber and the amazing Engineer TheSucker to merc for their opponents. After that, the great European drought of Highlander outside of UGC began and the great teams like SNSD, May Contain Nuts and Colony went on a 9 month hiatus until the announcement of ETF2L Highlander league competition.
Highs and Lows
Season 1 saw the classic Colony side come back from the dead to play again, unfortunately it was a season with a lot to be desired as they came 4th placed, losing points to everyone except the Portuguese side Comunidade Portuguesa TF2 though considering they allowed the use of any skill player to make teams (no restrictions on 6v6 experience like in the HCC), it was a credible performance, and before Season 2 they had one of their brighter points that I will fondly remember in the Experimental Highlander Cup #1 – Where they made the High Bracket final against SNSD once again and took the first map Barnblitz against the predictions of everyone thanks to a big pick by our man SabaSaba on TheSucker - Admirable praised the performance of Colony that night, especially the scout Furbo (now with Team Decerto), despite losing a really closely contested 3 map series, they surely had enough promise in their performance to have a successful season 2.
Colony’s only real accolade was tying for first place in the 9v9 Wireplay league during what is called “Season 9″ on their website, precious Gold for the Finnish side! ETF2L Seasons never gave Colony much joy in the open field, but the relegation tiebreakers always brought on joy for them. In Season 2 they played rather poorly and it wasn’t until the end of the season where they won their last match vs Turbopoop eSports to keep themselves from finishing last and then a tiebreaker playoff vs Choir Tai, despite losing in the regular season. for Season 3 and 4 they had decent performances to start the season but would trail away midway through the campaign. in Season 3 they battled for their place (and a small sum of prize money…maybe?) and defeated Max-Play to keep their Premiership spot and again in Season 4, they avenged a playoff loss to Legolas’ Wrath by beating them in the regular season and securing 4th spot in what has turned out to be their last season.
Legacy
Despite never reaching the heights of success like their rivals (and great friends) SNSD and holding the tag “Forever second” – immortalised by Zooob’s Steam profile - it is perhaps suitable that their last ever competitive game in the Experimental Highlander Cup #4, was a defeat in the Final, coming 2nd once again to the Russian side, A Large Piece of Beef. A disappointing end and with the new team Highpander drawing Furbo and Zoob away (It could be argued I have killed Finnish Highlander, to add to my rap sheet of Killing English Highlander) enough has been enough and Colony have settled into the dust. But their legacy will live on forever, with the “original pubstars” always being a community favourite amongst the Highlander faithful and an inspiration to many teams that have come through the ranks. The Colony 9v9 Gatherremains popular, still the best way to get a casual pickup game in 9v9 European TF2, via the “Spreadsheet mixes” and of course the Colony mumble is still popular for the Highlander community.
So I wrote this article just to pay tribute to one of my favourite teams, never the best but they always had heart and always put on a show, sticking it out despite never reaching great heights. A inspiration to public players, showing how far a group of gamers from a Pub server can go in the competitive scene. I’ll die a sad man never seeing SNSD beaten by Colony or that fixture ever occurring again, one of the oldest rivalries in TF2.
So thank you Colony for the memories and all you’ve done for Highlander.
Colony were:
Furbo, Zoob, Yonus, Nappr, Kkaltuu, Letq, Kissakala, Phunk, Sabasaba, Septique, Mrlate, Fraggen, Noretus, Mente, S3, MInd, J0rmund, Gangsteralgot, Hurr, Jonzku and Hiekkis.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2013-10-15 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.