Arie — Regular highlander contributor Hildreth, had prepared a preview post on the HL S6 Grand Finals, but he forgot to publish it.
Hildreth — So how about some 9v9 hey?
On the eve of the ETF2L Season 6 Highlander Grand Final between first seed Itsallgood and second seed, Highpander – teams have been preparing for the 6v6 season but there is one little game left, to decide who is crowned ETF2L champions and takes the (most) prize money + Tt gear. The final itself will be casted on Blackout Gaming tomorrow, starting 21 CET with casters as of yet undetermined.
For a change of pace than the usual preview article, myself and Bulow prepared our very own previews of EACH OTHER’S team. The war of words proceeding this contest can only far surpass the quality of game that awaits us tomorrow, read below to see each team leader’s honest opinion’s on their opponents:
Bulow: cough cough splutter muted noises of miserable defeat
What’s that noise?
Oh, just perennial chokers Highpander, clouding the skies with phlegmy fear the night before our ETF2L Season 6 Highlander Grand Final. This may seem harsh, unfair even, but this was an inescapable inevitability given that the team was created by Hildreth, a man who oversaw the greatest fall from grace in TF2 history when he took over as medic of the (previously) unstoppable NA team The Syndicate. Tail thoroughly between legs, Hildoge slunk back to Europe, thinking that there would be easier pickings to massage his bruised and battered ego; Highpander was born.
But look at their record (and performances) in the big games: their first wireplay campaign admittedly ended in success, but only after a shaky showing against a Daraoutoutou side that never practiced; dropping koth maps to both us and Kill Switch in Season 5, and indeed, losing the only game that mattered, the final, on two maps of their own choosing; crashing out to us in the Awesome Cup in the semi final. Lamentable.
Hildreth revamped the team. Recruited new people. Big names. Good players. What happened? Losing to Kill Switch. Losing to us. So far they have beaten a Chessclub team that, whilst stronger on paper than their previous line up, doesn’t yet have the same cohesion.
Cast your mind back to the pre-season article. Hildreth claimed that “Kill Switch who as champions should be expecting to retain their title.” Such lame, sub-Mourinho ‘mind games’. Kill Switch, even before their later troubles, were always going to be a weaker side with the loss of Mint and Hegee, two of the very best in their classes. That great doyen of Highlander, Emilio Estevez, saw through the bullshit, declaring “The expectation/pressure is on Hildogs again imo as they have made some big changes to their roster with the intention of winning Prem.” That’s the difference between us and Highpander: we’re a pub community team who have played together all the way from Div6; they’re a group of players picked to win. Anything less for them is failure.
This puts Highpander in an unenviable position. Their only purpose is to win. All the expectation should be on them to do so…and yet their record shows them as brittle and ineffective. What kind of winning machine is that? Victory tomorrow night should be the bare minimum expected from the campaign; a loss would be humiliating.
I could go into detail on some of their players – Zoob, famous for his “forever second” steam profile, and Kissakala a former colony teammate; Steve has tired of padding his ‘impressive’ KA:D with 3 damage chip shots from his shotgun, and has started playing medic in 6v6 – good job, buddy, you’ve already had more drops in one map than I did in my entire (undefeated) 6v6 career. I’ve already mentioned Hildoge himself, and I won’t hear a word said against Piddox. Piddox is good, with a soft, melodic voice. Fool is pleasant too. But Nijoonen, oh boy, that guy. Let’s just say he’s the only player in prem that Fanny can dominate. Phroblem has played well, but suspiciously so; at the start of the season it looked like Mr Epic would take his spot, after an almightily ‘meh’ Season 5…but then he started playing well, almost like he…flicked a switch?…well, the Russians always said he fishy…From the sounds of it Solid will be back playing tomorrow, but we all know that he not so secretly wants us to win anyways, so it’ll pretty much be 10v8 (and you are allowed to play with 8 btw).
Can Highpander finally beat their finals hoodoo?
Doubt it, they’re scrubs GG.
Ouch! Harsh words from the Northern Ireland medic and Itsallgood leader. Thankfully I have publishing rights and am allowed to retort.
Hildreth - What can be said about our opponents for the ETF2L Highlander Grand Final? A longstanding team of friends, a big family…too many Norweigans, a Medic who makes TheSucker look like the Fishomania champion.
A lot can be said, a team that rose from mediocrity losing games to the likes of JollyRanchers and my North American PUG team, they have stuck it out through thick and thin, kind of like a family that cannot help but fight, but stick together despite their differences and Bulow’s Irishness. Their comms in-game tend to be a mixture of Bulow screeching orders like an exhausted father as his spoilt children grab the Golden egg-laying Hen and turn purple, wishing they had followed his advice. Poor Bulow, nobody listens to him when he maincalls but then when they decide to listen, it tends to end up in a disastrous push as Bulow runs into a sniper sightline like a Turkey on thanksgiving and gives his opponent’s one hell of a dinner treat.
But their internal issues don’t matter for much this season, competition wasn’t particularly solid early on for them and Inso, Muuki and Lazybear can make up for their combo’s misgivings after they totally cock up another simple uber advantage.
Oh Muuki, this Anime lover is good at killing Medics, what can be said? However zoob has more Medic picks than him this season? And more frags? Inso is insanely good, but in the worlds of Electric Temptations Medic, Phorofor “Do any Euro spies ever use their knife to backstab?” Well we reckon to give Inso a fair shot in the final, our Spy Solid is going to play with an injured hand, because he doesn’t have the heart to embarrass Bulow too much.
Their progress to their first place in the rankings can only be defined as fortunate – Facing a Kill Switch side when they were ill-prepared on Gravel Pit, a Chessclub side when they were already guaranteed their first spot and SNSD on a Payload map opposed to a 5cp map where they would have most likely got smashed. To top it all off, the ONE map they can actually compete with us (judging by our more favourable pcw record – I’d say it’s 99% in our favour RIGHT GUYS?) happened to be the map they faced us in the regular season, Badwater. If it was Koth, they may have left the server early to avoid a second round. If it was 5cp, I’d suspect a Norweigan DDOS attempt…and let’s not mention Gravel pit shall we lads? Yes but they got the luck of the maps and then the lucky uber drop when Fanny decided now was the time to hit a headshot and won the game.
It’s okay, we weren’t really trying that hard, thought it’d be more interesting to lose and let them be top seed, I’d feel bad if we got first seed, pick two maps they’re bad at and rolled them.
You could write a lot about the people in this team, Lenny the Engineer main – I am not sure if he is ever seriously playing this game but he can sure fire shots from 2 feet away with the Rescue Ranger better than no other Engineer, bar maybe the population of 24/7 Dustbowl Engineers. Kkaltuu is the worst heavy in Prem…can we agree on that? Fanny decides only to play well for Team Norway. Rudey was basically an average Euro Pyro until he started copying Steve’s style, going from 1/4 the play to 1/3 the player.
Can Itsallgood win the final? I think they can….if I forget to set my alarm and not oversleep. GOOD LUCK BOYS.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2014-05-21 by Arie.
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.