With the $4000 Invitational at DreamHack Winter just around the corner, teams are preparing to make the journey to Jonkoping and fight it out in person. Check out this fancy widget below to get all the info you need to follow this EU LAN! Or read on and I'll put it into words, I know you're going to get lost inside this widget and never get out.
Maps & Whitelist
Controversy abounds! The seven maps for this event will be the same as ETF2L Season 22, howeversunshine has been replaced by gravelpit. The fabled return...or the fabled crash and burn. I forget which.
The whitelist for this event is the same as ETF2L Season 22, without the sticky jumper or the rocket jumper. This can be found at whitelist.tf/dreamhack_winter2015.
Schedule
The tournament will run from 15CET on the 27th November, ending with the Grand Final at 18CET on the28th November. For detailed scheduling of each fixture, check the widget, and follow twitch.tv/teamfortresstv.
Each fixture is BO3, with map elimination, aside from the Grand Final which will be BO5 with map elimination. For more detailed info check (you guessed it) the widget. All hail widget.
Every match will be streamed and casted by a plethora of talent at the event. The on-site coverage will be brought to you by such well-known names as: Dashner, Airon, DavidTheWin, BoneS, Uberchain, & Huhy; with casting from Sideshow, Turbotabs, Maks & Beater. Whilst we have planned this all out extensively, we also are diving into new territory! So keep your eyes peeled on the stream for interviews, new content, and a look into how we're experiencing DreamHack Winter!
Originally posted at: http://www.teamfortress.tv/29632/knoxxx-leaves-epsilon-esports Epsilon eSports made a highly-anticipated return to ETF2L Premiership for Season 22, mixing previous veterans from i49 and nerdRage pocket and scout, tek and flippy. The team was primarily formed as an Overwatch team, but were participating in Premiership with the expectation of taking home a victory due to the high calibre of players. They started off excellently in the Challengers Cup, taking home the 1st place prize and only dropping a single map in the semi-final to TLR on cpprocess. However in Season 22, despite some stellar roaming play from Mike and the previous i49 LAN champion experience from numlocked, schocky, and KnOxXx, the team did not look like the dominant Epsilon of old. They dropped a point after being taken to a Golden Cap on cpgullywash by LEGO, and lost cp_process outright to the increasingly inconsistent * TLR*. Perhaps this could be expected from an Epsilon that was only playing scrims twice a week, but with * Reason Gaming* and * Full Tilt* left to play there was very real risk of them ending as low as third in the regular season. This wasn't a particular worry for the team, though *KnOxXx* in particular is a player known for wearing his heart on his sleeve and being very emotionally invested in the game, who had already been feeling frustrated with TF2 in scrims and games.
On Thursday night the team took on Reason Gaming on cpprocess & cpsunshine, two shaky maps for the distinguished Epsilon team. This was the match of the season being played out in Week 5, with both teams going into the fixture hoping to take full points and cement their place in the playoffs. The games were intensely close with both teams leading for large amounts of time, but Reason managed to come out on top on cpprocess. Epsilon were hard pressed to recover on the second map cpsunshine, where they had previously lost to TLR in the Challengers Cup, but came out on top in a somewhat surprising victory making the overall score 3-3. Whilst that would seem to be a mild success for Epsilon, setting them up nicely for a playoff position, those paying close attention to the team comms and morale would realise that for KnOxXx the frustration levels were rising.
Perhaps due to an overestimation of his teams ability without scrimming, or simply a personal dislike with the unlocks this season, KnOxXx has decided not to play TF2 with Epsilon eSports for the rest of Season 22, nor at DreamHack Winter 2015. He will be carrying on playing Overwatch with the rest of his team, but feels that TF2 is simply a source of exasperation. The Epsilon TF2 roster will continue playing in Season 22 and at DreamHack Winter 2015 with Bulle as the substitute for both events.
Seb "numlocked" Barton, the team's demoman and an old veteran, offered the following thoughts on the team and the medic situation:
Our main aim this season was to play less seriously and get some synergy for Overwatch, whilst still contesting the top teams and hopefully winning. Nobody is really bothered about how we're performing, and we're not playing to completely try-hard. We are going to finish the season with Bulle, and of course aim to win, but KnOxXx was getting too mad with the game itself to continue playing.
KnOxXx was getting angry in the scrim before our game on Thursday, and then raged in french in our official. He was definitely angry, but not with our performance. It's just tf2, it makes him too mad. He just gets mad at stuff happening in game.
The team is one game away from a guaranteed playoff spot, with their next fixture being against Animate. This should be an easy win for Epsilon, but without the previous leadership and stability from their medic an upset could be possible. In addition there now exists a very real potential for Epsilon to finish 3rd in the regular season behind Reason & Full Tilt, and require them to fight their way to an overall victory.
Yes, you heard correctly! A four-team invitational TF2 tournament will be taking place at DreamHack Winter in Jonkoping, Sweden on November 27-28. Read on for all the details you need to spectate this brand new TF2 LAN playing host to a clash of the European titans!
DreamHack is one of the biggest names in esports, with events happening all over the globe and throughout the year. DreamHack is the worlds largest digital festival, the "indisputable largest LAN party in the world with over 26,000 visitors, 22,483 unique devices in the network and close to 10,000 visitors who enjoy DreamHack with their own computer". In 2013 TF2 was represented by the Swedish gamers from Saints who played in the Exhibition area challenging visitors to MGE matches for prizes. We've attempted to up the ante slightly from last year, and are going to be running a four-team invitational tournament, produced by teamfortresstv (with a fantastic helping hand from Saloon.tf) with on-site coverage and a sizeable $4,000 prizepool courtesy ofMarketplace.tf!
Format
Teams will play a double-elimination bracket over the course of Friday and Saturday to determine the ultimate champion of European TF2. LAN is all that matters! Forget your ETF2L online finals, and petty scrim ELO. This is where the real men battle, face to face with the enemy, shoulder to shoulder with your team.
Invite Group
The following teams will be participating in the invite bracket:
Epsilon eSports
Reason Gaming
LEGO
Saints
The teams will play a full best-of-three double-elimination bracket. The event will kick off on Friday, November 27th at 16CET, with teams banning and picking maps throughout. The ruleset will be ETF2L Season 22 rules, perhaps with some spicy small changes depending on how devilish I feel! Map pool, precise schedule and rosters will be announced in a follow-up article, with a teaser video to get you hyped!
The $4,000 (~33,000 SEK) prizepot from Marketplace.tf - will be disbursed to the winning teams as follows:
$1,750
$1,000
$750
$500
Coverage
We're on the ground in the Exhibition area at DreamHack in Jonkoping with a teamfortress.tv crew sponsored by Saloon.tf to bring you live coverage. Check the website and our media outlets for content and updates:
Casting veterans will be appearing alongside LAN media veterans and production members to deliver all of the action straight to your screens. The full breakdown of staff will be provided at a later date, but rest assured that this event will be covered to the classic teamfortresstv high standards. We had an opportunity to get a foot in the door of DreamHack by hosting a full LAN tournament in their exhibition area and hopefully turn a few heads, but teamfortresstv have decided to boot the door down and make a damn flashy entrance!
Conclusion
Hyped yet? Make some noise on twitter with the hashtag #dhwtf2 and get ready to witness what promises to be the beginning of a fantastic TF2 DreamHack story. One day we'll be up there with a Valve league, official DH LAN circuit, TI5 prizepool and salaried players! All you have to do is Dream...(Hack).
The beginning stages of the Challengers Cup are about to get under way on Thursday 24th September, so let's take a look at the teams fighting for that $1500 prize pot. In the form of video AND writing!
Maps
Before moving to checking out the rosters for my Top 10, let's take a look at the maps involved:
Maps for Open Series
Round of 32: badlands, granary, viaduct Round of 16: gullywash, snakewater, sunshine Quarterfinals: process, granary, gullywash Semifinals: badlands, snakewater,viaduct Finals: gullywash, badlands, process
I've roughly drafted my idea of a Top 10 for this tournament by taking the invited teams, adding in a few lower Premiership teams, sprinkling a couple of Premiership Qualifier teams in, and adding a random 10th team because I have no idea about these guys. I also asked the teams to provide a 100% serious quality insight into their teams for people watching.
1: Reason
Permzilla
kaidus
kaptain
Rising
Starkie
Hafficool
Stark : "We're like well good innit. We got me and haffi on scout which is like bangin ye? Then we got kaido on demo and hes just the dogs bollocks. Rising on roamer whos a BEAST. Kapi on soldier whos a MONSTER. Permzilla also plays."
2: Epsilon
KnOxXx
numlocked
Mike
tek
schocky
Flippy
Mike : "We're an Overwatch team trying out TF2 to pass the time. Finding this F2P anime knockoff seems like a pretty good way to pass the time especially since there are teams and cups apparently"
3: TLR
Serotone
WARHURYEAH
AMS
Salmon
HerrP
kiler4funn:P
WAR : "Hey guys, We here at TLR e-sports ™ cannot wait for the Challengers Cup powered by Razer Arena ™, with our new improved lineup featuring the best players (currently looking for teams from mid+) I’m sure we can put on a good show with our gimmicky playstyle. I hope other teams will join me as I say that we are very appreciative of Razer ™ for supporting competitive Team Fortress 2 ™. Our brand spanking new Overwatch ™ team will be firing on all cylinders as we look to claim our stake as the best Overwatch ™ team in Team Fortress 2 ™. I’d like to thank our sponsors for getting us where we are today, TorGuard ™, KFA2 ™, Netgear ™, Iiyama ™, Multiplay ™, BattleTiger ™, Gunnar ™ and Ocaholic ™. Cheers, WARHURYEAH"
4: Full Tilt
kos
alle
Silentes
Sideshow
Thalash
Astt
kos : "Listen kid we are the [censored] team in the game ty, we will end u all. Epsi blow cos they don't play, [R]aisin like to choke because kaidus who the [censored] are russians and tlr have never been good. ty. selling zowie za"
5: Serpents
shyyou
Death
Forsak3n
lippy
ShaDowBurn
atomic
ShaDowBurn : "..."
6: Danger Dogs
skeej
kr4tos
zoob
kalho
tonmas
Tseini
kr4tos : "im happy we finally finalised our roster, after weeks of trialing... in the end we just picked up skeej on medic and switched me back to demo, which we didnt try once before. but we all know each other from teams in the past/ highlander, so im confident we can work well together as a team! we are all looking forward for the first challenge in the razer cup now!"
7: LEGO
Condom
DrPhil
Josh
dmoule
sorex
iZon
Josh : "This version of lego only has one dane in it due to real life commitments from the other danes, so iZon was playing dota with me one night and came up with the idea of making a different version of lego by making it just for friends mostly. This involved me iZon and dmoule who have known each other for a few years with the addition of doctor phil and sorex who we have known for almost a year now. All we needed was someone to fill the gap of a cool player in prem and that is when we picked up condom. We've tried out this lineup a fair few times and only got steamrolled really by top teams such as reason and the last resort, but compared to low prem/top high teams we were always able to do well against them mostly coming up with victories and that was shown when we slammed dogs in the zowie cup."
8: top5 rocket?
Ombrack
Kaiizo
Medico
Neo
Opti
Blitzo
Opti : "I would describe top5rocket as a group of friends before a team. Blitzo and I have been friends since season 10 or something. We've successively met Ombrack, and then Kaiizo, Medico and Néo (who had been playing together before). Top5rocket is also including all the people casually playing mixes with us and that leads to, as fraac said, difficulties to find 'serious' logs. We've done a few lans/IRL meetings together; that boosted up our friendship greatly. The support we had on the forum (I'm looking at you Ownage) is really incredible andwe'd really like to thank them all for that. Top5rocket is a community of nice people, and 6 of them appear to be teaming up to play at a decent level."_
9: Planet Express
ScrewB
iikq
neo
muuki
sheepy
tommi
sheepy : "So it pretty much started with me just wanting to make a team with friends (muuki tommi setlet screwb neo) and we were pretty awful in our first few pcws as people have been enjoying pointing out on etf2l. We then deicded that we wanting to actually win something so we got iikq on demoman and now we have really improved a lot and are a pretty good team now. We still have a whole lot to improve on but all 5 players although not the most experianced and have never really played at a prem level are really commited and willing to put the effort in. We have made prem playoffs and although prem would be nice and we want it I think that we need a season to get used to playing at the top level. Considering how keen everyone on the team is I think when season 23 comes along we will be challanging the top prem teams."
10: Ownage Squad
Verse
nuze
Drackk
T0m
hpqoeu
moursi
hpqoeu : "Ownage Squad sponsored by UberLoFF are a Top Notch ETf2l "High" Division Team Looking to Win This Season (22) PLaying For this Extraordinary Team We have Prem PLayers such as "T0m" and "drack". Neither of which can jump properly, yet both play with gunboats. Scouting For tHIs Team We have "Moursi Fanshawe" And "hhhpqeoqu". moursi gets damage through building and "hqwerrew" snipes. Last and Least (cause theyre bad classes and no1 cares) we have "Nuzeman" and "Turbonmonkey" on Demoman and Medic. Really solid players."
Quite.
Well I'm sure you learned nothing from that. I guess you'll simply have to listen to the analysts over on twitch.tv/teamfortresstv, on Thursday 24th September, Sunday 27th September, and Sunday 4th October.
