Thursday 24 September 2015

Top 10 Teams, Trailer & Maps - Challengers Cup hosted by teamfortress.tv


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
Maps for Invite Series
Map Selection Quarterfinals: gullywash, process, granary
Semifinals: badlands, sunshine, snakewater
Finals: gullywash, badlands, viaduct

Top 10 Teams

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.

Monday 14 September 2015

Challengers Cup hosted by teamfortress.tv


If you've been around at all in the past two months you'll have witnessed the most amazing tournament in the history of TF2 with i55. What you'll have also noticed skulking in the corners, ready for its time in the limelight, is Razer Arena. Razer Arena is a fantastic automated system that runs tournaments from a website seamlessly. It's well-administrated, fantastically easy to use and very supportive of TF2. You might have seen smaller cups being casted here, or even played in them. This, however, is the big debut!

Prizemoney

Razer has put up a stonking $1500 for Europe to battle tooth and nail over in an incredible tournament spanning 3 days. Four teams have been seeded already by invitation:
  1. [R]eason Gaming
  2. Epsilon eSports
  3. The Last Resort
  4. Full Tilt
...another 32 will compete for the right to challenge them, with every single round casted live on teamfortresstv!
The winners of the entire tournament will walk away with $900 and a title before Season 22 is even halfway through. The 2nd place team will get $400 to mop up their tears with, while the 3rd and 4th place teams will get$100 to put toward treatment for the traumatic events that led to them being knocked out so early.

Schedule

The main tournament is open to absolutely everybody and with the roster shakeups at the top, anyone can take the money! The tournament will start on Thursday 24th September at 19:45 CEST (just a tiny bit before normal pcw time for your convenience). 32 teams will battle it out, playing 2 Best-of-Three knockout matches to leave us with our top 8 Open teams! You're guaranteed at least 2 maps against teams roughly your skill level, and up to 6 tense maps if you win as the entire tournament is Best-of-Three. So sign up fast to get some practice in before Season 22, get casted, and try out the new Razer Arena system!
Games continue on Sunday 27th September at 18 CEST where those top 8 teams will once again go head to head in another 3 Best-of-Three games. With everything on the line, teams must win at least the Quarterfinal match to secure themselves a place in the Invite tournament! After that, the teams can breathe a sigh of relief -and then immediately battle for seeding! At the end of the first Sunday, we will have our top 8 teams for the Invitational bracket, and the seedings going into the tournament.
The final day of the Challengers Cup hosted by teamfortress.tv will be an unholy spectacle. On October 4th at 18CEST, the potential leviathans of [R]eason Gaming, Epsilon eSports, The Last Resort & Full Tilt will have to withstand a barrage from the tried and tested champions of the Open Qualifiers.
Again Best-of-Three. Again the losers walk away with nothing. But if even one of them falls - the Open teams get a fat slice of the winnings! Yes that's right, all you have to do to guarantee yourself at least $100 is to upset a single one of the 4 invited teams.

Razer Arena

Find out more details about the schedule below (including times, brackets & maps) and click the links to create a team and sign up on Razer Arena. We'll be posting more content later on including roster rundowns of the top teams, a video trailer by Beater featuring sick frags, information on which of your favourite casters will be making appearances and more.
Want to make a name for yourself and your team on the teamfortresstv stream? Just want some experience in an Official before Season 22? Maybe all you want to do is support competitive TF2? AIM HIGHER DAMMIT!!
Do you have what it takes to fold Full Tilt, roll TLR, create an un[R]easonable upset & take down Epsilon?! OF COURSE YOU DO!
Challengers! Are you ready?!