Razerfox — Hi there fellow TF2ers! For those who don’t already know, TF2 has found its way to the shores of the deep, dark continent of Africa. There is a small but dedicated community of us based in South Africa with a few players from neighbouring countries Botswana, Zimbabwe and Namibia sometimes joining the fracas.  Given the relatively poor state of connectivity across the rest of Africa, we are pretty much isolated from any other TF2 communities in Africa and especially the rest of the world – our high latency is a real game breaker. Back in 2009 we managed to play a friendly match against the guys at FakkelBrigade but it wasn’t too much fun trying to compete with an average latency of 240ms.

Team Fortress 2 Community of South Africa

Over here we closely follow the Euro TF2 scene and essentially use the same thirty minute time limit and difference of five with an almost vanilla weapon and unlock rule set. A good bunch of us visit Vanillatf2.org on  daily basis and even make sure we share their great and useful tutorials content on our local site (TF2CSA) as well. And at the i43 stream finals there were at least thirty of us enjoying the casting and getting off on Byte’s (OHHH GOING HUGE!) comments, something to make our TF2 wet dreams so enjoyable – really good stuff!  P.S. We would like to know how to contact Darn to send him all the letters from SA fans requesting to have his babies!

TF2 competitive scene in South Africa

Our local competitive community might not be as large as the likes of COD4 (COD has on average over forty local teams competing at any one time). TF2 has about twelve teams that are active. We could push this to sixteen or even twenty teams but unfortunately various issues: lack of true commitment; poor team captaincy and less than ideal Internet infrastructure contribute to use remaining at a low, but stable community ceiling of twelve.

Since TF2 became a free game we’ve seen a great influx of players at the pubbing side. We are still working to convert many of these to the competitive scene – not seen many of them really interested in playing 6v6. We are, however, still building up some momentum with those that are keen and hopefully next year when the major events take place we will have healthier numbers and good competitiveness betweens teams.

Team Fortress 2 One Night Cups

This Sunday we will have an event run by an organisation called “16Bit TF”. Founded and run by a well know local journalist and gamer, Yolanda “Lolita” Green, “16Bit TF” is a face-off challenge with eight teams competing over one night for the title. There are two seeding brackets, the four higher seeded teams make up the “pro” bracket (see below) and the remaining four teams the “novice” bracket.

Pro Bracket Teams

Vintage – Naked – Masters – Fags

Novice Bracket Teams

PcZ – Cyberjunkies – Prime – LegioN

This One Night Cups style of tournament have proven to be very popular in the local scene and they take place once per month usually the first Sunday of the month. The first editions had a single bracket for all the teams but on this latest edition there will be 2 brackets to accommodate a lower skilled group of teams to have their own finals and make their way through the rankings.

For more details of Sunday’s Cup, please check out the South African TF2 web site’s 16Bit TF Match page if you would like to have a look at our gameplay.

VanillaTV will be casting the final of this one night cup – with more details to follow.

Keep on fragging!

Thanks for the opportunity to promote our little community and tournament down here at the tip of Africa – a big shout out to all the people that keep pushing for TF2 to be a well recognized game within the competitive scene worldwide. Keep it up and keep on fragging!