VanillaTF2

Fog — With less than a day before the start of the ESEA S11 season, here is a preview of the teams and their rosters

Seeing has some of the rosters have yet to be set in stone, and not a single official match has been played with any of these teams, I will only focus on the teams, their off-season changes, and their potential ranking. I will not bother with making predictions and actual power rankings until the second week of the season.  With that being said, enjoy the ESEA S11 Invite Preview article!

There have been a lot of notable changes from the end of last season to this season, with notable players such as TLR, Mackey, CB, and TechDude no longer actively playing in competitive TF2 due to personal reasons or otherwise. Along with that, Area 51 Gaming TF2, The Experiment, The Spacewhales, and Blight TF2 have dropped off as team for this season. Replacing those four teams, we have the seemingly super-team that is Mihaly’s Flow, the return of Yz50 with Srsly Br0, Season 11 ESEA-IM 1st place winners Pinball Wizards, and ESEA-IM S11 4th place team and voted in by the community Leviathan Gaming. Of the teams that have stuck around, all of the rosters have some new faces, mainly from the remnants of the defunct teams. With the short amount of time between seasons and the new rosters not being fully in sync, expect there to be a lot of surprises in the first few weeks of the season.

Read on for the full lowdown!

1^⁵ᵀ Epsilon eSports (140 points)
2ᴺᴰ Team Infused (127 points)
3ᴿᴰ Crack Clan (114 points)
4ᵀᴴ 1 Team Yoyotech (100 points)
5ᵀᴴ 2 Karnage eSports (68 points)
6ᵀᴴ 2 Tryharders (54 points)
7ᵀᴴ Last Man Standing (46 points)
8ᵀᴴ Equilibrium (45 points)
9ᵀᴴ Punchline (39 points)
10ᵀᴴ Quarantine (37 points)

Greg — Fifteen votes will go into each month’s rankings, ten of which are from the previous month’s top ten teams, and five of which are from our panel members, who will vote every month. The points system remains simple: a first place vote earns that team 10 points, 9 points are awarded for second place, and so on. The numbers in parentheses refer to the specific team’s ranking in the previous Month.

Continue reading to find out who the panel members are, and see their thoughts and opinions on this month’s rankings.

CUBE —  It’s been a while since I’ve written an update regarding the VanillaTV YouTube Channel, so here’s a news post to let you know what we’ve been up to and what we’ve got planned for the coming months.

Fragmovies of the Month

For any of you that haven’t seen, a couple of days ago we released a new series called VanlliaTV Fragmovies of the Month, which rates and reviews TF2 Fragmovies from the previous month and provides links to the full movies. The idea behind this is to help editors gain more exposure for their fragmovies and also to hopefully increase the quality of the fragmovies by giving new editors an idea as to what people look for in a fragmovie.

I want to give a massive thanks to  BoneS and  Skyride for helping me review the videos and since releasing the video, I have also been approached by decap and  FreezeR who will now be joining the panel to help rate and review in future months.

We’ve had some great feedback since releasing the video and will start thinking about which movies to review for February very soon, expect to see the February video around mid-March.

More updates after the jump…

1^⁵ᵀ    Epsilon eSports  (137 points)
2ᴺᴰ    Team Infused (130 points)
3ᴿᴰ  Crack Clan (114 points)
4ᵀᴴ  2  Broder (94 points)
5ᵀᴴ  2  Team Yoyotech (79 points)
6ᵀᴴ  3  Exotic Island (78 points)
7ᵀᴴ Karnage eSports (74 points)
8ᵀᴴ  Tryharders (43 points)
9ᵀᴴ  Team Decerto (34 points)
10ᵀᴴ    Quarantine (29 points)

Greg — Fifteen votes will go into each month’s rankings, ten of which are from the previous month’s top ten teams, and five of which are from our panel members, who will vote every month. The points system remains simple: a first place vote earns that team 10 points, 9 points are awarded for second place, and so on. The numbers in parentheses refer to the specific team’s ranking in the previous Month.

Continue reading to find out who the panel members are, and see their thoughts and opinions on this month’s rankings.

Fog — Hey everyone, sorry about the lack of a Week 8 Power Ranking, but I had no time to write the article due to various personal reasons. Hopefully this roundup makes up for the lack of power rankings

After a very exciting final week of the season, the LAN spots have been decided! After the week 7 matches finished up, the final LAN spot was still very much up for grabs. The teams played on the classic favourite cp_granary for Week 8.

Granary is a standard 5CP map that along with Gravel Pit, are the only maps used from the launch of TF2. The map itself is known for it’s generally flat terrain, and it’s easy rollouts to the middle point. There have been some changes made to the map from the game’s launch in 2007, with the biggest recent change being with the addition of the second entrance to/from garage. Granary is also known to be a slow paced map with clear choke points and limited possibilities for flanks. Teams will have to rely on their heavy classes to put out lots of damage and also have to rely on their teamwork skills to be successful on Granary. Now it’s time to go over what went down in the 8th and final week of the regular season before LAN.

1^⁵ᵀ (1)   Epsilon eSports (140 points)
2ᴺᴰ (2) Team Infused (125 points)
3ᴿᴰ (5) Crack Clan (102 points)
4ᵀᴴ (3) Team Dignitas (97 points)
5ᵀᴴ (4) Relic (89 points)
6ᵀᴴ (8) Broder (80 points)
7ᵀᴴ (6) CKRAS Gaming (61 points)
8ᵀᴴ (7) Team Yoyotech (58 points)
9ᵀᴴ (9) Exotic Island (36 points)
10ᵀᴴ (NEW!) Quarantine (13 points)

Greg — Fifteen votes will go into each month’s rankings, ten of which are from the previous month’s top ten teams, and five of which are from our panel members, who will vote every month.  The points system remains simple: a first place vote earns that team 10 points, 9 points are awarded for second place, and so on.  The numbers in parentheses refer to the specific team’s ranking in the previous Month.

Continue reading to find out who the panel members are, and see their thoughts and opinions on this month’s rankings.

Fog — The article is a bit late, but Week 7 is now underway. I’ve decided to stick with just Power Rankings for the rest of the season, so no more predictions or roundups (unless there is a good response for the roundups).

With only two weeks left to go before the end of the season, teams are going to be making the final push for the remaining 2 spots for LAN. At this point, Classic Mixup and Quantic Gaming have already secured their place for LAN (which team will be first or second is still up in the air). The race for the final LAN spots have heated up, with Area 51, High Rollers Gaming, The Experiment, and Mighty Ducks being in what is the closest race for 3rd and 4th that I’ve ever seen. This week, matches are being played on the recently made official map cp_gullywash_final1 made by Arnold.

Gullywash has seen many changes during it’s many revisions, the most noticeable change from the last Release Candidate to the final version is the addition of the drop-down at the middle/2nd point connector/choke. This opens up some new possibilities with flanks for soldiers and scouts, opening up the narrow corridor which slowed the game down a bit. Another part of the map that teams will have to watch out for is the passage to the last point from underneath, which also provides a massive point for players to flank and potentially backcap the final point with the team at last. The last point has 4 viable options when pushing into it, however, the last point is also notorious with being a hard point to push. With the rest of the maps for the regular season being the standard 5CP, maps should play in a similar style. Now lets get into the Power Rankings, which will be short and sweet due to my limited time.