VanillaTF2

Greg — Season 11 is over; the undisputed champions Epsilon have been defeated, which sees Team Infused crowned the new champions - breaking their curse of never beating Epsilon.  We now move into the off season break, however pretty much every team has had a mid-season or post-season team change, which has gone unreported except for live on PirateRadio (with CommanderX, kaidus and myself).  I am going to take you on a journey through the Season 11 team changes and look forward to the Season 12 Prem teams.

Current Premier Teams

Team Infused:
Lets start with the Champions of Season 11: Team Infused.  It has been a season of progression for them, beginning with a player change, the former dignitas scout cookye came in to replace the quad pistol and just a few days after this pickup the team lost out narrowly in the first Excello final of the season to their nemisis Epsilon eSports.  They took this in their stride and pushed forward, eventually repeating their first place in the regular season; granting them first seed into the playoffs, where they finally defeated Epsilon and secured the title “Champions of Europe” for Season 11.  However it has not been plain sailing for the English team as during the playoff period I made the decision to leave the team, the Team UK and former Team Thermaltake scout JoeyC (also known as Fisshu) replaced me.

Lineup: numlocked, dunc, flisko, mike, JoeyC, cookye

Trath — It has happened! The beast scout by the name of Longas has officially joined Crack Clan‘s roster. After getting into a fight with Taimou as was reported on Pirate Radio, it seems Longas has decided not to stay with Tryharders untill the end of Season 11, but rather run straight to CC. Trying to get some info, I had CC’s MatnuN tell me:

“Yes, Longas has joined us as scout. He will be switching HarryHook, who has quit TF2 for now.”

The latter is not necessarily true, as we have seen Prem people giving reasons which turned out not to be true – for example when Quad left Team Infused or when EstaniS left CC. Anyhow, if you haven’t figured it out, it means Longas will now be playing alongside Bash.

What does this mean for Tryharders? Since the start of the season, it seemed like Taimou was willing to do anything to keep the clan alive until what still seems as the inevitable fold in the end of the season. So either he will take a Prem/div 1 scout, or perhaps we will see another MGE Junkey taken to the roster? We will find out in the coming days!

Torden — 1 prem spot, 5 contenders?

Update: Added news about Equilibrium reform, above Rejects. Also added Clippen comment.

The pre season mating period has officially kicked off, as vibrant as ever. Last season, Crack Clan had a pretty clear edge on getting the free promotion. This time around, it’s more difficult to predict – and not from the lack of hopefuls. Quarantine, Decerto, Exotic, Karnage and Taimou’s new crew are now on a path to a brawl to figure out who’s best of the rest. Here’s the insight.

CommanderX – Myself,  djc, and  Greg have record a pilot for what will be the first of our (hopefully) weekly podcast covering the latest TF2 goings on, matches, gossip, and general scene news. Firstly i’d like to apologise for Greg’s intro, i don’t know what he was thinking, we’re all embarrassed for him, and it about sums up how much use he is without quad.  Secondly as a bit of a disclaimer, the views expressed in this broadcast are ours alone and are not condoned by VanillaTF2/TV or anyone else.

This is a pilot, so we want as much feedback as possible. Use the comment section or PM us individually. Let us know what was good, bad, what you want more of, what you want less of. We’re thinking of maybe doing it live next time to allow more audience interaction. Shoutout to  huhy (djc’s favourite ETF2L admin) for helping me with the technology side of stuff, that i’m useless with.

Hope you enjoy

Podcast Edition #1

Torden — We’re halfway through the season, and there are still some major fluctuations going on the top end. First off, Diggy’s Punpu and Mafu seem to be heading off the Finnish power line, with a dwindling interest for the game. This move should see Hymzi back to playing demo, as he once was renowned for. Admirable once wrote the real meat in the team were Cookye, Hocz and Dajackal - Now we’ll be able to see if he’s right. In the words of cookye:

We want to be more active so we’re replacing mafu and punpu

This upcoming Dignitas cup, the team will be trialling los bandidos Longas and  Jan who were recently seen in the defunct attempt at a TCM rejuvenation. Like I’ve previously mentioned for Mister and idk? Frogs, turning single nation teams international tends to be risky, only time will tell if Dignitas can break that curse.

Meanwhile, Infused.Tt are taking their part of the TCM cake, with camel rider  Byte now expected, although unconfirmed, to join their ranks. The team will be identical to Team UK who rose to the top on last Summer’s ESL nations cup, aside from  Quad trading for Fisshu. Flushy appears to want to focus on university, he’s written an elongated statement right after the jump.

In other news, it seems idk? Black’s search for a medic has finally come to an end (so far), with the recruitment of the Swedish kukjävel,  Ceder. Yoyotech traded out Zoob, having Hat go back to soldier for main calls, and taking in  Origo as a new scout.

Torden — It’s been a hard struggle for TCM the past months. Having already lost/removed  Pena,  Flisko and  Antyy, ranks are thinning out, what could be the grand reunion last year’s near unbeatable team backfired. Haunter, Coinz and Skinnie quite openly abandoned ship last week, after internal disagreements. Additionally, super demo Kaidus reported to be having an unstable net.

The abandoning trio is still to be found on the ETF2L roster, but Byte’s description on his latest video leaves a pretty clear message:

TCM’s first week and probably last week playing in Season 10, due to insufficient players available at the top level since the bastardly departure by Coinz and thus leaving Skinnie/Haunter not wanting to continue! So I thought I’d record this and show you that despite using 3 merc’s as such (Zerox/Leon/Jan).

Bad news for season10, as we could be losing the 2nd finalist of the previous season. However, knowing the perseverance of Byte and manager Xman, we’ll be damned to be seeing the last of these thugs just yet!

Martn — This afternoon the one and only  Marco ‘MVP’  Wichmann, also known as the Angry German Kid, tweeted that he might consider making a comeback to TF2. Not very later he tweeted about having some UberSexual feeling.  Torden told me that this could possibly lead to the following team:

• MVP
• Dunc
• Haza
• Predz
• ???
• ???