Byte —

Sparkle Motions season has been quite unsteady with the injection of new players such as retsh0ck, Luzzu and the ever so popular and ‘up n coming’ soldier SteveyJJ. Going by their results, they’ve only won, one game outright and nicked a point off the revitalized Reverto.

The team will be looking to win all six points this evening, to cement their position for next season in division 1 in preparation for season 16. I hooked up with Konr who leaders this team early, and asked him what he thought about going into this match.

Konr

‘I think we have a good chance of winning personally, with the possible exception of us needing to use a merc in WOODY/Luzzu’s place. Decerto is a team we’ve played a lot recently and while we usually win Viaduct rather convincingly, other maps have gone both ways. I feel like if we all communicate well enough and listen to eachother we can take this quite comfortably, but gf18 will have to be focused hard.’

Looking at division 1, it’s apparent that Sparkle Motion need all the points, so nothing less than a win will satisfy konr and his men. Looking on the other side of the coin Decerto.Ozone need all the points they can get to contend for that 2nd spot. furbo panda’s have played their toughest matches, but could still drop a few points to Decerto or My Sparkle.

I caught up with huhy to see how he felt going into this match.

huhy

‘hello. Um dunno what to say really, I havent played for two weeks and i am coming back to play tonight’

Some great insight there from huhy and his team, so I’m told as they don’t know what to say!

Both teams playing for different causes, should entail an epic clash between the two. Join VanillaTV tonight with an all english cast featuring myself, Byte & SunddenlyStarMia, with DavidTheWin directing from 21:10cet

Sparkle Motion macman, Phy, Gubbins, WOODY[, konr

20

Decerto.Ozone gf18_idiot, Turbomonkey, dONut, arc, KillAri

ETF2L ETF2L Division 1 Week 5 Sparkle Motion vs Decerto.Ozone

(3 comments)

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TIME

• Tuesday June 18th
• 21:15 cest
• 15:15 edt (na)
• 05:15 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream
• VanillaTV Mumble

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• Sparkle Motion
• Decerto.Ozone

View Results

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Arie —

Thanks to our amazing subscribers, you can instantly skip beyond all those pesky pauses and server changes that these prem teams seem to insist on and cut straight to the action. It’s a great way to watch VTV casts, especially if you keep playing Dustbowl and MvM during our live streams.

So a big thanks to  CUBE for curating our excellent YouTube channel!

Byte —

That all important 4th will guarantee the team in competing for the title, however it’s up for grabs.

Vinland Suqp3r, Salmon, delzic, Rake, CaptainHax, kos

02

SOLAR lailli, qnx, hycz, Peter, Paul, vanilla

ETF2L ETF2L Season 15 Premiership Week 5 SOLAR vs Vinland

(2 comments)

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TIME

• Monday June 17th
• 21:15 cest
• 15:15 edt (na)
• 05:15 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream
• VanillaTV Mumble
• Teamfortress.TV

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• SOLAR (75%, 9 Votes)
  
• Vinland (25%, 3 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 12

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The rosters

SOLAR
Medic – vanilla
Demo –  lalli
Soldiers –  hycz and  qnx
Scouts –  maidu and  cor

90° Fov e-Sports
Medic – kos
Demoman -  suqp3r
Soldiers –  CaptainHax and  Salmon
Scouts –  Rake and  delzic

This could not be a more exciting match as both teams need points to cement their place in premiership. Former team name Vinland are stuck at the bottom of the table with 3 points, but a win versus SOLAR tonight could change all of that moving them all the way up to 5th place. Anything less than a double map win is leaving it up to the TF2 Gods.

SOLAR on the other hand have a slight cushion standing in at 6th position a single map win would put them joint 4th with Skidmark Central, a full outright win would put them ahead and up to 4th position.

Can qnx and Hycz carry the SOLAR torch and sustain the damage they deliver to enemies? Will Vanilla be a match for the up and coming ‘hot stuff’ kos as medic?

Join us tonight from 21:10cet with Skully & SuddenlyStarMia on the microphone and Animal directing the show, not missing a single headshot, backstab or back-cap as always!

Arie —

Luckily this site is completely open to contributions, simply log in with steam and press the “Write an article” link in the top bar. Don’t be frightened by the word “article”, a simple post consisting of just a few lines is fine as well. Here are some examples of both simple posts and lengthy articles of years past:

• Nor joins notag
• Problems in the frog pond
• A Fisshu for the people
• January’s VanillaTF2 Top Ten
• Antlion Audio Modmic Review
• Rant: TF2 and its potential as a spectator game

So yeah, feel free to submit gossip, team transfers, youtube VODs, tutorials, reviews or whatever else you think would interest a competitive TF2 minded audience. To kick things off, ipz’s latest video of his Tips from Ipz channel:

CanFo — The Electronic Sports Association (ESA) is organising a £1,250 launch tournament on Sunday, June 23. Different from the regular subscription tournaments that will kick off in July, participants do not need an ESA Premium account to collect their winnings, everyone is eligible to win money that can be invested to enter more tournaments or subscribe.

If your team finishes in the top 16, 100% of the winnings are paid into your team’s ESA wallet from where it can be distributed among the players by the team leader. The prize distribution is listed on the tournament page.

Thanks to ESA’s new partner Ozone Gaming, the first place additionally receives 6 Ozone Rage ST Headsets.

This tournament is open for all. However, all matches your team plays in this tournament contribute to your rank. Ranked tournaments will start in August.

The setup is single elimination and the teams are seeded, meaning the two best teams can not meet each other until the later rounds.

Start of the tournament is 12.15 CEST on Sunday, June 23. You may notice that the start has been moved back by an hour, compared to the first draft of the tournament, after some members of the Team Fortress 2 community asked not to start that early in the morning.

Each round until the semi finals is played “best of 1″, meaning the winner of the map advances to the next round. The semi finals and the finals are played as “best of 3″ with the loser’s pick system to decide the played maps.

ESA is the first competition in Europe that uses the so called “North American” setup for Team Fortress 2. In detail, this means, each map is played in 2 halves. On 5CP maps, the first team that scores 5 points total wins, on King of the Hill maps, the team that scores 4 points total wins the map. Because only the win conditions for the first half can be triggered by the server config, please pay attention to the overall scores in the second half. For the full information, please take a look at the rules page.

Every map is estimated to last 75 minutes. This does include the allowed delay of 15 minutes and the total playing time of 60 minutes. Please do not delay your matches longer than 15 minutes. Your best bet would be not to delay your matches at all and start on time. If your opponent fails to have a full team or refuses to start, please immediately get in touch with an admin to ensure a smooth progress of the tournament. Any matches with no result at the start of the next round will be decided randomly by an admin. If your match is delayed by a few minutes because of pauses or technical issues, you need to inform an admin.

The signups are open now. If the signups get close to 64, we will increase the slots to 128. In this case, the final will be moved to Monday evening instead of Sunday evening.

Please make sure that all your players have their Steam ID entered on their profile or your team can not be approved for entry. You can enter your Steam ID in the format STEAM_0:#:###### in your Dashboard.

The Quake Live Community Holysh1t has published an interview with ESA director  Mike Lawrenson aka Didge that should clear up some doubts about the model and ESA in general.

If you have any questions, please answer them in the comments or in the ESA IRC channel #esa on Quakenet. You can also message  Sonny Black or  CanFo directly for any questions.

Arie —

last night’s close game between  Broder and Skidmark Central

Broder cookye, Ryb, Mirelin, Zebbosai, Jukeboxx, Bybben

20

Vinland A powerhouse of finns

ETF2L ETF2L Season 15 Week 4 Broder vs Vinland

(1 comment)

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TIME

• Wednesday June 12th
• 21:15 cest
• 15:15 edt (na)
• 05:15 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream
• VanillaTV Mumble

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• Broder (100%, 13 Votes)
  
• Vinland (0%, 0 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 13

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VanillaTF2: Yesterday you guys seemed a bit rusty against Skidmark, especially on cp_badlands it seemed pretty close. Afraid you’re going to spill some points tonight?
Zebbosai: I don’t think we will lose any points tonight but you never know with cp_process we are really bad at it.

VanillaTF2: Mirelin blamed the team for not playing aggressive enough against Skidmark, did you think that was an important factor yesterday? Can we expect a more aggresive Broder tonight?
Zebbosai: Well Mirelin is Mirelin :D I doubt we will be more aggressive today considering the maps are cp_granary and cp_process.

VanillaTF2: Anyone in Vinland you’re particularly worried about?
Zebbosai: Their scouts are both very good snipers and Suqper or whatever his name is has some really good pipes but we should be able to handle it

Rake had this to say:

VanillaTF2: Broder seemed a little shaky in their match against Skidmark yesterday, does that boost your confidence a little bit?
Rake: Well we’re hoping to take advantage of Broder’s less than ideal form at the moment. And we’ve been doing fairly well in PCWs lately so I’m confident we can at least have a match on our hands

VanillaTF2: Darn was recently replaced, and CaptainHax was brought in. What language can we expect the team comms to be in tonight?
Rake: Obviously with CaptainHax and kos playing we’re comming in English (Finglish, red.)

VanillaTF2: Is there any particular Broder player you’re worried about, or is it more their general skill level and team play that makes them the favourite?
Rake: Mostly we’re worried about their general teamplay, though obviously they have a lot of strong individual players.

So tune in at 21:15 CEST to VanillaTV, where our amazing new streamer  DavidTheWin will show you the smooth 60FPS stream again, while  Admirable and  Skully tell you what’s going on.

Arie —

Teamleader  ipz confirmed that the team is no longer playing under the Crack Clan banner and that they’re looking for a new org. He denied their search for a new organisation is due to a lack of funding/LAN support from Crack Clan.

A VanillaTF2 spy birdy already told us  Zaibatsu is in contact with an organisation, unfortunately the bird has no Dignity and reFused to name the cool team out of fear of being k1cked by its Fnatical owner. Regardless of  Zaibatsu finding a new sponsor in time, they will be attending i49.

 Crack Clan had the following to say about the European team leaving:

On the whole Crack Clan have been really happy with the prem team, however it’s recently become apparent that now is a suitable time to part ways. Crack Clan are by no means out of e-sports but we need an evaluation time to decide the best way to move forward. We wish the ex-cc team the very best in the lead up to i49 and will be rooting for them no matter what. The CC Youtube will continue to make great content but with a host of guest commentators and features; stay tuned!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the American Crack Clan team is also no longer part of the organisation and is now known as Immortal 6, a name you might recognize, they joined Crack Clan less than 3 months ago.

Former  Crack Clan Yellow player CranCarry had this to say:

We, as a team, thought it would be best to just step down because we couldnt provide the things they were asking for. an example of that would be them asking us to making a frag video for cc.  in all honesty, between scrims and school/work/hobbies outside of gaming, we simply could not find the time to go through all of our demos and get ticks to provide an editor info to make it. We planned to do so, but scrims, esea, everything else in between it was just asking too much too soon from us

So where does this leave Crack Clan? They’ve been a big name in our little scene for a while, especially their latest premiership team. We’ve seen the team stream with comms, demo packs, team configs and youtube videos, they can’t provide those things without an actual team, so will they try to find a new premiership level TF2 team? ipz has said he’ll continue to release videos about competitive play on this channel, so it looks like you won’t have to wait long for your fix of lame hiding spot videos.

In my opinion, any team would be lucky to pick these guys up, good luck to  Zaibatsu with finding the right organisation for them!

beach —

Broder bybzii, jukebox, Zebbosai, tonppa, ryb, Mirelin

20

Skidmark Central Kiler4fun, Daleth, skeej, Greg, kaidus, flisko,

ETF2L Season 15, Week 6

(3 comments)

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TIME

• Tuesday June 11th
• 21:15 cest
• 15:15 edt (na)
• 05:15 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream
• VanillaTV Mumble
• Broder

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• Broder (71%, 5 Votes)
  
• Skidmark Central (29%, 2 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 7

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The rosters

broder
Medic – Mirelin
Demoman – ryb
Soldiers – Zebbosai and jukebox
Scouts – tonnppa and bybben

Skidmark Central
Medic – skeej
Demoman – kaidus
Soldiers – Daleth and flisko
Scouts – Greg and kiler4fun

Going into this game, broder have the clear advantage. Although they lost their last game to Epsilon, they won their other two matches against SOLAR and LMS with ease, only conceding 1 round over the two matches. On the other hand, Skidmark Central are still yet to win a game despite having a strong lineup on paper; no doubt they will go into this game keen to earn some points, but realistically with the way they’ve been playing this season, that’s looking ever more unlikely for kaidus and his boys. The maps tonight are koth_pro_viaduct_rc3 and cp_badlands, an absolute classic and the newcomer into the European map pool. I always have Viaduct in my mind as a map that can potentially cause major upset, so we’ll see if anything out of the ordinary happens on it tonight!

Arie talked to  Zebbosai and Kaidus for their perspectives on tonight’s match, first up, Zebbosai:

VanillaTF2: Your team has taken a break after your loss versus epsilon. Were you guys sick of the game, or was it just a lack of availability of your players?
Zebbosai: It had nothing to do with us loosing to epsilon both me and juke was gone so we played with zappis like 2 days then we took a 1 and a half week break

VanillaTF2: Due to that break, you haven’t played practice matches until yesterday, are you worried you might get surprised on viaduct due to this lack of practice?
Zebbosai: Im not worried at all about the games this week we played yesterday on viaduct twice and it worked great.

VanillaTF2: Any tips for the casters on viaduct, what should they watch out for?
Zebbosai: If jukebox goes sniper specc him if he aint sniper watch bybben and kukkye destroy :)

Kaidus had these answers for us:

VanillaTF2: Broder has been on a break leading up to this match, only managing to squeeze in a couple of matches worth of practice in 9 days. Does that raise your hopes for tonight?
Kaidus: Well ye broder are very reliant on DM at the end of the day. I don’t expect them to be that much worse for their break, however before their break it seemed like ryb and bybben were just begining to look like they belonged in top prem again. I’ll be interested to see how they do as their form strikes me as very fragile.

VanillaTF2: Broder’s Zappis has been pcw-ing a few times with you guys. Is he a spy for broder, or really a double agent, any secret tips you’ve received?
Kaidus: Zappis played with us yesterday, but we were essentially a terrible mix putting about 20% effort in due to various noshows. I’ve always liked zappis as a player, but I don’t think he could have picked up on any of our “tactics” yesterday if he’d tried

VanillaTF2: Zebbosai said that Jukebox would be their man to watch if he goes sniper on viaduct. Who should the casters keep an eye on from your team?
Kaidus: If kiler actually shows up (in the literal sense) tonight then it will be him. If he puts his mind to it he can put the game on his back completley, but he’s still learning which fights to take and which to leave.

Casting tonight will be Eydok and Skully with newcomer DavidTheWin handling the stream; join us from the usual time of 21:15 cet!

CanFo — The Electronic Sports Association (ESA) is proud to finally announce its launch! The ESA is a new competitive tournament website, which will feature some of the most popular eSports titles throughout Europe. One of the opening titles among Quake Live, Dota 2 and Counterstrike: Global Offensive is Team Fortress 2.

The unique model revolves around providing skill balanced, free entry and pay to play tournaments within a dynamic ranking system. In a transparent model the ESA recycle user subscriptions into free tournaments organised and managed by ESA to provide cash prizes for each level of skill. The proposed structure, which balances quantity and quality, ensures more people receive a fair cash prize. ESA pay all prize money instantly into the users’ online accounts, giving gamers real money to make money in the pay to play arenas.

ESA have reviewed the way a traditional ladder system works. Players/teams no longer have to specifically challenge each other to participate and climb the rankings. ESA use match data from all structured tournaments to keep the system flowing. In addition, teams are able to challenge one-another for free and are able to set a wager for the game, if desired.

As part of the premium package, ESA have included a whole host of features which allow players to play in multiple teams and create grouped/microsite profiles for their multi-gaming teams, displaying their sponsors, streams and social media with more features to follow. ESA have included an electric money system into their inventory of powerful services, which allow players and teams to send prize money to one-another without the need of external financial services, creating a real clan pay philosophy to online esports.

ESA have formulated a ‘Prize Distribution Promise’ which directs how the subscription revenue is divided between skill levels and tournaments and allows up to 32 participants to receive a cash prize from individual tournaments.

To help build momentum, the ESA have devised a reciprocal promise for the opening months of operation. The ESA promise to recycle every penny of every subscription into tournaments. A measly 250 subscribers will provide a whopping online prize pool of £1250, which looks even more in dollars. In addition, ESA promise to give a £2000 bonus tournament for every 2000 subscribers we get for the game. If either game accumulates 4000 subscribers, the total prize pool for that game will be £24,000 (per month).

As we are in early beta, the Team Fortress 2 community is one of the first to sample our new services fresh out of alpha testing. There may be bugs and occasionally things may go wrong, however, we value your feedback and aim to have problems resolved in quick succession. The early beta version provides a good representation of how we intend to move forward. As we grow and refine our services, you will be glad to know we’ve got more moves up our sleeves to add to the flavour of what we’re doing here. If the ESA do not deliver what we promise, you have every right to cancel your subscription.

A possible setup for the first tournament in July has already been drafted out by the experienced admin team of Sonny Black and myself ( CanFo). The final schedule is depending on the number of subscriptions and will be released in late June. The ESA will be the first platform in Europe to adapt the setup of 2 halves per match (also known as “The North American Ruleset”) and will feature all the popular maps and unlockables. The ESA also grant the Team Fortress 2 community the possibility to run fun tournaments (e.g. BBall, Ultiduo) with prize pools on a regular basis, if the interest is high enough.

For any questions, please ask in the comments or in the ESA IRC channel (#esa on Quakenet).

Register now and stay tuned for what is yet to come!

beach —

Epsilon eSports KnoxXx, numlocked, Mike, GeaR, schocky, basH

20

Skidmark Central skeej, kaidus, Daleth, flisko, Greg, Kiler4fun

ETF2L Season 15 Premiership Week 5

(1 comment)

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TIME

• Wednesday June 5th
• 21:15 cest
• 15:15 edt (na)
• 05:15 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• Epsilon eSports (96%, 22 Votes)
  
• Skidmark Central (4%, 1 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 23

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The rosters

Epsilon eSports
Medic – KnoxXx
Demoman – numlocked
Soldiers – Mike and GeaR
Scouts – schocky and basH

Skidmark Central
Medic – skeej
Demoman – kaidus
Soldiers - Daleth and flisko
Scouts - Greg and Kiler4fun

Epsilon are clearly the stronger team going into this game – yet to lose an official in almost a year since i46 last August, they have dominated European TF2, only coming close to a loss against broder in the Season 14 Grand Final, during which they conceded a map. This season is no different – they have played 4 games and won all 4 2-0, so currently sit on the maximum 24 points in the tables. With strengths in every class, I’m not expecting anyone to shine in particular – Epsilon should just do what they do best; work solidly and ruthlessly as a team to continue their winning streak.

Skidmark Central have had a fairly below-average season so far. They are currently sat on 3 games played and 6 points, but are yet to win a game, having lost to Crack Clan and only managing draws against prem newcomers SOLAR and Vinland. Clearly their strengths lie in kaidus’ deathmatching capabilities primarily, backed up  by the strong damage of Kiler4fun in particular from the scout pair, but unfortunately as a team they don’t line up strongly against the might of the Epsilon roster. Obviously koth_viaduct is a bit of a wildcard map where weird and wonderful plays can happen and swing the result in either team’s favour, so that’s certainly the map to pay close attention to during this game to see if Skidmark Central can pull something out of the bag.

Join Haydn and Skully tonight at the usual time of 21:15 cet, with camera maestro AnimaL on the stream.