VanillaTF2

 Hildreth – It’s been a couple of months since the end of ETF2L’s inaugural Highlander season but this week it all starts up again with 6 weeks of 9v9 action to go between Season’s 11 and 12, making it a busy period in the TF2 calendar. So far we have over 200 teams signed up for season 2 at the moment with SNSD the current holders and still yet to be beaten although Colony cut it close with an exciting finale in the first ever Experimental Highlander cup. To add to this ETF2L have a cash prize pool of up to £1000 (courtesy of an anonymous Highlander loving donator) for the winners and second placed team in the newly formed Premiership for the top level teams, to add extra incentive to those to practise and beat SNSD – I don’t want to see another gold medal parading on  TheSucker’s chest, do you?

Upvote me: http://www.reddit.com/r/tf2/comments/qifh3/vanillatvs_coverage_of_the_reddit_highlander/

Trell — Do you <3 Highlander?  If not, why not?  What’s not to love…the smell of burning flesh as a Pyro runs rampant through your team, the sound of a decloaking spy stabbing your medic or the sheer madness of 9 players per side trying desperately to kill each other…

Well, we have a treat for you this afternoon, some Redditors have organised a Highlander tournament and very kindly asked us here at VanillaTV to cover the EU side of it!

Named the Reddit Round Robin, this is the third edition of the tournie, which aims to take low and newly formed teams into a tournament situation and give everyone an equal chance at taking home some e-glory!  The first tournament had just 3 teams, whilst the second had 5 – this time 12 NA and 8 EU teams applied to enter.  eXtv will be covering the finals of the NA side of things.

You can see the schedule and teams here, and tune in to the stream from 15 CET to watch our coverage on VanillaTV.  See you there!

VODs of this match:

Hildreth —  Whilst the amateurs from 6v6 are in mid-season, the real “pros” in Highlander are just warming up with ETF2L hosting their first ever  pre-season experimental cup focused on testing different maps. We saw just over 40 teams fight it out in 3 skill brackets playing on pl_Barnblitz, cp_Foundry and cp_Upland, the latter being created by  Mark. The Lower bracket was won by new team  Gibs’R'Us whilst the Mid bracket was won by Division 4 side  GFM Highlander team which leaves us with the business of the final for the Highest bracket…

colony :E J0rmund, MrLate, mente, noretus, zoob, SabaSaba, furbo, nappr, s3

12

SNSD TheSucker, Linus, Hat, droso, TviQ, Hurri, CUBE, ALX, Thalash

ETF2L Experimental Cup High Bracket Grand Final

(21 comments)

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TIME

• Sunday February 19th
• 20:00 cet
• 14:00 est (na)
• 04:00 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• VanillaTV Livestream
• VanillaTV Mumble

SOURCETV

• relay.vanillatv.org:27100

Who will win this match?

• SNSD (75%, 122 Votes)
  
• colony :E (25%, 40 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 162

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VIDEO

pl_barnblitz1-0VanillaTV

cp_foundry0-2VanillaTV

ctf_turbine_pro2-3VanillaTV

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Hildreth — Welcome to part two of my three part article series documenting and reviewing the calendar year of 2011 in the world of competitive TF2. I would like to apologies to the Aussies, Africans and Asians for not really featuring you in these articles but I prefer to focus on the two main scenes which I actually know a something about. Anyway without further ado, I present to you the months of May to August of this year.

TL:DR – TF2 dies, gets born again and we have an awesome LAN.

Hildreth — 2011 was a great year for me personally; being the year of the ‘panda’ in the Chinese calendar – might have made that up, it could be a smaller animal with a likeness for orange vegetables – and has been one of the most eventful years, dare I say ‘THE MOST’ eventful year in our competitive scenes history. We have had the biggest LAN to date, TF2 going Free-2-play, launch of a new casting organisation and many, many great matches. It has also been a year of doubt and controversy. The slogan ‘TF2 is dead’ being printed on TF2 discussion boards everywhere and still being typed by many there has been dispute and frustration over unlocks, LANs and growth in the TF2 scene. There has been more gossip, controversy and drama than you’ll ever see on Maury. TF2 has changed – rising stars of TF2 have gone ’pro’, old pros have gone on the Brink of losing interest and leaving the scene. Coverage has changed and developed with new people writing articles, making videos, volunteering to cast or stream and hell we have even seen a new game mode start to become accepted in Team Fortress 2. To start it off I found a gem of an old-fashioned TF2 rant/commentary by  Foster with an actual positive outlook for 2011 and to steal a quote from it made by  Darn:

“Unless TF2 gets a proper LAN tournament in 2011, it will be the last year.”

Make of that what you will.

It’s been a long year. I intend to go over it month by month highlighting the memorable matches, the big dramas and the key events that defined our scene this calendar year. To avoid a TL:DR fest I will split it up into 3 parts, one to release now, one of New Years Eve and the last part in 2012. I would like to apologies to those who do not follow the Gregorian calendar, if for example you are Jewish please re-read this again in 9 months.

SeriousCat —With the holidays right around the corner most of the competitive scene has taken a break, with a few notable exceptions! Scheduled for tonight Dec. 26th is the Div 1 Highlander match between Comunidade Portuguesa TF2 and turbopoop eSports:

Comunidade Portuguesa TF2

02

turbopoop eSports

ETF2L Highlander Season 1: Week 4 (Division 1)

(2 comments)

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TIME

• Monday December 26th
• 20:00 cet
• 14:00 est (na)
• 04:00 est (aus)

CASTED BY

• No cast information available

SOURCETV

• To be announced

Who will win this match?

• turbopoop eSports (79%, 15 Votes)
  
• Comunidade Portuguesa TF2 (21%, 4 Votes)
  

Total Voters: 19

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VIDEO

cp_gravelpit0-2

cp_gullywash0-2

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At VanillaTF2 the unicorns never sleep either. We present you with a new (beta) feature: an aggregate RSS feed of all the TF2 community’s news, as well as our matchticker & matchresults. Point your RSS reader of choice to http://rss.vanillatv.org/. If you have visited us on IRC before, you will recognize it as the RSS version of our VanillaTV bot’s output.

Additionally, our VanillaTV bot is now available on the GameSurge IRC network: contact me for details.

Happy holidays!

Comedian — While it has mostly gone unnoticed to the European community, CommFT and eXtv are organising a community highlander discussion at 21:00 CET.

Attending will be Free and jinn from CommFT, eXtine and  Mikal from eXtv, Bubblebobbler, INF,  hein and  forn from UGC, Comedian from VanillaTV,  Hildreth from ETF2L, Agro and  Ruskeydoo from KritzKast, wm from Ozfortress and last but not least, dubel from CEVO to discuss the fine points of Highlander and everything surrounding it.

The plan is to have around 1 hour talking about the various questions, after which it will turn into a public chat where we will be taking from you, the community. Of course, like always, there is the risk of overtime, so dont take this schedule too closely to your heart, especially not with so many people attending.

you can listen to the discussion in the eXtv Mumble Server (dal.eoreality.net:64760) or tune in to eXtelevision for the stream. Read more for the The panel questions and details.