VanillaTF2

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.

Fog — The week 4 matches have finally concluded, with week 5 matches starting tonight on cp_snakewater

Snakewater is a 5CP Standard Control Point map created by Chojje. This map has gone through serveral different revisions and release candidates, before landing on its final version. For a team to be effective on this map, they will have to be on constant alert with the map’s many entrances and exits to different points. Some notable examples include the dropdown between 1st and 2nd point, the window at 2nd, and the kitchen at middle point. Teams will also have to be aware of possible back-caps, as they are common-place on a map like Snakewater. The last points of this map are known for stalemates and slowness, however Chojje has improved the speed of the last point over serveral revisions of the map. Otherwise, this map plays like a standard 5CP map, which will be a welcomed change from the maps of Viaduct and Gravel Pit played in the past few weeks of the season.

In terms of roster changes this week, Bl4nk has left Snooplicity and has moved down to Open to play on ex-invite Medic Tragic’s team, which coincides with the pickup of Boomer last week. Other then that, the only noticable pickup was the return of scout great Ggglygy, however, his role is only a backup role, and not a starting role. Now on to the Power Rankings.

Faint — Ladies and Gents, tonight is the invite final of the Excello ZOWIE TF2 Challenge II!

With Team Dignitas coming out on top in last nights 3 map (almost 3 golden cap) thriller against Epsilon eSports, they get to face up against Relic who beat  Crack Clan in the other semi-final last night, all in aid of winning the coveted 6x ZOWIE P-TF Mousemats on offer.

Both teams had convincing wins in their quarter-final games vs. CKRAS Gaming and                Team Yoyotech, and look set to try and show that they are back in form and can be known as the #1 team in europe, a ‘title’ that Epsilon seem to have hung onto for the last couple of months.

The action kicks off at 21:15 CET and VanillaTV will be covering the match with AcidRenix and Beta casting, and Comedian on the stream.

Also covering the action tonight is n2otv, and finally TF2World.Ru TV who will have Salamancer casting.

And for you highlander fans out there, TF2World.Ru TV will be covering the ETF2L Highlander Season 1 Week 3 game, between Colony and SNSD which starts at 19:00 CET.

Fog — The week long Thanksgiving break is now over, with week 4 of ESEA-I going on.

This week’s matches are taking place on the always interesting cp_gravelpit. Gravel Pit is a 3CP Attack/Defend map, with the unique feature that both the A and B points of the map are able to be captured from the start of the round. Expect a lot of off-classing from the standard cookie cutter classes, with Engineer and Heavy on defense, and Sniper and Spy on offense being the most popular options. The map is a lot less focused on DM, and a lot more focused on strategies and key picks of utility classes. With Gravel Pit, most teams on defense barely focus their attention on the A point, and heavily fortifying the B point. However, this map is also prone to stalls as teams will wait for the perfect moment to strike, and can be very boring to watch as a spectator. For a team to be successful on Gravel Pit, practicing strategies on this map is key, as the teams who are not prepared to play this map will be destroyed.

There has been some shakeups with the teams and their rosters, the biggest one thus far is the folding of the beloved team The Spacewhales. The Spacewhales had a rough season thus far, being the only winless team in Invite. The team has had to play through different situations and circumstances, such as ricco not having power for an entire week, and the personal matters that forced rr- to miss the match vs. High Rollers Gaming TF2. To get more of an insight on the folding of The Spacewhales, I spoke with Zakirll, the former leader of the team.

Sonny Black —  In an awesome “best of 3″ series Vamonos, that has been revealed as the new  Crack Clan lineup, has beaten  I Don’t Know? Black and thereforegained the last free spot for the Invitational tournament.

CanFo — The current Excello TF2 tournament will come to an end tonight and has been quite a success. Managing director at Excello,  tomahawk,  is planning to continue the support for Team Fortress 2.

I’m here – I want TF2 to become a mainstay at excello.net as long as you wish to do so.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all participating teams, our Sponsor Bigfoot Networks, VanillaTF2.org, ETF2L, VanillaTV, n2o-TV, TF2.Pro.Ru, Martndemus’  TF2, all casters and viewers for their great support.

Bigfoot Networks decided to sponsor another cup and is donating another 6x Bigfoot Killer 2100 network cards (each worth around €80-90) so it is now time to announce the next tournament. To create a better competitive atmosphere, we will host two tournaments this time – One Open Tournament and one Invite Tournament.

Hit continue reading for the tournament details!

eXtv‘s Dyonysus has been nice enough to make a highlights video of the recent bout between Evil Genuises and complexity on Coldfront. This incredibly close and intense match up saw both NA teams battle it out for ESEA-I S7. In case you missed it, the video is a great way to catch up on the important frags/moments from the match. For those interested, check out the official match stats here and grab the STV from here.

HQ Download (400MB, .mp4)

- Abhorrence