What does European competitive Team Fortress 2 look like in the aftermath of the incredible, yet ultimately anti-climactic Insomnia 52? After last year’s all-European Grand Final, only Epsilon eSports managed to place in the top four this time around and have since disbanded along with every other EU LAN team. Never had there been such a concentration of elite talent in one tournament, and amongst such a cutthroat field Europe were left wanting.
Cast your mind back to September 2012 when Europeans were trying to come to terms with the ignominy of Insomnia 46’s exclusively North America final. The phantom pains of that public flogging would weigh long and heavy on the mind of Jean Louis Boyer for a full year before his Epsilon super-team would take revenge, but KnOxXx has stepped back from the game this season. So who will guide Europe from the darkness once more? This shall be the first test...
TeamFortress.TV are teaming up with Tt eSPORTS to bring you another high calibre, live-streamed, one-day invite tournament to showcase the best teams playing right now in the dying light of the European summer. All but a few teams remain from the season past and the siren call of ETF2L Season 19 beckons to the faithful from the not too distant future, new rosters gather strength in the shortening days as clandestine alliances are forged in haste before the new Premiership will be confirmed.
Those eight teams deemed worthy by the ETF2L admins will be invited to compete for the affections of a continent and an impressive haul of Tt eSPORTS loot on Sunday 21st September from 15:00CEST / 09:00EDT with TFTV broadcasting the brutal ballet from start to finish. To fuel the bloodlust, Tt eSPORTS have brought us some of their newest product lines. The runners-up will be able to find solace in 6x Tt eSPORTS METALCAPS (5 keys) to pimp out their mechanical keyboards, whilst our glorious champions will get their hands on 6x Tt eSPORTS VERTO Headsets just as they are being released in Europe!
Teams must keep their eyes on the prize, because the road to the Grand Final is not an easy one. The tournament structure will be a seeded double elimination bracket with best-of-one rounds on predetermined maps, until the best-of-three Grand Final where the upper bracket winner will have earned the first pick after which loser picks. As per ETF2L rules, 5CP maps will be played over 30 minutes with a mercy rule of win difference 5 and golden cap rounds to settle any drawn games, whilst KOTH maps will be played as first to 3.
Smooth operation will be the order of the day with serveme.tf providing game servers; quite simply the easiest way to borrow a competitively configured TF2 server from a variety of locations around the world, with logs.tf support and STV demos made automatically available. Show your support and donate for extra perks and the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that all donations are distributed amongst the server administrators who make this incredible free service a reality.
As a precursor to ETF2L Season 19 we will of course be adopting their newly announced whitelist. Don’t come crying to me when that Backburner Pyro and Tomislav Heavy crush your tournament dreams; get yourself up to speed with this beautiful visualisation on whitelist.tf. I think you can expect to see the latest addition to the ETF2L map pool, Logjam, feature prominently in the tournament alongside the more familiar Badlands, Gullywash, Granary, Process, Snakewater and Pro Viaduct.
Which maps will feature in which rounds, the teams and the seeding will all be confirmed in a forthcoming preview article shortly after the ETF2L admins have finalised the divisions on Thursday 18th September. With a glance back at the Season 18 archive we can speculate that GGWP.pro, 4-25, Furbo Pandas and LEGO will likely have their claim to Premiership action honoured, but who will fill the other four positions?
Most prominent amongst the contenders are the newly christened maincall.tf (formerly Arie Meeldijk Gaming) with frighteningly good line-up featuring ipz, WARHURYEAH, Mirelin, Kiler4fun, smzi and Rising; can you say SU-PER-T-EAM?!
Setting themselves up as their main rivals you will find a distinctly Swedish offering with Nordic twist, bk (A.K.A. Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers), composed of Zebbosai, ryb, Herr_P, qnx, Knutsson and zappis -- the last two will be making their off-class debuts as medic and roamer, respectively.
Hopefully that should be just enough to pique your interest for now. Over the next ten days we will be drip feeding you more information about our grand plans for live coverage, interviews, mumble comms and viewer giveaways... I’ve said too much already...
Preview Image Credit: ViewSEPS