Eight teams had to fight through the qualifiers to earn their spots at poLANd.tf #winter 2024 but eight more had already been invited as last ETF2L season's Premiership teams (or as previous seasons' champions). To help you sort through these, here's the low-down on the contestants who earned an invitation to Poland and to challenge for the crown...

★★★½

• Cuby
• juxta
• Raf
• dwo69
• deli69
• Patchouli

It would be easy to look at ★★★½’s position in the standings at the end of the Autumn 2023 season and write them off, after they ended the season in last place without winning a match. However, they showed many strong performances throughout the season, including ties with MANDEM and TLR, the #1 and #2 seeds in the playoffs, and plenty of narrow losses. For this LAN, dwo69 will slide into the team in place of Scar, as the Frenchmen attempt to use their years of experience playing together to reverse their misfortunes from last season and convert some of those close losses into victories.

Evil Gameing

• menex
• saltyy
• Buud
• Opti
• shappie
• theos

Followers of ETF2L will recognise this team as the core of Garda Panteri from last season, where menex, Buud, shappie and theos took sixth place in a chaotic season that saw them draw with both last-place finishers ★★★½ and with eventual champions The Last Resort. For poLANd.tf, however, some roster changes have been forced. grix's departure sees Prem champion Opti come in on Roaming Soldier, and after a year spent playing Highlander saltyy returns to their roots, replacing yalin on Flank Scout. On their day, Evil Gameing were already able to compete with the best, and while scrim results show they haven’t yet found the consistency they lacked online, LAN may be a whole new story.

MANDEM

• balder
• snh
• Nicky
• haunts
• adysky
• piggles

MANDEM have built up a rather unfortunate reputation in the past two Prem seasons, being top of the table after league play in both outings (this of course includes a 6-0 win against Witness Gaming in the Summer season, ending their 24 series ETF2L winning streak) but then crashing out of playoffs in devastating fashion on both occasions. These league-play results are not surprising, given the wealth of talent in the team: in particular balder’s meteoric rise to the top, becoming one of Europe’s top pocket scouts within just a couple of seasons in Prem. Fancy, the team's star demoman, will be replaced by adysky, rolling back the years to their dominant days with Se7en, and bringing composure and confidence to the team that might just be what they need to take it.

tf2hard.com

• hubert
• amppis
• Jordy
• Warped
• bl0ke
• mak

Whilst this tf2hard.com roster only shares one role with the HAVOC team that finished in 7th place in the recent ETF2L Prem season (Warped on roamer) the two lineups share four players, meaning it is somewhat valid to think of the new tf2hard.com as a continuation of the old HAVOC. $neaky and EoN have forgone their spots (joining alien workshop and POUNDLAN respectively), and the rest of the team have shuffled around their roles to make space for the long-standing combo duo of hubert (aka aph) and Jordy to join on their regular roles. Readers who watched the RCADIA LAN in 2022 may be noticing strong similarities between this new lineup and the BIGBLOKELAN roster that finished 3rd place in Hamburg, so the players in the crossover might be dreaming of an even stronger finish this time in Poland.

The Last Resort

• Nevo
• flick
• Brujman
• ronz
• zambz
• seeds

The Last Resort roster that will be travelling to Łódź is more of a mix team than it is a continuation of the team that took the ETF2L throne after Witness Gaming’s abdication, but that certainly doesn't mean that they won’t pack a punch. flick and zambz will be looking to continue the career-best form that they had during their Prem campaign, and they will be joined by four of the strongest free agents that Europe has to offer. A combination of /for fence not attending and tf2easy BLACK disbanding made the French trifecta of Brujman, Nevo and Ronz available for TLR to pick up, a trio who were silver medalists back in Summer 2023, while the roster is rounded out by 3-time Prem champion seeds, returning to competition after a brief hiatus. If the strength of a team is determined by the sum of its parts, then surely TLR will be going far at LAN.

Varmkorv Boogie

• Hugee
• 0mger
• Sw3ny
• Arentrir
• ympo
• tendon

Varmkorv Boogie have been one of the fastest climbing teams over the past few seasons, keeping mostly the same core in their recent rise from mid to prem. Their latest online accolades include winning Div 1 in the Summer 2023 season, and an impressive 5th place finish in their debut Prem season in Autumn 2023. With their regular medic .xio joining TCM for this LAN, tendon will be picking up the medigun and former roamer Sw3ny will be taking the newly vacated Pocket Soldier slot. While Varmkorv are unlikely to be anyone's favourite to win the event, their performances in the recent Prem season show that they should not be underestimated; if they can carry forward their momentum from last season they should do serious damage.

wer das liest ist doof

• voxtec
• shocky
• kn
• Fischkopf
• Philip
• Condawg

wer das liest ist doof (or WDLID to their friends) are one of the few teams arriving in Łódź with no changes from last season. Throughout that they fended off the zoomers to reach playoffs and eliminate first seed MANDEM, before falling to The Last Resort in a nail-biting grand final. In total, various iterations of this team have appeared in eight Premiership seasons, alongside many appearances for the always-competitive German national team, and in the case of schocky a trophy cabinet stretching all the way back to Epsilon and i49. WDLID’s last showing at LAN was RCADIA Fortress, where they fell in 5th-6th place, but with the addition of kn, Philip and Condawg they will be hoping to not only have the experience to reach playoffs but the skills to secure a podium finish.

Witness Gaming

• toemas_
• ixy
• papi
• Silentes
• Domo
• auto

Witness Gaming has been the dominant force in European TF2 since ETF2L Season 42. Winning silver medals at i69 and gold at both RCADIA and i71, they have been a league above the rest of the competition. Witness are a true superteam, in the sense that all six of the players are among the best in the world, with Pocket Scout toemas_ arguably the planet’s number one. Witness chose not to participate in the most recent season, for a combination of reasons, leaving the throne temporarily vacant. Throughout this hiatus, though, they kept scrimming, so their opponents may be out of luck if they hope Witness have weakened: for the former champions, the only acceptable result will be yet another victory.

Article written with JMaxchill