On the sixth of August, the NASA rover known as “Curiosity” will land upon Mars. It cost roughly $2,500,000,000 to assemble and launch this robot. Seven minutes: the time it will take to complete its descent. Two years: the duration of its interplanetary mission. The primary objective for Curiosity is to determine whether Mars is or ever has been capable of sustaining and supporting ~life~.
Meanwhile, the TF2 community wants to spend $20,000 to assemble and launch two crack squads of American mercenaries to the city of Telford to dispatch of the filthy Europeans who claim dominion over this game. As a person reading this on Team Fortress dot TV, there's a good chance you only care about one of these two goals and I'm reasonably sure that evaluating the viability of Mars as an outpost for humanity is way down there on your priority lists. In addition, there's a significantly higher chance of finding intelligent life on Mars than there is in the drunken masses of i-Series:
There have been a few events that are serving as a lead-up to the i46 event, and this Sunday, you can tune in to catch one that came about as a result of the fevered workings of James “Admirable” TF2GamerExtraordinare's brain. Since the entire draw of donating to Classic Mixup and Leviathan Gaming is watching Europeans play Americans, why not watch Europeans play Americans from the comfort of your own home before you drop the contents of your Paypal into the eXtv chip-in? The first match will feature Classic Mixup facing off against TCM Gaming, and I'm here to give you guys some information about these teams.
- Brad "PYYYOUR" Ross
- Tyler "TLR" Morgan
- Anthony "Harbleu" Ballo
- Mike "Platinum" Miles
- Sven "Ruwin" Zobler
- Carl "enigma" Yangsheng
America got to see its first super team in action at this past ESEA LAN. Most of them came out of it wishing they had watched “Glitter” instead. Things did not go too well for them Mihaly's Flow boys – some people will blame the performance of Shrugger, who somehow went to his first LAN without anyone (especially enemy scouts on middles) noticing. Some others will blame the performance of the combo as a whole, which have been transplanted into this “new” superteam under the Classic Mixup name. PYYYOUR and Harbleu seemed out-of-sync for the entire ninety minutes of LAN glory, with the latter being dropped on several ubers and the former's fingers leaving a trail of butter wherever they went. It also led to one of the more quotable quotes in TF2's history:
And soon, that quote and Flow's entire LAN performance will be a distant memory. From one perspective, gone are Soup, Wonderwall and Shrugger. From the other, we bid farewell to Moose, Lansky and kbk. What we are left with is the team that everyone thinks will topple Leviathan Gaming except this time we TOTALLY mean it guys, okay? Flow was just a mistake baby girl and I ain't mean to hurt you, I promise... Maybe the TF2 community will never rebound from the wound suffered when they hopped aboard Mihaly's Train, but if any meld of players could stitch that gape, it would be Classic Mixup.
First, we bid farewell to Soup and Smaka. Sorry buds, you were generally serviceable – at least one of you was – but we need some of that “second best North American demo of all time” swag to really have a super team. You can argue about Platinum's swag levels but I submit this photograph as my only piece of evidence:
Secondly, Moose and Shrugger got kicked out on their asses. One used a luxurious mound of fluffy ginger hair to break his fall and the other was too blazed to feel pain so I'm quite sure they've recovered safely by now. Enigma and Ruwin are fused together for this run of Classic Mixup, putting the best passive scout in NA history (you can tell this team is good just based on how many “best _____ in NA history” superlatives go their way) with a man who just made an incredibly impressive LAN debut. While watching Ruwin's Dallas performance, I could practically feel the sweat dripping off of him as he went into desperation mode to save his team's chances.
Sliding over to the very warm seat which Harbleu occupied this past season is TLR, noted trofeo bandolero and fitness guru. The rust is still clearly there, having accumulated from the time he took off to play DotA2, though you can see it crumbling away bit by bit as you watch him stream. He will have the honor of pocketing PYYYOUR, who might have some issues to shake off once the actual LANs hit. Though the majority of them are too scared to say it, a fair number of Invite players have expressed the belief that PYYYOUR's poor LAN performance may not have been a one time thing but instead, one of many in a series of ever-intensifying mental blow-ups. It will probably help if Mixup avoid the dreadful fate of playing like an Open team once they make it over to Europe.
To close out the Mixup roster, sealing off the final hole and making that sucker airtight is three time LAN champion Harbleu:
- Ahmad "Byte" Fansa
- Jani "hocz" Laakkonen
- Sebastian "Zebbosai" Olsson
- Jason "Kaidus" Allen
- Kalle " hymzi " Honkala
- Jukka "Rebeli" Kauppinen
The TCM Gaming creation myth is not quite as titanic a tale. Nobody got together and deemed “today, we will unite all sick gamers across the land of Europe that we may win Dragon Bag gear bags.” It was probably for the best, since whichever guy said that would have felt like a real dickhead once TCM finished second in ETF2L and missed out on the grand prize. Thus far for TCM, their results have far exceeded expectations. Team leader and European-PYYYOUR-counterpart Byte said so himself, at one point uttering "third place would be good, second place would be great, and first place would be like a slow, subtle, sensuous drip of ambrosia across his lips and down his chin." Hey, quit judging – different strokes for different folks, right?
If I told a European TF2 player who was in a coma for the past few months that Byte went to Kaidus and said “let's make a team” and a floating cloud of purple haze replied “yo damn man keep it down I'm just tryna chill and you getting all up in it on me what the hell dude.” A Byte-Kaidus union seemed to have all the makings of a bad romance: Byte is known for his professionalism, high level of devotion, and harshly critical in-game attitude. Kaidus is known for... uhhh, let's call it other interests.
While traveling along a yellow brick road in search of top level TF2 players, the British pair presumably came upon the fractured remains of the Finnish National Team, no doubt engaging in the typical Finnish bonding ritual of getting hammered and sitting in a sauna with legs spread wide open and no care given to how much ground a small white towel can cover. The first two recruits were Hocz and Hymzi, the former wanting to continue his carry as one of the best DMing pockets Europe ever knew and the latter having grown fond of meatshotting after having spent so much time meatpiping. With this core of players, TCM (then known as “nonamefound”) had laid the basis for an ultra-aggressive, deathmatch heavy style.
Once Hymzi and Hocz joined up, Byte's role in the team felt even more blurred because he was known for wanting to play a passive style that forced the enemy team to make mistakes, and the Finns plus Kaidus were known primarily for walking forward and shooting at things and letting out a soft “welp” after they all died. Their last two pickups seemed to round out that imbalance of style. They continued scouring the Scandinavian lands, swooping up the inexperienced but heady and eager roamer, Zebbosai. And for the final spot, TCM went with a throwback. Byte no doubt remembered the good old days when names like Riemu and Exoronic dominated the land, capable of placing their gigantic crosshair on top of a character model and holding left click. He reached out to the new age heavy, the kind of heavy who knows you can't be a heavy full-time, the kind of heavy with skin that has been made pale by years of living in snow and hair as yellow as the sun:
He also happened to be the kind of heavy who mostly played scout, which made Rebeli exactly what TCM Gaming wanted. Rebeli may have his moments of failure (such as when he got drunk before one of his team's playoff matches), but the style of scout he plays works perfectly with Hymzi's ultra-aggressive gambling. Hymzi will push all of his chips into the pot pre-flop on a pair of suited connectors, while Rebeli looks down at a pair of fives and throws them back upon the table while disgust and hatred burrow deep into his soul.
So knowing all of this sick background information on the teams and having subjected yourselves to my terrible sense of humor for so long, surely the next question on your lips is "djc, what's going to happen in the match?!?"
Well, to find that out you're going to want to tune in to the VanillaTV cast this Sunday, July 22nd at 21:15 CEST/3:15 EDT, with commentary from Greg and cbear as Classic Mixup and TCM Gaming play through Granary, Badlands and Snakewater.