An ETF2L forum thread sprouted somewhere around the beginning of the hazy summer period that would eventually continue to germinate in the minds of the league’s administrators. We are here to celebrate their decision to condense the established three week Premiership Playoff system and bring it all to you in one incredible evening of competitive Team Fortress 2.

TeamFortress.TV are going to do their very best to make this the spectacle that it deserves to be, with a flurry of content coming your way in this very article and beyond towards our live stream event starting at 12:45EST / 18:45CET this Sunday 30th November. If a picture says a thousand words then this video from everyone’s favourite Danish Action Hero, Beater, might just feel like being battered repeatedly around the head with an Oxford English Dictionary. Caution is advised.

OK! Straighten yourself up and wipe that brain matter from your screen -- you should now be sufficiently hyped. The event in question is the ETF2L Season 19 powered by Tt eSPORTS Premiership Playoffs, and our good friends at Tt eSPORTS are offering a few lucky viewers the chance to make their experience just that little bit extra special with some hot hardware giveaways. Up for grabs on the night will be 2x Tt eSPORTS METAL CAPS for bullet-proofing your mechanical keyboard and one of their brand new ambidextrous Tt eSPORTS VENTUS Gaming Mice, which have only just been released this week! Tune in on the night to find out more...

Behind all our razzle-dazzle, pumping tunes, gloriously captured airshots and promises of eSports loot, there is in fact a serious competition. Over the last two months three hundred teams have been battling it out on a weekly basis in the ETF2L. In the Premiership, eight teams have become three and on Sunday one team will be crowned champions. The story of the season was captured in 33 hours of live streamed coverage here on TFTV, but also through Gentleman Jon’s delightful Weekly Report Card series over on ETF2L. Rumour has it that an end of season recap will be gracing their news page some time before Sunday...

The Contenders

You could be forgiven for thinking that the season had been a very predictable one with the three teams tipped by most people finishing on the podium positions. Yet it was a season packed with dramatic golden cap finishes, roster switcheroos and surprising results.

A special mention has to go out to E-SHOCK ESPORT who failed to qualify in the pre-season, but snuck in the backdoor left open when Russia’s top team, GGWP.pro, folded early on. The Franco-Belgian outfit made an impressive run to within spitting distance of third place, but their Cinderella story came undone against league leaders, Übersexuals.

A combined haul of €1,000 cash money, 6x Tt eSPORTS VERTO Gaming Headsets, 6x Tt eSPORTS THERON Gaming Mice and 6x Tt eSPORTS METAL CAPS are due to be contested on Sunday. So let’s examine the competitors and see if we can figure out which of these fine fillies might make it across the line first.

Our very own content workhorse, Sideshow, has undertaken a series of distinctly unprofessional recorded interviews with our plucky competitors. Zebbosai & Herr_P were the first to face his barrage of questions and you can savour the results right this very moment mere pixels below this sentence. UPDATE: More interviews!

Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers

More than a few eyebrows were raised when this roster was assembled pre-season, not because of the calibre of the players, but because of their choice of classes. Knutsson the roamer, playing medic? Disgusting! A scout playing roamer? Get out zappis, you filthy beast! Don’t these Nordic types know their place?!

*Knutsson*	*ryb*	*AMS.*	*Herr_P*	*zappis*	*Zebbosai*

All that was soon forgotten... well at least until Week 7 when a panic set upon the team, faced with too many sketchy results in their match history. The fear got the better of them and they decided that they would have to revert to their “main classes” in order to ensure their spot in the playoffs. It was delicious irony then that they would proceed to drop a map to the worst team in the division. Who would have thought that changing the system you have practised for two months at short notice might be a bad idea?

With the fate of their season out of their hands and the dread intensifying, it fell to Übersexuals to swoop in and save the day by crushing those pesky kids from Planet Express and E-SHOCK. All’s well that ends well you might think, but characteristically Zebbo seemed more upset to have been saved by IPZIE than thankful to have scraped in to the playoffs.

The nature of their arrival doesn’t detract from the fact that they deserve to be here. Their on-the-fly plays have revolved around very direct aggression from zappis and rogue operations from Zebbosai, an approach which has fared well against the overtly aggressive stance of La Berrichonne de Châteauroux, but less so against the more considered plays of Übersexuals. Self-admittedly a team with no real strategy, chaos is their best weapon; if they can repeatedly undermine their opponents’ game plans in these high pressure fixtures then an upset on the podium is a real possibility.

La Berrichonne de Châteauroux

The Frenchies proved to be the most punctual of the final three, completing all their fixtures in the league-appointed weeks. It feels like an age since we have actually seen them play. As it turns out, it’s been three weeks since their last official fixture, the one where they dropped a map to Planet Express; a game of Granary that has stuck in my mind. Seemingly unable to stop and take stock of the situation, they relentlessly threw themselves at that well-drilled defence for 30 minutes, banging their heads up against a brick wall before eventually succumbing to their wounds and the clock.

*Bulle*	*Exon*	*Tek*	*fl1p*	*T-Mac*	*Flippy*

What is going to happen on Sunday if Plan A (skill it) doesn’t work? Luckily for L.B.C. I can confirm that Planet Express didn’t make it to the playoffs, but the question remains. Even with the incredible talent of these six players and the thousands of hours they have played together through ETF2L’s seasons, that one map was enough for me to really start to question if they have what it takes to be champions in 2014.

I can confirm that this will be the roster they are fielding, despite frequent appearances from Captainhax during the season on pocket, including that game against Planet Express and conversely taking a map from Übersexuals -- their biggest scalp. Looking back at their fixtures it seems he and fl1p each played half of the games, with Tek bouncing between pocket and scout. It’s hard to distil any winning formula from their results, so I am left to trust their judgement and hope that they have spent at least a few minutes in the last three weeks thinking about that Granary game.

Übersexuals

They started as favourites and they have finished as favourites, but for some reason that seems to be where the comparisons with Epsilon have ended. The draw with La Berrichonne de Châteauroux ended any aspirations of a perfect season back in early October, and later that month when wobbling to a golden cap victory against BK it seemed like Europe’s new super team might not be so super after all.

*Mirelin*	*WARHURYEAH*	*IPZIE*	*SVMZI*	*Rising*	*Kiler4fun*

Without a doubt they enter the playoffs as the team to beat, and on the back of a fixture where they played better offclass on Pro Viaduct than onclass on Granary. Certainly, the game was of no importance to them, but perhaps their biggest failing this season has been their inability to cultivate that fear and respect that Epsilon once instilled in the European populace; both their potential opponents will genuinely believe that they can take maps. That’s great news for viewers, but it also means that their hard work in claiming the top spot in the main season can easily be undone over the course of 90 minutes. The title is theirs to lose.

The benefits of finishing first in the main season seem slightly reduced in this new playoffs format. Previously you would have had a week to look at your opponent’s last fixture and construct a game plan, but now it is literally minutes. If they choose to watch the first game, then they are foregoing a warmup match. All they really earn is two picks in the modified map elimination system, but that is hardly a silver bullet – I’d much rather be coming up from the first game on the back of a genuine victory than stepping in from a PCW, or worse, STV.

Übersexuals are still going to win, but fl1p me I’m looking forward to it :D