ozfortress Summer Cup 2016 Qualifiers end and the Main Bracket begins
Over two nights (Thursday the 10th and Sunday the 13th December) some of the best teams in Oceania competed in Swiss Qualifiers for the ozfortress Summer Cup 2016. The following teams made it through the event to join :smug:, Gossip Girl and Jasmine Tea in the Main Bracket of the 16 team, double elimination competition.
ozfortress Summer Cup will be cast live by TFLIVE with highlights on the Backcap Youtube series. All fixtures are Best of 3 barring the Grand Final on Sunday the 21st February which is a Best of 5 with no advantage. For all the details, make sure to check out ozfortress. For now, let’s examine the crème de la crème.
The Direct Invites
Jasmine Tea are the big dogs in the competition, coming off a OWL 14 Premier division win over iM lite team pump & dump, in the off season they replaced now married roamer SoLe with Premier personality Zaka. Their showings in the off season Razer cups have been just as dominant, taking first place each time they've played.
While there is very little doubt that Jasmine Tea are the current best team in Australian TF2, the back and forth between them and yuki in the last three OWL seasons has shown that they are far from unbeatable.
It wouldn't be hard to describe Gossip Girl as the evolution of 4th place OWL 14 team Andy C, but the team has taken on a very different feel, as the off season shuffle has ended with them only having two members member of Andy C in the current line up, scout render, who was formally pocket during the time as Andy C and roamer Gnat. Joining Render and Gnat is former crack clan demo Yewlster, Tea Time/Not Bad pocket and scout Jersh and Sam, and Division 2 OWL 14 winner darbs on medic.
Below them sits :smug:, who were last seen winning Division 2 in OWL 13. From that line up pocket Spaccce and scouts neutral and randy have been left out, replaced by OWL 14 Division 2 winning pocket Jiho and scouts Cooki and Faithless, formerly of OWL 14 Premier teams die. and Andy C. Joining them are returning members oni on demoman, Cole on medic, and on roaming soldier, ransibling. ferelah will cover for ransibling until his return in February.
While Jasmine Tea are ahead of the pack, :smug: and Gossip Girl are much closer, each able to take maps off the other, creating an interesting rivalry, and what will probably be some good matches deep into the main event of the Summer Cup.
The Challengers
Sitting below the big three are newer teams Labracadabradors and U bad lol? Labracadabradors came first in the Summer Cup qualifiers, not dropping a single map, but had slow close games with both 5th seed team U bad lol? and 7th seed Great Gravy. Made up of former boat boiz members Redhawk, Dreams and ckm, as well as OWL 14 Division 2 winner Enrith, rac pocket/medic/roamer/demo Hobbes and scout Yorda, Labracadabradors could be a black sheep in the main event.
U bad lol? have a more fluid roster, made up of the combination of former m8s players. Roight is the lynch pin of the team, no matter his class, his high level of death match pushing U Bad lol? through many situations. Joining him is former m8's roamer and wu medic daveii, as well as m8s scouts laan and Disturbed. Former Brodogs Sucks scout Starbucks proved in the Qualifiers he can bring the meat if given the task. If U bad lol? show up with the right roster on the night, there’s no limit to what they can do.