steel kinda sugar coated our experience, but it's been pretty good so far. We've had very extensive difficulties involving people missing lots of matches/scrims due to real life situations (we've only played matches with our full roster a handful of times) but that's from pretty much everyone at some point rather than specific players consistently. The only other complication is our teams relatively passive nature (nobody really wants to maintain a maincaller position, and anybody who tries struggles because you have to shove people to be aggressive and work together a lot)

It's also the first time i've been captaining a team. Initially I didn't want to because it felt like an unwanted extra thing to tick into my focuses but overall it's probably made me a better player just because it's taught me to reason more with everyones situations, and really focus on trying to keep the team together and improving (luckily we have people on the team smarter than me that will recommend stuff like stv reviews and discussion when I don't).

We've been on a losing streak entire first half because of our harsh schedule (excluding several ffw), but we're just now entering the more equal half where hopefully any shred of demotivation anybody had will be replaced with a drive to improve since we'll be able to say if we lose these games it's not because they were way better but rather we could have won and just need to improve. As captain I feel a little more bummed because if we aren't doing good I feel like it's in some way my fault (definitely need to get more even scrim partners we can learn from, and it's my job to make everyone go the extra mile to improve in any place our mentor isn't expected to do so). We've had some issues where people treat the team like an obligation rather than a volunteered commitment, and that gets annoying but everyone on the team genuinely wants to improve and see us win so hopefully we can kick off the rest of the season with more experiences to make

Overall everyone on the team has been pretty rad and done a great job rolling with the punches, we all know that it's what you gotta go through on the road of improving, we've found a lot of games where we manage to win rounds or scrims and feel great about it because of how well we did

Scout and leader for The Baddies: https://play.esea.net/teams/119431

After winning a joke UGC silver 6s season we decided that we wanted to try open. With some roster changes here and there, we all, with the exception of our other scout, are fresh from UGC. (Our roamer is basically fresh from lobbies) After the first week we made some more roster changes and we have been playing with that roster.

It's been a great experience. I don't think I've wanted to scrim as much as I have wanted to on this team, and I can feel myself improving. What's also been great is that besides scrims, we like to hang in Mumble and we've all become pretty good friends from it. It's also really been the first dedicated team that I've been on with all of us looking to get the most out of this season. Besides each other, some people from other teams have been really chill to hang with in Mumble (some of my b come to mind), and overall it's been a fun experience. We're hoping to have the rest of our season be as strong as it has been so far. Shoutout to glider for helping us (and me in particular) out with a lot of stuff, especially on sunshine/badlands week.

Also, scrimming this much has made me appreciate sleep a lot more (there's a big difference in my dm and gamesense from when I do sleep compared to when I do not).

(Oh, and shoutout to our demo's 9:37 badlands rollout B) )

Medic (and as of this week, leader?/scheduler) for im sorry https://play.esea.net/teams/124805

This is my first season of ESEA - I've always been interested in transitioning to 6s from HL at some point and I've played a ton of PUGs but I've never actually been on a non-PUG scrim team for 6s before. This team are a bunch of my friends from HL that decided to form a team in wake of the Open Team Drive. We scrimmed maybe 2-3 nights before our first match.

My team is filled with DM gods (for their lack of 6s experience, they are REALLY good) - our first match, our pocket-at-the-time, crab_f, overslept and left us playing 5v6 after we were unable to finance one of our subs due to technicalities. We went in knowing we were going to lose.. and we ended up winning 5v6 thanks to bo4r. It was a FANTASTIC way to start our season :)

After that was mostly maps we were familiar with from HL - gullywash, viaduct, process. We went 6-0... and then came the maps we have no clue how to play. We don't really scrim, or do map or demo reviews - half of my team REALLY wants to put in the time to improve, and the other half is too busy with HL and doesn't want to commit any more than our current 3 nights a week. We generally play a half on a map, show up to the match and see what happens. It all came to a head when the team divide (the half that REALLY want to play, the other half that doesn't) made it unfun to play - some people rapidly losing interest in 6s and some minor bickering during scrims.

We made some adjustments - american, our leader, decided to step down to focus on HL. Vipa, our spy-main friend, filled in as roamer. Our demo and pocket switched places.. procreative is the only person on our team with any actual 6s experience, so having him on pocket made sense.

Now we have to figure out what kind of team we want to be for the rest of the season - it's all of our first season of Open, and playing HL + open means that the only nights without TF2 are Fridays. Even if it's only me doing map and demo reviews and research, I'm glad I'm playing with these nerds. I also know if we actually scrimmed and talked things through, these guys would destroy.

Next season, I am officially retiring as HL medic. I realized, playing with/against high open teams that I have A LOT of med mechanics to work on - surfing, positioning, distancing from my heal target that I still mess up - and as a perfectionist, you bet your ass I'm going to be fixing these things ASAP... especially if I have more nights off :)

(edit: preemptively posted, fixed and finished what I was typing)

Now that the regular season has ended, I kinda wanted to make an account and use this space to reflect on the season I, and Egg Salad Dressing, have had thus far. https://play.esea.net/teams/119535

So coming into it, our team's known each other for about a year. We just met in valve pubs and decided to test the waters of comp play with a season of highlander and finally, last fall we made the transition to UGC steel 6's where we went 7-1 (and no playoffs). Quickly recognizing that this league was ass, our competitive spirits set our eyes to something higher; ESEA-Open. By the end of the UGC season, we for whatever reason were offered to have our fees paid by Brooky12, which we are all eternally grateful for! Thanks to him, we were able to for sure play in ESEA. Moving on, we've got like, okay dm, idk, but the real question was how effectively we'd be able to learn our roles and adapt to the 6's meta. And during the winter, we started truly scrimming open teams and the general feel was like "cool, we think we can hang in mid-open." And I got the confidence I needed to go up against other good scouts in this league without embarrassing myself. Going 8-8 or whatever probably would have been a big success to us in all honestly, competing in our first season of open, but I know personally, I'm always aiming higher.

So the start of the season rolls along and our first game is against the Baddies. We'd scrim them a few times in the offseason, with them generally getting the better of us but we felt that with our full roster playing to their ability, we had a chance. Our medic's first death in open was a drop and then we subsequently dropped the first two rounds of our season before halftime rolled along. A little bit of doubt crept into the back of my mind. But then we just decided to try and shake off the jitters and play more aggressively and somehow, some way, we managed to pull back 3 rounds and fend off an intense last push from them for a narrow 3-2 victory. Little did I know at the time just how good a team the Baddies were as they now finish the season among the middle of the playoff-bound teams. Good game Baddies, you guys are a great group.

Honestly, the win was a huge boost to our confidence and we were excited to be playing in ESEA, couldn't wait for our next game. It was against Bong and the Rippersons and no offense to them, but we thought we were going to win and still think we could have won. However, they put up a great fight and they were the better team that night as we fell behind and were unable to pull it all the way back this time around. They ended up having a good season too, finishing 10-6, so kudos to them as well.

After this game, we realized we needed to refocus and approach our games better. We looked at the random schedule we were dealt at the start of the season and figured that aside from Diexxxtrecrispy (who as expected rolled us) that our schedule was pretty easy and so we ended up at a 7-2 record halfway through badlands week. Because of the wins we were accumulating early in the season however, our schedule was about to get a lot tougher and to complicate matters further, our other scout decided he hates playing scout so we went through some tryouts in the middle of our season.

We went into our badlands game against Thai Guys pretty much expecting a loss but it was still disheartening to lose as we did. But we moved on and I urged our pocket and team leader, Brimstone, to seek a mentor. Thankfully he did make the effort and we now have Shiki to help us not be dumb. Thanks Shiki! After granary week, we then picked up Sandblast who now still plays with us on the flank. I felt that his very aggressive style would compliment well with my more passive style and together we could do a lot of work off our solders' damage. With these changes, we ended up winning our last five games of the season by scores of 5-3, 4-3, 5-4, 4-3, 5-3 with three golden caps in there.

Egg Salad Dressing now finishes the season 13-3, in 9th place. I still feel our schedule has been relatively easier compared to what some teams had to deal with so there are surely better teams more deserving than us but still, I'm really proud of what my team has been able to do this season. We've had our share of yelling and being frustrated and all that jazz, but I'm still happy we played this season and learned a lot and improved. Personally, I'm very happy with how I've played in every game this season and am excited to continue improving and helping my team win. Sorry for rambling on perhaps a bit longer than I would have liked, it just felt good to finally step back and look back on the season. Thanks to all the other players I've played with in scrims and matches this season, thanks to my teammates for putting up with my passive aggressiveness in comms, and thanks to whoever actually reads all this!

damn nigga

fenryr, scout for slim slins https://play.esea.net/teams/120018

I played some shitty seasons of ugc before with friends and 0 intention of caring, then went to cs for a bit. I lost all enjoyment from cs and got reinspired to play the game. I had a lot of excitement for replaying the game, but very quickly I my enjoyment died about 2-3 weeks in. I still think I've improved greatly over the season but I'm going to be much more selective with who I play relative to teams, seeing how I didn't know anyone in tf2 at my entry point. I still had fun(shoutout to wari, arsie, and fsd for being cool and fun teammates) but felt like putting no effort because of how our pocket decided to play. Sorry to zoo wee momma for what our leader did a few nights back, and it's been a weird season to go back into.

super huge shoutout though to fsd, he got me on the team, paid my league fees when my esea ran out mid-match(causing us to lose), doing demo reviews, being there for me, etc. If he didn't motivate me/pay my league fee and a month of premium I would have just abandoned tf2 again.

ps. revy you've got a lot to work on in the future, like how you treat teammates, other teams, practicing, playing your role, calling, making space. I've given you shit before about it and I won't prolly stop at the rate it's coming but I believe you'll be better in the future if you actually put effort towards improving on it.

I'm in class so I need something to do. Well as my 1st legit season in open I ran team my b ( now slins mine sweeper squad ) As a jump into the season I'm glad I got to start playing the first 5 weeks with really funny and awesome people. Although I ended leaving due to scheduling and in-game role issues I desided to leave. I ended up getting picked up by ESD and met a group of people that really tied my 1st real season together. This team taught me a lot about tf2 and I'm glad I get to play in playoffs with them. As a team I feel that we played very well and I never thought my 1st FULL season of open I broke all these goals I wanted to accomplish personally.

medic for slim slins. today i found out we are lfp pocket as we have last match to play this season