The European branch of Ascent, having recently picked up alle from Faint Gaming EU, were looking all set and ready to compete in ETF2L Season 32, hoping to improve on their second-place finish from last season as well as prepare for Copenhagen Games 2019. However, alle has opted to step down from the team, citing a lack of interest in the game. LEGO founder and experienced Demoman Dr.Phil will be his replacement.

Ascent.EU just fell short of the Premiership title last season, and had to be satisfied with second place instead as they ultimately succumbed to Se7en, losing the Grand Final 3 maps to 1. While this can be a letdown for such an ambitious squad, it was after all their first season together, and now that their team play is sharper than ever, they look ready to take on the best of Europe again in both online and offline play.

Frantic weapon-switcher, talented editor and also team leader amppis expressed his thoughts on next season, as well as shedding some light behind the change in Demomen :

Last season went well for us although losing to Se7en was a slight disappointment at the time since we all know that we are very capable of beating them. We are going into next season feeling optimistic about our chances of winning and the goal is always going to be to do that, however we are still mainly focused on LAN and we wont let online results discourage us. I think we still have the best players European TF2 has to offer right now and I'm looking forward to keeping on improving with this team.

The initial scrims we had with alle were great but after a while we started struggling quite a bit as a team. I don't think alle is to blame for that but it definitely made him quickly lose interest in playing TF2 with us again. We had no intentions of getting rid of him and nobody disliked playing with him but he decided to not keep playing with us since he thought his lack of interest in playing the game would hurt the team down the line.

Thankfully Dr. Phil who had trialed for us before was still interested in playing for us next season. Even though its a shame to lose alle I'm really excited to see what Phil brings to the table and I'm looking forward to playing with him.

The Finnish Fragging Friends, amppis and credu, have trapped many teams in their wild ride. Both of them are often remarked to have amazing mechanical skill, and credu was even tied for first place in the Scout of the Season award. The British Bombing Buddies Drackk and silentes are also a force to be reckoned with, both of them were hitting rockets for days last season, as well as generally showing these kids how it’s done. Finally, in the non-alliterated non region-sharing corner, we have Medic Connor and newcomer Dr.Phil. Connor was noted for his great survival skills, as well as for being more eager to saw people than an XVIIIth century surgeon.

As for Dr.Phil, he was lastly seen in Premiership as the pocket for wer das liest ist doof, the only time in his 9 seasons in the top flight that he was not playing with LEGO; a team he founded and led for more than 7 years, going from Division 4 to Prem with them. His best finish with the Brick-Building Boys was in Season 24, where he acquired second place, as well as a couple of bronze medals in seasons 25 and 28 to fill up his trophy cabinet. Dr.Phil will surely be able to put this wealth of experience and his excellent ability to coordinate with his team to good use.

Surely eager to make his enemies step on Legos, Dr.Phil has opted to tell his opinion about his pick-up in hieroglyphs :

¯\(ツ)/¯

Eager to show that they have not peaked yet, the Ascent.EU roster is :

• Scout: amppis
• Scout: credu
• Roamer: Drackk
• Pocket: silentes
• Demoman: Dr.Phil
• Medic: Connor