Sorry for being delayed with these announcements, been a bit busy with IRL stuff.

New Updates

• Invite Group Stages will be BO1 with all teams playing in one Round Robin Bracket. Changed from two groups playing BO2. This means that the number of matches is going up to seven on the Friday.
  
• Five Teams have automatically qualified to the Invite Bracket, and any other teams will have to apply to play in an Online Qualifier.
  
• Froyotech, Se7en and SVIFT automatically qualify to the Invite Bracket due to performances in their regional Leagues.
  
• Ascent.EU and Faint Gaming EU automatically qualify due to their recent performance in the EU Monthly.
  
• Online Qualifiers dates are not fixed as of yet, but will most likely take place over the coming weeks. The top 3 Teams from the Qualifiers will qualify to the Invite Bracket.

Again, please post any questions here or in the Essentials Discord. DM me on Discord if you want to make an application to compete in the invite division, with your roster and any information that you think may be relevant (e.g Logs or recent performances in your Regional League)

Correct, that has been added to the page.

At this point in time, I believe that the format you see on the Toornament page is accurate and is not subject to any changes. BO1 Round Robin Open, BO2 Round Robin Invite, BO3 Playoffs. Invite features 2 groups of 4 and open features 4 groups of 8.

Times and number of rounds etc are dependant on signups and certain details we are waiting on like specific time for main stage.

We will be making an announcement regarding Invite Teams very soon. Just need to finalize a few details, won't be more than a few days.

Essentials have had nothing to do with ESA Rewind from the start AFAIK, so I do not know what you are insinuating here.

Also, I believe people are concerned with Rewind not being a thing due to it being an NA LAN and, last time I checked, Copenhagen isn't in the US. Perhaps flights are not as expensive to Denmark from the US as I previously believed, but without Rewind there really isn't a prominent equivalent to iSeries for NA, regardless of who is running it.

Yeah, that should be what the config runs. In terms of the map version quote, I'll update that text, many thanks.

That was the intention, however, I believed that the ETF Tournament System was not in a state where I would be confident in using it at this level and while Toornament can be finicky, it is reliable when actually running. As well as that, myself and the other tournament admin have previous experience with using the site.

Simply put, the map has not been in any League rotation, so has not been playtested. Since the change is not a drastic geometry change, it may be put in the map pool should there be positive feedback from playtesting and a sufficient demand for the change.

You can signup for the Insomnia 63 TF2 Tournament early and find all of the rules and structure of the tournament on our Toornament page. Fixture Times and Structures are subject to change and are dependant on signups. Please make sure that you read the rules before signing up.

https://www.toornament.com/tournaments/1631514046444314624/information

If you a team leader of an attending team, there is a text channel on our Discord which you can use to communicate with us with any questions. We will be using these channels to communicate at LAN so please make sure you are in that server. DM me if you need access to that Channel.

This thread will also be used to announce further information like the Talent/Production team as well as answering any questions that the community will have. I understand this should have been out weeks ago and for that, I do honestly apologize for not being proactive enough and promise that we are working our absolute hardest to get everything ready.

If your team is attending iSeries and have not signed up to the Tournament Page by the time signups close on Friday, you will not be able to compete.

Note: Some information cannot be disclosed and we will be transparent when that is the case, but we will try to be as honest and explicit as we can.

Schedule

Consider yourself corrected.

For the sake of brevity, I will not address everything that was mentioned. But understand that some members of the team are working around the clock to get stuff ready for i63. In terms of Getawhale's stream, many of his grievances are ones that I have shared, and many are currently being worked on. Staff Members have all received a copy of the all the details of the event which is updated by myself and other Team Leaders.

Whilst I have been at the Organisation, we have never made any attempt to directly compete with TF.TV. That may have been the case previously, but our main focus is ensuring that this event goes as smoothly as possible and that everyone has a great experience. Motions are being made to get information out and details cemented.

If anyone has serious concerns, Staff or otherwise, you may contact me and I will try to answer any questions you may have. I won't leak details that Non-Staff should not know, however.

In order to ensure that the tournament is played, we are lowering the number of teams required to 14. With 10 in the Open Division and 4 in Invite. This is the absolute minimum amount of teams we can have without forcing teams to play duplicate matches.

To clear up any misconceptions regarding promotion, we approached ETF2L and asked if it were possible to have a news post. They declined as they wish to have their posts limited to events that are ETF2L-related which is completely understandable. I believe we are free to make a post on their forums, however.

Following on with that, I do have a query for those that criticise Essentials for lack of promotion. If what we are doing is not enough, which outlets would be beneficial and attract the most attention/signups? We currently have the promotion on TF.TV (both a Thread and Event), UGC, Twitter, Discord, TF2PL and Reddit. One or two of these haven't been done for the EU Monthly and that is entirely on me, that being Reddit and an ETF2L forum post.

That being said, where would be the first place you check if you wanted to know if an Event is on?

Quick bump to remind teams to sign up for the tournament. If you are a team that thinks that they should be in the invite division, contact me through Steam or Discord.

The NA monthly is back and it's better than ever thanks to Marketplace.TF and just like our EU Monthly announcement last week we've got lots of changes to our format including invite and open brackets, a new map-pool and the global whitelist!

We are also introducing a giveaway of $120 of Marketplace.tf credit to one lucky team from either the EU or NA monthly. All you have to do to enter is play either the NA or EU monthly and play all of your matches in full to stand a chance to win. The winners will be announced during the talk show on 22nd July.

NA Monthly sponsored by Marketplace.tf:
Play dates: 14th-15th July
Prizepool: $750 and $80 of Marketplace.tf credit
1st Place: $450
2nd Place: $225
3rd/4th Place: $37.50
5th-8th Place: $20 of Marketplace credit

Changes from last month:

• Whitelist changed to global
  
• Cardinal removed from map pool
  
• Product and Sunshine added to map pool
  
• 8 team playoffs, all matches Bo3
  
• Invite bracket introduced, 4 teams invited, 4 qualify from swiss
  
• Invited teams will play round robin on saturday from the start of round 3 to determine bracket placing for day 2
  
• Class limits: 2 for each of scout and soldier; 1 for all other classes
  
• 5CP win limit 5 with a 30min timer
  
• KOTH win limit 3
  
• Global Whitelist
  
• Server Config

More info on our news article here.

We are still planning to run test matches with top level player mixes to try out potential new weapons for the whitelist. If you are a high-level player wanting to play in these please get in contact with us via Discord.

SIGNUP HERE

That's a mistake, it will be fixed. Our NA Announcements usually go out a week after the EU announcement.