hello everyone, got some news for you all

- signups for LAN qualifications end today 23:59 CET, so please make sure you sign up if you are interested in participating
- I think we'll have a schedule and format for qualifications ready tommorow **late evening** because we'll go thru this after work
- most likely we'll cast some of the qualification games on https://twitch.tv/essentialstf
- Garda Panteri is back in the invite for now because they actually have a roster to play, however /for fence will not participate, that leaves us 7 spots you can win throughout qualifications
- signups for spectators will be open after qualification stage, the participant cap is set to 50 spectators (due to venue size limitations)
you can find registration page as well as who is attending here: https://play.toornament.com/en_US/tournaments/7328877883772370944/
- we are not going to make a hot seat spots for teams - in comparison to tournaments where a platform makes it easy to switch like playstation/xbox/switch games where you just have to switch controllers and that's it, I believe it would be time-consuming (because someone has some super junky setting they want to have before playing and they will spend ages to get it), harder to schedule as we'd have to account all pauses for that
I think it could make a very bad impression onto the event as well as the venue and it's too much risk for us to do it
- we did out attempt to get our event medal in the game, however our request was declined by Valve, that leaves us only with physical medals and trophies, so don't worry, they will look great
- most importantly I informed the venue that they must be prepared well with alcohol because of what kind of tragedy happened in rcadia

hello once again

we definitely did not expect such interest from the community and because we want to make this competition as competitive as possible, after long discussion on the topic we have decided to change the signup format, so the following teams have a guaranteed spot in the LAN signups as invite teams:

MANDEM
TLR
wer das liest ist doof
Evil Gameing
Witness Gaming
tf2easy black
HAVOC
★★★½
Varmkorv Boogie

/for fence

that means that 9 out of 16 teams are reserved, we reserve a right to change this list in case of a team fold or NA/AU/NZ invite level teams being interested in participating
since some of the teams are lacking single players, we have decided to postpone the signups a bit and since that is the case already, we are going to to introduce PoLANd.tf 2024 #winter Qualifiers Stage to which all of the interested teams can signup
you can do so by creating a ticket on our discord https://discord.poland.tf and creating a ticket in #poland-tf-faq-en, providing the list of players who could participate
for the qualifiers we are going to use current ETF2L ruleset and map pool, which is:

- cp_process_f12
- cp_snakewater_final1
- cp_sunshine
- cp_gullywash_f9
- koth_bagel_rc7
- cp_metalworks_f5
- koth_product_final
- cp_sultry_b8a
- cp_entropy_b5

signups are open until 6th of December 23:59 CET and the Qualifiers Stage will take place 9-10.12.2023, all matches will be bo3/bo5 and the exact bracket will be published after signups close

due to a fact most likely we will rent PCs, we have raised the operation cost fundraiser cap to 3000 PLN
thanks to you we have already gathered around 2700 PLN already and if we overreach the fundraiser cap, we are planning to put any extra money gathered into the prize pool
if you are interested in helping out, you can do so at https://donate.poland.tf

it is not a typo
btw signups open tommorow 19:30 CET

yep exactly they host a signup/payment page, i'll just a share a link to it at the time mentioned above so all teams have equal chances of signing up
we have a separate form, because BaseStack will get info about the captain while we need to know about the whole team, also that was a part of our contract agreement with them

btw working discord link https://discord.gg/C3TWmwj https://discord.poland.tf

also if you need help travel let us know on Discord, we can support you (not financially) in buying travel tickets

first come first serve, so be sure to sign up as soon as possible
afaik there are 16-17 teams interested in joining the event

hello everyone

i have great news to share with you:
- i have signed up a contract with BaseStack for this event, so you can book your flights/sleeping spots!
- we are going to be able to cover 16 teams, not 15
however 9 gaming stations will be downstairs due to lack of space in the venue, they will be in an open space instead of a closed rooms and the desks will have more space than in the rooms
the venue has 95 PCs with 95 FHD 240 Hz screens and 1 FHD 144 Hz screen, meaning there will be one PC missing and we will have to rent the PC ourselves from some 3rd party or one of the participants can bring their own PC to fill the hole
- signups will open this Wednesday (29.11.2023) at 19:30 CET, i will post a signup page link on our Discord: https://discord.poland.tf
for spectators entry fee for the whole weekend is 10 PLN where one drink is provided within the fee
for players the only form of signup is the team signup, where one adult player fee is 300 PLN and 220 PLN for a minor, meaning in 99% of cases you will have to pay 1800 PLN for your team upfront (captain pays for all players in the team)
all participants must fill a form which you can get after creating a ticket on our Discord where you must provide a proof of payment towards BaseStack
signup order for teams matters, as we'll let choose teams where do they want to sit in the venue with the signup order

after we close signups, we will check what map pool and whitelist do you want for this event where all players will be able to vote
we will provide an event schedule soon
the whole event will be streamed on twitch.tv/essentialstf
thanks to Arie's support we are going to host LAN serveme, so it will be more convenient to reserve servers for your matches :)

i would like to thank you for all donations which will go for the event operational costs and potentially the prizepool, i really appreciate it and we hope that we'll make this event so great so it will be a great memory for you all
cheers :)

hello everyone, apologies for lack of update from my side
i wanted to update you whenever we have some meaningful stuff to present to you all and it seems to be a right moment now
we have the signup page ready and we are finalising things with BaseStack in order to get contract signed this week
there is an important change in terms of spectator attendance - it's going to be a paid entry for 10 PLN for the entire event and you will have a drink included in that fee (which is even less than one pint in weatherspoons on insomnia)
we are still lacking on funds required for covering the operational costs, donations on https://donate.poland.tf/ will be highly appreciated
also, the deadline for volunteer apps is november 25th, you can sent them here: https://volunteer.poland.tf/

we could make one as we have assets ready for tf2pickup.us but honestly i didn't try it again because we had it running once and it was an absolute fail due to lack of proper advertising probably, but this time i think it could be good as people know how the service works and that with proper moderation games can be really balanced

wihajster in Polish is a phrase for something you mention (like a tool) but you don't know how is it called and it comes from German as "wie heißt er?" (how is it called?)
also you speak it exactly in the same way as you'd do in German

hl.tf2pickup.us for highlander games in NA :)

hello, i have some updates:
- unfortunately we have to wait on the venue owner with providing a proper signup / payment page which they offered us to get ready in the first week of November, when we get any info about it we'll let you know that the signup opening is very close and i'll provide you an exact date where we'll provide a signup link for everyone
- 15 team spots, there is a high possibility we will have 16th spot available for a team, hopefully we'll know that before the signups open
- byoc won't be an option on this event as well as future events due to size limitations of the venue and venue's owner plans for arranging it, the plan is to set up some bar downstairs so you after you beat someone's ass in the game or you get a lesson you will be able to drink some shots, a beer, optionally five
- team signups will be captain based: captain pays for the entire 6 of the players, 300 PLN per player, so in total 1800 PLN
- we are going to choose what kind of map pool we'll want when the signups close so it's going to be you who will choose it, i'll don't have a specific date for when are we supposed to run it but i presume this year still so you have enough time to train for that
- we'll be using hardware of our own + stuff we'll rent/lend from friends, we are unsure yet what costs are going to cover in detail, but we need at least 2000 PLN to cover operational costs like wristbands, physical medals etc, so any donations will be appreciated, you can support us thru Tipply https://donate.poland.tf
if we get more than we need, we'll move some of it to the operational costs pool for the next event or add it to the prizepool
- we are going to have an offline production, if you are interested in helping us cover the event, we need help with production and casting, so if you are interested in helping, feel free to apply at https://volunteer.poland.tf

I'm sorry that is out of context but I love the fact that you have a nickname Sweden with a Swedish flag, looks like you'd be a country representative lol

we are not bound to what ETF2L enforces as a map pool on PoLANd.tf and we are going to decide what will be the map pool for the event in the best interest of the people who will actually play on the event, possibly by gathering feedback from them

hey, little update:

byoc most likely will not be a thing, at least it's very unlikely after talks with the venue owner, also we will prioritize team signups meaning first you will be able to sign up as a team (captain pays for the team and signs up players), then when we'll see no more teams sign up, we'd open single player signups
we can cover 15 teams and signups will be first come first serve
we will obviously tell you in advance when the signups will start so you can prepare yourself, i expect to open signups mid/late October

my humble request is: if you want to sign up as a team please come to me and tell me what's a rough roster you want to sign up with so i can be aware how many teams are already formed more or less
i spoke with some of you but i want to have some idea who can i expect because i don't think full teams will bait the LAN

you can contact me with these team infos on https://discord.poland.tf or @suprovsky (Discord)

also the event is 23-25.02.2024, not 2023 :)

thanks for your work :)

would it be possible for you to have a look on why soap dm does not work properly when using mp_tournament_readymode? from my understanding the problem is that even if all players ready up and conditions are met to start the game, it does not and stays stuck
we use mp_tournament_readymode on all tf2pickup.org based pickups so i think everybody would be very grateful of this fix