Yeaaa.... This whole eXpressions series hasn't quite lived up to it's promises yet as I haven't been getting them out nearly as frequentyl as I'd like. Instead of short topical aticles, I'm having to play a lil catch up. A lots been going on with eXtv and TGBF.tv, BUT THATS NO EXCUSE :)

Engineer Update:

The Engineer Update finally dropped, with a bit of surprises, a dash of predicted changes, and a little controversy. With the Golden Wrench crafting giveaway, DrunkenFool exploited insider information to determine when drop times were going to be. Derek was in the server while DrunkenFool counted down to a drop. Derek's craft and DrunkenFool's actions fittingly earned both of them a VAC ban. DrunkenFool took his in stride with an irc interview describing his feelings on the ban which Robin Walker himself explained to the creator of TF2Items.com

Yes, that was old news. Newer news is the Golden Wrench Charity drive, in which the owner of the #31 Golden Wrench is raising money for the Childs Play Charity through a scheduled destruction of the trouble causing item itself. The charity effort has gained steam and is not only almost at $4K raised for this fantastic cause, but also has solicited agreements for the destruction of other wrenches. Check out the page and spare a buck if you got it.

The Engineer update brought some new maps: Upward, Hightower, and Thunder Mountain.

The first and most important step to the start of a team is building a team itself!

Recruiting can be the hardest, longest and most painstaking process to account for and the pre-requisites you decide to be important are what will craft your future team. You want to make sure that you ring every bit of information out of your potential recruits that will matter to you. Without first establishing a set of expectations for your team that really sums up what you want you team to do and be, the candidates that come your way will be infinitely disappointing. For my team my initial pre-requisites and requirements were as follows:

Availability: Availability will decide not the overall skill of your team but the development of skill and the progress your team will make as a whole. If your team overall can only manage to make 1-2 scrims a week then chances are your team is going to develop at an alarmingly slow rate. If your team plays 10-15+ scrims a week chances are you'll litterally see progress with your team in a days time. 

Much like the older series started by community fortress writer Alar Ensis this is a series detailing a team breaking into the competitive scene. The principle reason for this series is not only to entertain the high echelons of tf2 with humorous perversions of skill but to educate new teams starting out and low tier teams by listing the processes, actions, and events that have occurred and will occur to our team that have strengthened us.

To start we will go over some standard questions who am I, how did my team start, and why did it all start. Because my team at its present state is fairly well known, clearly not top shelf, but good enough I will describe past events in this article called “Some History”

Who am I ?: I am Adam “Forsaken” Melo, I got my start playing games via console and then within weeks got a pc. I’ve captained teams, clans, guilds, and outfits on the following games: Socom 2 & 3, Everquest for Playstation 2, Everquest for Pc, Everquest 2, LOTRO, Guild Wars, Counter Strike: Source, Planetside, and many other games that I cannot even remember to count. I’ve organized group numbers of 5 to over 5000 (Planetside & Graphic’s Design Communities) and being in the captains seat has always been my thing. I started playing team fortress 2 after a brief stint of cs:s and i've never looked back.

Hawkeye linked me this and I thought you guys should see it. It's vitally important...

...for the lulz.

TotalGL has teamed up with Valve Software to bring the TF2 community a Free league with Awesome Prizes!

What's better then playing Team Fortress 2 for free? How about Playing TF2 for free with Prizes for the Top 3 teams!  And what could possibly be better then that right? Well I'm proud to announce that TotalGamingLeague's prizes are being provided by our favorite game developer - Valve Software!

After talking with the awesomeness that is Robin Walker, Valve is going to supply the Top 3 teams with merchandise and possibly even signed memorabilia to salivate and coon over. For any of you who don't remember the recent TF2 shirts, posters, cards, mugs, etc that have grazed the Teamfortress.com blog head on over to their store to check out what might be in the works for the TGL S5 Victors!

And like a bad Infomercial, I can't help but say: But wait, there's more!

On comes Season 7.... or maybe not?

ESEA has announced Sign ups for it's Season 7 campaign alongside a slew of new features and announcements that on top of a larger prize pot also includes the ever so tasty to talk about threat of not supporting usl.  Yea there's a catch, and its really quite simple - ESEA is asking that the TF2 Community supports ESEA by signing up 50 teams into the Open division, and considering that last season ESEA had 40 this doesn't seem like too big of a stretch.  One thing to keep in mind however is that with the addition of an Intermediate division, the number to sign ups doesn't only have to go up by 10 teams but presumably 10+ the number of teams that move into intermediate.

I think the community if it chooses to can absolutely accomplish this goal, the question is, are we going to?  I've talked to several people from different stages in their competitive careers and the reactions have varied from a battle cry to support and in extreme cases "save the game" through this league to "*%$@ that, they called us whiners, that's classy customer support right there." ESEA has been what many consider to be the games top league for the past several seasons, and for the past two in particular ESEA has brought TF2 to public venues at their Lan Championships.  I for one hope that ESEA sticks by the game and that the community can rise up to the challenge but either way, I think the game's only going to grow - with or without ESEA.

From the CEVO site:

The Professional Division (CEVO-P) is our most prestigious division and consists of only the top twelve teams in North America. Teams are selected for this division based on their performance in CEVO last season (top 4 from Pro and top 2 from Main) and their performance in other leagues.

We were originally going to use a Professional Placement Tournament to fill the division but we have decided to directly invite qualified teams. If I have not talked to your team already and you feel that you deserve to play in CEVO-P this season, read on...

Applications:

Teams that have not qualified or been invited yet, and are interested in competing in the Professional division can apply via email before Thursday, August 5th @ 11 PM CST. To apply, teams must be signed up in the Amateur division with at least 6 "@ready" members on their roster.

Please send the following to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to apply.

1. Team Name
2. Link to CEVO team page. (Can be found on the standings)
3. Team Experience / Accomplishments (CEVO, other leagues/tournaments, other games, etc..)
4. Why you feel that your team deserves to be invited into the tournament.

I thought we would have to go this route when I originally announced the Placement Tournament and I think it's better given the current structure of the upper tier.

Netcode Illuminati is now branching out to TF2. The NCI community is well-known in the Source world and has provided active forums for Source players for many years.

The TF2 section will have premium content in the form of Video commentary where top TF2 players explain in detail - our strategies, our thought processes, and why we make the decisions we make. All of our contributors will be active on the forums to answer questions from the community. We will also provide lessons.

Check out our forums here: http://www.netcodeilluminati.com/forums/