Ladies and gents, there's Highlander afoot!  Week 5 of UGC's Season 4 slug-fest was decisive: the wheat was separated from the chaff, the good from the bad, the hrrrm from the meh.  Included were the very weird and the disturbingly normal, and on a good day, you can't tell them apart.

But this is Highlander!  There's 18 friggin' dudes in a server trying to blow each other up.  Anything goes.  And now, as we bum-rush the final three weeks of matches, every point, every cap, and every piece of intelligence returned is crucial!

Let's get into the Week 5 re-cap before we soldier on to the Week 6 predictions.  After you, good reader.

Outlined against the bright blue Yukon skies, the Four Horsemen ride again. In lore of old, they are known as Pestilence, Famine, Destruction and Death. These are merely aliases. Their real names are PYYYOUR, dummy, justin and carnage. Together, and with their team mates TLR and ww-, they form the wave of wins that threatens to take out every team that stands between them and a season 9 championship. Only one team obstructs this path of glory: eMazing Gaming.

Last time they clashed, eMg won. But now, with both teams 12 and 1, their upcoming match on the all too painfully familiar Yukon will secure themselves as Season 9 champions and the all important first seed in heading into LAN playoffs.

Yukon is a hard map, a map that can go back and forth for twenty minutes and then suddenly burst forth with aggression, ending rounds in seconds instead of what can seem like hours. It is also a dangerous and difficult map for medics, with harsh sight-lines littering the map and immense difficulty in dodging away if caught out of position. It is a map that will test each team’s combo to the breaking point and beyond.

Snipers, mostly due to the aforementioned enraging lines of sight, are fearsome on the wide open vistas we will see this weekend. This fact will not go unnoticed by viewers as The Experiment has arguably the two best snipers in Invite, justin and carnage. This will be a fierce, and close match with each team vying for that slight positional advantage, yearning for that juicy medic pick, crying as their best laid plans fail to lay waste to their brothers in arms.

All things considered, the results of this match are unimportant. Both teams have an assured spot at this September’s LAN. What everyone will really be looking for is that psychological edge. If The Experiment manages to take this game from top seed eMg, it will mean that their chances to win it all shoot up that much higher.

The Experiment has a lot to prove on Sunday night. eXtelevision will be casting this match, Sunday night at 11pm EST. Peter Mansbridge will be manning the camera as duder and eXtine serenade us with their luscious voices.

Hello and welcome to the first-ever edition of Splash Damage. This edition is the first of many weekly articles that I am planning to write and release every Wednesday. In each post, I will outline a particular topic related to competitive Team Fortress 2 and I will offer my perspective on it.

My perspective, as many of you know, is not one of disinterest given my active involvement in the community. My name is Graham Clay and my screen name is jinn_. I founded this site in March 2009. I have been playing competitive TF2 since beta and I was a TF2 league administrator under Pipher, Ahn, and Aschow at CEVO from beta until mid-2009 at which point I assumed the position of Head of Game for CEVO TF2. By the time I retired after CEVO Season 7, I had run a dozen TF2 events and I had helped shape many of the current competitive TF2 standards (6s, the big three maps, timelimits and winlimits, tournament formats, etc). In terms of my personal life, I am from North Carolina and play a lot of soccer.

In the dozen days since we announced our donation drive for The Experiment's LAN fund, we have seen an amazing groundswell of support for the team's efforts to make it to Dallas. So far, as of this posting, we have received $792.19 from a total of 21 community members. That's an average of $37.72 per donor and we are immensely grateful for the generosity of the community. The team has already purchased a few plane tickets with the donations and they are pumped to see their fellow players support their ESEA S9 LAN endeavor.

As promised, I have devised a method for donors and the community to interact with the team. There is now a section of the forums devoted to everything related to the LAN fund. The section has three stickied threads (one with a copypasta of the original announcement, one with information for donors, and one for anyone to pose questions to the team) and non-stickied threads for each donor who donated more than $20. If you are a donor, check out this section of the forums ASAP.

As we receive more donations, we will continue to add to the list of donors on the forums and hopefully we can get all of the donors in touch with the team. We still need more donations, though, and I thank all of those who have donated or are planning on donating.

Doom!  Terror!  Madness and Popsicles!  Popsicles made of doom!

Highlander is upon us over in the UGC Season 4 HL Summer league, and blood is in the water. Week 4's matches were make or break for many teams, but fret not.  Free is here and he has the medicine of coverage.  It soothes.  It calms.  It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the crit rocket.

Let's recap the week before we get down into the all-important Week 5!

The newest season of CEVO's Team Fortress 2 league has opened for registration.

Ordinarily, I'd post some hooplah about CEVO in this post.  But, come on!  This is CEVO we're talking about here!  You shouldn't be reading hooplah! You should get registering your team and getting ready to whip some behind!

As in, right now, soldier!

Power creep is something that's been happening to many classes throughout TF2's lifespan. While the majority of unique weapons simply provide an opportunity for an alternate playstyle, some weapons are nearly always (and in a few cases, literally always) better than their stock counterparts. I see this as a poor design choice, and the unfortunate side effect of having 120+ weapons in the game.

Sure, this number includes a few weapons that are shared amongst classes, and the promotional reskins that aren't technically different, but the point remains valid. TF2 is thick with content.

For these articles, I'm going to break down one individual class slot at a time and show you what's happening to our beloved classes, and why I believe power creep is something that's preventable if we step in soon.

This first article will focus on the Soldier's melee slot. We'll start with one obvious statement:

The Equalizer is better than the Shovel in 99% of all situations. This is damn near fact. If you're getting Ubered and have exhausted your ammunition, you could pull out your shovel. If you have exhausted your ammunition, have an enemy in melee range, and are above 121 health, then you could pull out your shovel. In every other situation, Equalize your way through enemies or out of trouble and into a healthpack. The biggest downside that isn't explicit is something Deathanchor sums up well: "The second you see a soldier whip out his equalizer, you know he's lit." If you saw a random Soldier on the battlefield, wielding his rockets menacingly, you'd be terrified and start looking for a way around him. If you see him floating around with an Equalizer, quick, shoot him!

Is the Equalizer fair, especially in competitive matches? It's another case of an interesting weapon that promotes risky clutch plays, like the Ubersaw. Sam P. calls it "a lot of fun", and that's something to seriously consider. Sure, it's better than the Shovel. Is it worth nerfing, just to promote good old reliable, bursting-into-flames shovel gameplay?

Stream Link

Area 51 vs Check Six Gaming is the match for tonight, cp_gravelpit the map.

It's been an eXciting week of stopwatch this week, with eXtv covering 3 nights of Gpit (after Warmfront on Sunday) so far. This match could prove to be the most important covered however, with Area 51 having a 6-5 record and Check Six gaming trying to battle into the 4th place spot with their 5-6 record.

This is the last time Check Six plays Area 51 this season, making this a crucial victory if they are to make it to LAN. There are just 4 games left after this, with Check Six playing eMg twice while Area 51 faces Classic Mix^ twice.

Tonight, eXtelevision members eXtine and Duder (running production) will be joined by the ever fantastic Schetter from keekerdc.com and the legendary TF2 scout oPlaid for commentary.

Discuss the match below, before and after the match.

Well, here we are, about five weeks past the release of the Uber Update, and not even two weeks past the arrival of Doctor Grordbort's rockets. How far have we been in this five weeks, and where's TF2 at now? We'll jump in with quick run-downs on the Uber Update sets, and throw a bit more experience and knowledge at some of the weapons I was on the fence about.

Ladies and gents, wrangler whores and assorted sword maniacs, welcome back to Screaming Eagles.

My name is Free and I'm low!

Or low-mid!  Sometimes I'm low-low, but the other night, when I took Sky Wizard to match point in MGE (20-19, his win), I eclipsed some kind of mid-mid-low.  Maybe mid-low-mid or low-mid-mid.

Oh, I'll be honest.  I don't know what the hell I am.  Matter of fact, there's some debate about this very thing going on in the CommFT forums right now.  The question is on the table: are these bizarre, arbitrary ratings valid?  Are they accurate?  Are they bizarre and arbitrary at all, or have I just nipped too much of the homemade mash and listened to the ice dragon again?  Do I have a level 50 sword?  I do?  Well, where the hell do I keep it?

But, dear reader, do not fret.  Do not get panties in bunches or buy panties if you do not already possess the garments.  Do not find self in lingerie aisle at midnight being known by security guards.  Because I got this.  I'm going to sort this out.

Ladies and gents, welcome back to Highlander coverage!  And let me tell you: we emerge from The Week of Terror!

Free, you say, what is the Week of Terror?

Knave!  It is a week of torrential upsets, a week of the pillaging of dreams, hopes, and predictions--a week where Doom Vulture has risen from his thousand-year sleep to spread his black wings over the sky of 2 Fort.  He rises in a shower of black feathers, an infernal squawk bellowing from his throat!  He feasts on the savaged remains of Highlander teams led to the slaughter.

What happened in week 3?  Where's it going in week 4?

Read on, brave reader.  Read on!

Yaaaooooooo... or something like that.

shdwpuppet here bringing you some awesome news about a last minute cast put together by eXtv covering the quite neglected ESEA IM. Tonight's matchup on the big stage is none other than the mighty powerhouses of Avoided vs Red Flag. Avoided is looking to prove to us they have what it takes to dominate the American TF2 scene and make their way to Invite. The team straight out of last season's open has been making waves, not losing a single match all season long, but their recent match on badlands with Kinetic was the closest the team has ever come to tasting the bitter taste of defeat. Red Flag will be looking to capitalize on that trend and bring some noise on cp_warmfront. This is Red Flag's first game against the IM titan and this will be their first chance to prove they have what it takes to win the season.

An absolutely entertaining time is virtually guaranteed as the two mighty giants of Intermediate duke it out. Manning the camera tonight is the always lovely duder and sending the airwaves your way on the mic are the mighty eXtine and newcomer to eXtv casting: shdwpuppet. Tune in at 11pm EST/8pm PDT to find out who reigns supreme.

Lots of events and casts planned for this week, check out eXtelevision.com for all of the info and stay tuned right here at CommunityFortress.com to hear about all of the action.

As you may have noticed, I have been updating a few of the aesthetic aspects of the site this weekend. I have implemented our new header (the image with the bird and the Community Fortress ribbon) and our new background (which actually needs tinkering since the tiling is too obvious). I have also altered the log-in button and its placement.

We will likely be altering the look of the forums to match these changes. Credit to midblue for being our graphics guy since launch and for making these new images. He will be in charge of the design of The Experiment's LAN T-shirts as well if all goes according to plan.

What do you guys think about the look of the site?