With a 9-1 record in ESEA-Invite and only seven matches remaining, CommFT-sponsored The Experiment seems to be on a sure path to the ESEA LAN. Attended by the top four teams in Invite, the ESEA LAN acts as the playoffs for the Invite division of ESEA. While the teams of other divisions compete in their playoffs online, the Invite players travel to Dallas, Texas to duke it out face-to-face with lights and cameras illuminating their every error and triumph. With their regular season record, their veteran roster, and their determination to win, The Experiment is ready to take home the top prize at the LAN in front of thousands of spectators. Except there's a catch.

It costs more than a thousand dollars to get a full TF2 team to Dallas.

Although CommFT was able to pay for the team's regular season league fees, we cannot even pretend to have the cash on hand to fund their likely and imminent trip to the ESEA LAN. Recently we have seen an uptick in advertiser revenue but it will be many more months before we have the cash available to fully sponsor a team's trip to the ESEA LAN.

So where does that leave us? Well, given the generosity of the community in donating for the CommFT HL tournament purse, we think that it is possible for the community to fully fund The Experiment's trip to Dallas. With a little bit of cash from dozens of community members, the large sum necessary to send the team to LAN can be realized with ease. For those who want to help out, we have altered our donation button on the top right of the homepage so that all of the donations that are submitted through the button go directly, via PayPal, to The Experiment's LAN fund. We are looking to community members, regulars of CommFT, and fans of The Experiment to lend a hand in getting them to LAN.

Since we know that many folks have little spare cash, we want to give back to those who donate above a certain amount. In fact, we have decided that those who contribute $20 or more to the effort to send The Experiment to the ESEA-I LAN will be able to join members of the team in group lessons. Depending on what class the donor plays, he/she will be able to meet and interact on a personal level with the appropriate member of the team to learn more about how to play their class in the competitive setting.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Experiment and the classes played by the members, the roster is stacked with many of the longtime stars of competitive North American TF2. All of the members of the team have extensive professional competitive 6v6 experience. dummy has played Demoman for Evil Geniuses, compLexity, Team Dynamic, and Blight. PYYYOUR has played Medic for iDemise, Eximius, Team Dynamic, and compLexity. carnage has played Scout for Eximius, compLexity, and Loaded. justin has played Scout for Blight and compLexity. TLR has played Soldier for Check-Six (who were the ESEA-I LAN champions last season), Blight, compLexity, and Pandemic. Finally, ww- has played Soldier for Dynamic, Blight, AI, and Frag Dominant.

To be clear, all of the money donated via the button on our homepage will go directly to the team. CommFT will not take any of the donations for any other purpose. Those who donate $20 or more and want to attend group lessons with the team must check the forums for a thread bearing their name in order to connect with the team. Thanks for reading and thanks to all who lend a hand to get The Experiment to the most competitive LAN in North American TF2.

As the first-ever CommFT Highlander tournament concludes, I would like to offer my thanks to all of those who were involved. In particular, I would like to thank those who donated money towards the prize purse which, from donations alone, reached $191. The donors were Free ($100), Mr. Cohen ($50), Mr. Schetter ($20), Mr. McDiarmid ($10), Mr. Kenley ($5), Mr. Boles ($5), and Mr. Yi ($1). Every dollar counts so all of these donations were greatly appreciated and, as a result of these folks' generosity, Kawaii Explosion and SNSD each walked away with $95.50 of hard-earned cash on top of their Valve swag.

I would also like to thank Free, Ashkan, RaCio, Hildreth, Leftism, Hawkeye, eXtine, and anyone who I have forgotten for helping run the event and keeping the matches publicized. Big thanks too to all of those who provided thoughtful feedback throughout the tournament (pala, emb, Lutraphobia, mustardoverlord, dENIAL, riverdude, dasho, MRSLIN, linkzero, Peter, almightybob, Daystar, theduderman, strychnine, shdw, and so on). Three and a half months of insane Highlander has been a blast!

Congrats to the champions and everyone be sure to stay tuned for the next big CommFT Highlander event.

After an epic 3 hour and 15 minute match, SNSD has emerged victorious over Angry German Kids in the European division of CommFT's first-ever Highlander tournament. After losing on pl_badwater, SNSD defeated AGK on both cp_gravelpit and the tiebreak cp_coldfront. SNSD's roster was as follows:

Starters:
Linus
Alx
TheSucker
hurr
Hat
Hurri
Pumaman
TviQ
Setlet

Substitutes:
Shintaz
MikeW
BiG|[½]³
Billykins

Be sure to give these guys a big round of applause if you see them around the site or the community. They will be receiving Valve swag and cash from donations for their victory.

The final standings for the tourney were as follows (the bracket can be seen HERE):

Press Read More to see my notes from the pl_badwater section of the match (I missed the majority of other two due to errands)...

As shdw posted below, the CommFT EU Highlander Grand Finals are going down today at 3 PM EST. Provided by VanillaTV, the coverage will kick off around 2:30 PM EST so be sure to tune in at that time so you do not miss any action. Our friends over at VanillaTF2 have posted a good pre-match article about the two teams competing in the Finals (SNSD and Angry German Kids) and here's an excerpt:

SNSD’s route to the final boasts an impressive record only conceding three rounds in all their games, beating Fap!, Quad Damage before beating tonight’s finalists sending them into the lower bracket followed by wins against 8 Mates and a Ginger and Public Power to earn their place in the final.

Angry German Kids, composed of some familiar names to those that follow 6v6 TF2 such as kurt, klar, BasH, Stefan and Thy – all in the German national team – possess an equally impressive record barring their defeat to SNSD in the fourth round, of course. Having received a bye in the first round, AGK’s campaign started with wins against Hi my name is ![<3]! and Fritzl’s Dungeon before being knocked out of the upper bracket by SNSD. AGK responded very strongly in the lower bracket, however, with no team scoring a single round against them in wins over Quad Damage, Combat Folk, 8 Mates and a Ginger and Public Power to reach the final.

You can follow all the action tonight on VanillaTV with Hildreth and guest-caster Agro from Kritzkast covering the action, the maps tonight will be Gravelpit, Badwater and a Coldfront decider. Remember to join #VanillaTV on Quakenet to get server information and other developments as soon as we get them.

To see the rest of the article and Leftism's interview with SNSD's captain Linus, click HERE.

eXtv will be going live with a big ESEA-Invite match tonight at 11 PM EST. CommFT-sponsored The Experiment will be taking on Check-Six on cp_warmfront. ex is current 7-1 on a seven-win streak while x6 is currently 4-4 and recovering from a 1-5 loss to Area 51 Gaming.

Tonight's match will be the first match for The Experiment with carnage on Scout. He was brought in by the team to replace Reptile and he is already working on his teamwork with his Scout partner justin. Team captain dummy remains on Demoman, ww- and TLR remain on Soldier, and PYYYOUR remains on Medic. As many readers will recall, carnage had left TF2 after playing his last season with compLexity. Previously, he had played for a wide variety of top-level North American teams, ranging from Eximius to Loaded.

I spoke with carnage earlier today and he told me that he returned to competitive TF2 because he was excited about the potential of the roster at The Experiment, he wants to play with new teammates, and he is hoping to visit Texas (via the ESEA LAN) again. He had lived in Texas until recently when he moved to California and he hopes that the LAN will give him a good opportunity to visit friends there. When asked about what he expects out of this season, carnage said that he really doesn't know how the new lineup will work out but that he is sure of one thing...that "there are some healthy meatshots in the future 8)".

Be sure to tune in to eXtv tonight at 11 PM EST to see carnage's return to competitive TF2 after his most recent hiatus. As a former professional Quake player and as arguably the most famous Scout in TF2, carnage will be sure to dazzle spectators in his debut on The Experiment.

Guess who's back?

Carnage has returned to TF2 to ramp up the meatshot madness to sick, sick levels.  Replacing Reptile as a starter, Carnage will be back in the saddle as one of the most dangerous and versatile players in Invite.

We've reached out to the man himself for the inside scoop.  Stay tuned for the update!

Ladies and gents, eXtelevision is about to cover the [51] vs Wha match.  Right now.

Yes, NOW!

Correction: eXtv has moved on to cover an Open double header.  Gaamoo from PubComp is covering the 51 v Wha match here: www.justin.tv/gaamoo

For eXtv Open double-header, check: twitch.tv/extvesports

Source TV, how I hateth thee. Thy demos breaketh, ye be laggieth, and thy delay thwarts my attempts to fixeth games. I’ve been a-playing too much Medieval mode.

Well STV demos seem to be back up so I’m going to present my report on Unibroue’s matches up to now. Matches four and six were forfeit wins for Unibroue, and seven and eight were during the week where all demos were corrupted. Thanks Valve!

Yaoooooooo! - shdwpuppet here with my first ever eXtv HYPE MACHINE!!!!

That's right ladies, from now on, I will be making sure that every move that my lovely friends over at eXtv is covered right here, on the bright neon billboards of CommunityFortress.com.

Today's announcement of epic proportions is none other than the European Grand Finals of the Community Fortress Highlander Cup. VanillaTV will be covering all the action on Thursday as the two finalists, SNSD and Angry German Kids, duke it out on cp_gravelpit. All the action starts at 20:30 CEST so get out your time zone converters and get ready for an awesome time. (Match Info)

But that's not all folks. You will definitely want to stay tuned, because eXtv will be casting this week's headline match right after all the sick 9v9 action. K1ck eSports and SG-1 will meet in glorious battle in the ESL Grand Finals. Being a best of three final, a splendid time is guaranteed for all on cp_badlands, cp_granary and cp_gullywash. Camera work will be provided by the ever sexy and slightly crazy Lucky Luke with eXtine manning the mic alongside guest star Torden. This promises to be the week's best match and eXtv is excited to bring you all of the action. All this goes down at 21:15 CEST. (Match Info)

Best of luck to all involved.

Since we are wrapping up the first ever CommFT Highlander tournament, we now have a few EOReality servers free for public use. We are going to dedicate one to MGEmod, one to a competitive-oriented pub, and one to community members to scrim with in case of emergencies. Players must contact me via Steam to access the scrim server (which is in Dallas) and the IPs for the other two are below...

CommFT DM Server (Chicago):
connect 206.217.140.146:27015

CommFT Competitive Pub (Chicago):
connect 206.217.140.147:27015

We are going to try to keep these bad boys as full as possible so be sure to add them to your favorites.

Tt eSPORTS announces their first official sponsorship in Brazil with the Ovo Frito team - this is big news for the South American TF2 scene!

São Paulo – After being part of the competitive Team Fortress 2 community for two years, Thermaltake through Tt eSports has decided to sponsor their first e-Sports team in Brazil. The team, Ovo Frito, has two different divisions with the main team composed of top players and the secondary team focused on training and preparing new players.

Camila Chimello, Product Marketing for Thermaltake, said: "We are very interested in bringing to Brazil the electronic sports scene we see in other countries, such as the division Tt eSports in Taiwan where the matches are displayed on TV channels." She added: "It is important give support to teams [in Brazil], and also to support initiatives that aim to make e-sports more legitimate in the country. The Ovo Frito team sponsorship is just one of several actions we will take in this regard in the coming months.”

Matheus "Ck." Santos, a player on the Ovo Frito team, also believes that the initiative will bring future opportunities to other teams: "I'm sure that with a big name like Tt eSports, other companies will start looking for competitive clans as they did some years ago. No doubt this will end up bringing in other companies, tournaments and events, and it is something very positive to e-sports scene in Brazil, even for players that do not play TF."

There will be a total of 12 players getting equipment from the Tt eSports gamer line so that they can train better and assist Thermaltake in the development of new products. Thermaltake believes that this sponsorship will attract more attention to electronic sports scene and, as a result, more teams will look for sponsorships in order to to evolve as professionals.



The official announcement was formalized during Anime Friends 2011, where competitions were held between members of the Ovo Frito team and visitors. The top visitors team received awards and all those who participated were given gifts (T-shirts, caps, pens, and so on).

More information about the Ovo Frito team at:
www.ovofrito.com
Original Text: http://br.thermaltake.com/press201113072.aspx

The latest edition is live!

Submit your clips via the form on our website.

Must be from a League/Tournament match to be eligible for the Top10, other clips will potentially be used in Moments of Glory, or compilation frag videos.

Ladies and gents, welcome to the Summer 2011 UGC Highlander League Season 4 coverage for weeks 1 and 2.  We're getting a bit of a late start due to sorting out all kinds of new awesomeness here on CommFT, but the time of great fear is over.  Take thy towel from thy head, extract thyself from under the bed.  Get the dust bunnies off your head!  Four  sentences in and we're rhyming.

My God, get the rubbing alcohol.  Get the rivet gun and the piles of oily rags.  Prepare for blunt trauma.

Prepare for Highlander after the break!