Ladies and gents, bunny-hoppers and crit-counters, welcome back to Screaming Eagles.

I love competitive TF2.  I love it like goats love everything and anything they can chew on.  But, seeing as how I am the Great Goat Lord of TF2, I sample everything from Pyro Dodgeball, to MGE, Prophunt to Saxton Hale.  I even like to pub.

Yes, good old fashioned pubbing.  Is it passe?  Are the cool kids who smoke Luckies on the corner decidedly not doing it this year?  Are the hipsters in their tight pants and assorted hobo attire carving up bathroom walls with secret oaths to Kill The Pub?  Hell with them!  The Great Goat Lord likes to pub!  I like to pub because pubbing, believe it or not, is good for you.

Do you disbelieve?  Do you say in your heart that I speak great untruth?  Have I come down from the mount to vomit on your tennis shoes?

Well, settle in and get edu-ma-cated, Goat Lord style.

The CEVO-Amateur Season 7 finals match between Team unRestricted TF2 and The Expendables is going down tonight at 10 PM CST. These two teams met in the upper bracket finals with Team unRestricted TF2 coming out on top with a score of 5-2 on cp_coldfront (click HERE for the brackets). The match tonight is best-of-three.  Each team chooses one map from the season to be their half of the bo3 and the tiebreaker, which will be played if each team has a map win after two maps, is koth_viaduct.

eXtv will be casting it at the following URL: http://www.justin.tv/extvesports

Well we have gotten this far so I may as well see it out and cover the rest of the play-offs. We are down to the last 4 teams in each skill division so we’re definitely at the business then. For the winners of this match, there will be a spot in the final and for the loser a 3^rd place play-off match. With so few matches remaining time to give the other divisions a shoutout for their consistency and dedication to the league. Thank you to all the teams that have played all season, hope to see you next season and keep Highlander active.

Quick recap of last week’s games then.

Ladies and Gents, welcome to the CommFT Highlander Strategy Series, a column that will dissects what went right (and sometimes wrong) with teams in the CommFT Highlander Tournament.  Nine people is a lot to coordinate with all the blood and explosions and skinny babies swinging fish everywhere.

First up is the gracious and timely Linus from Team SNSD, a EU Highlander team that's been kicking ass and taking names in the tourney.

So, without further ado:

Team Name?

We're SNSD, a European highlander team. We have won the ETF2L community challenge, and have won all of our matches in the CommFt tournament so far.

Highlander returns to TF2TV tonight at 21.30 CEST - 20:30 BST as we see a contest between 2 great European TF2 communities that have done so much for the game.

In the RED corner, weighing in at 4 public TF2 servers and 1 long-running TF2 focused podcast – we have the Team Kritzkast Highlander team. In the BLU corner, weighing in at 6 TF2 servers and support for 4 TF2 teams, we have the NervousEnergy Highlander team.

The arena will be competitive favourite cp_Granary, setting the stage for a night of possibly 18 players running around like men possessed trying to secure the elusive place in week 6. Both these sides have already been knocked down to the lower bracket; Nervous energy going down to the unmatched authority of the ETF2L Madmins whilst TeamKritzkast lost out to the mighty Russians that are Turbopoop e-sports – as casted on TF2TV.

Join Comedian and Hildreth as we find out which community powerhouses can come out bloody and victorious!

Mumble - tf2.team-thermaltake.com port 64770

Livestream www.tf2tv.com

SourceTV - tf2.team-thermaltake.com:27100

The eXtelevision crew will be producing some more live coverage tonight, this time checking out the match between Lonely Hearts and Oedipus and the Motherfuckers for the CommFT Highlander Tournament.

The match kicks off @ 9:30 Eastern and can be viewed on our Justin.tv Stream.

Peter Mansbridge will be handling production and will be joined by some casters from the Inglorious Broadcasters' roster.

As many of you know, recent updates broke our beloved PLDX recording tool in various ways. With an official fix not being released, much video work has come to a standstill (at least for me :P).

Enter Montz, and his Lawena Recording Tool. His tool aims to fill the void left by the PLDX GUI. He describes it as follows:

There is a huge UGC Highlander Playoff match tonight, with Lonely Hearts taking on Performance Enhanced on PL_Upwards. The action kicks off at 10:30 PM Eastern, 7:30 PM Pacific, and will be covered live by eXtelevision on our Justin.tv channel. Peter Mansbridge will be handling the production while Parable and Dyonysus will be commentating.

This is the quarter-finals of the playoffs, with the winner in this single-elimination bracket taking on the winner of yesterday's match-up between Inglorious Broadcasters and Unbelievable Brave Sweethearts, which was also covered by eXtelevision.

Tune in tonight for some more eXhilirating PL_Upwards action!

Ladies and gents, robot-fisters (eew) and Uber-poppers (eew), welcome back to Screaming Eagles.  With the CommFT Highlander Tournament in full swing and the upper brackets closing out, there's not much else to talk about except Highlander!  You can check out the what's what right here, but I want to switch gears and talk about something else: jump maps.

Jump maps? you say.  Has Free has been spooning cocaine into his Special K again?

Very likely.  You see, I've recently turned to jump maps to work on my weakest skill: rocket jumps.  I thought it would improve my jumps, help with coordination.  I expected to put in some time, build some skills, and move on.

I didn't expect it to completely change the way I play Soldier.

Ladies and Gents, blood!  Rockets!  Stickies!  Uber Engies!

You may have noticed a certain Highlander tournmant going down in these here parts, and you may have noticed that the competition is getting intense.  As we head into Week 5 of the tournament, teams are preparing themselves for an all-time classic TF2 deathbox of choice: cp_granary.

New to the tournament?  Want to catch up on what's been going down?

Read on, brave warrior.

So as you may have heard, there is a big LAN going on Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore, MD. Digital Overload is the LAN, and there will be TF2 there! I will be running the TF2 events just like I did at the GXL recently. Here is the info I have as of right now:

What: Digital Overload LAN - TF2 Tournament!
Where: Baltimore, MD
When: May 27th - 29th
Prize: Cash ($25 buy in per player), and maybe additional prizes on top of that.

HOW TO GET YOUR TICKET: visit www.digital-overload.com and click on "Ticket Sales". Register an account and log in. Under tickets you will see a few different options. get the DIGITAL OVERLOAD 2011 TICKET ($55) - you don't need the other ones.

It may seem confusing because it has dates next to it from Feb 9th - May 27th, this is just how long the ticket have been, and will be on sale for. Its "valid" as an online sale until the start of the LAN. ORDER NOW!

EVENTS: We will be running a standard double elimination TF2 tournament. ESEA/CEVO rules and teams will throw maps prior to each match. Depending on how many teams we get we may do it ESEA LAN style and do best 2-3 maps for each match. This will be decided the day of based on how many teams sign up. The cash payout is also going to depend on how many teams we get. We may do 70%, 20%, 10%, or winner take all. Again this will depend on how many teams we have the day of the tournament.

We may also run another TF2 Draft like we did at GXL, everyone seemed to have fun with that.


USEFUL LINKS:

http://www.digital-overload.com

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/digitaloverloadtf2

Community Fortress is pleased to announce its partnership with End of Reality Game Servers. End of Reality will be the official game server provider for CommFT for the foreseeable future. With the support of End Of Reality, all of CommFT's Highlander Tournament teams are able to play their matches on top of the line servers across North America.

End of Reality was founded in May of 2009 by entrepreneur and gamer Robby Hicks. Robby had one objective in mind: provide the highest quality game servers and support in the business. With the best server technology in the world and and exclusive load balancer keeping boxes running smoothly, End of Reality will always give you the best performance and ultimate gaming experience.

"We are very excited to have Community Fortress on board with us! I believe that through our newly established partnership, we can help grow the competitive gaming community and provide them with the best servers in the industry." - Robby Hicks, End of Reality CEO

End of Reality has offered an exclusive coupon code for CommFT so head on over to http://www.eoreality.net/ and simply use CommFT at the checkout and receive 15% Off for LIFE.