Welcome to the third installment of Breaking and Entering, at this point we have already build our "team". Assuming that your team has been established now and you've begun to scrim now is the time to start shaping your teams mechanics and really Improving your Team.

With that said the general antics of a team revolve around their strengths for pushes and guarding their weaknesses on defense. Some examples of teams strengths would be coL's ability to support solid snakes thundering targe routine and then extract him using scouts and soldiers. Or their ability to rush in with carnage and enigma and provide support for their meatshots. While some examples of many teams weaknesses are keeping the combo far back because they lack the ability to successfully spam, or setting up defensively at choke and not fighting middle because they lack the dm.

Whatever the case the starting grounds for any team in my opinion would be harnessing your teams strengths and establishing right out the gate what your team lacks and building that up.

TGBF is proud to be hosting a mumble cast for Day one of the Summer Assembly LAN from beautiful Finland. While I wish I could say I was sitting here, watching the players set up and get ready for game one, I am still in my room, staring at my computer screen and waiting for srctv info.

Anyway, I will be joined by my two friends from across the sea, Bellsprout and Moony as we get ready to cast around 6 matches worth of awesomeness. With big names in Europe like Dignitas, Power Gaming, Broder and TCM, this will be a day of casting you wont want to miss. The action starts at 11:15 am EST today and goes all day long, so log on, join in the tgbf mumble (mumble.tgbf.tv:64742) and get ready to party.... Euro Style!

Group A:

Group B:

... BUT WAIT if you sign up NOW we'll also throw in more prizes!  Alright so that's sort of not true.  You don't have to sign up right now or call anything in the next 10 minutes but we are adding more prizes!

TotalGL has partnered up with Novint, creators of the Novint Falcon, to bring the prize pot value up and over $2,200 for Season 5! The winning team will now find themselves on the receiving end of sweet Valve gear as well as a Pistol Grip Novint Falcon Bundle valued at $270+ per unit.  If you haven't seen what the Novint falcon is all about go check it out! The company over at Novint has been huge supporters of TF2 over the past several months supporting a BBall tournament as well as a competition against their very own developers and working with them from my end has been a blast so I'm extremely excited about being able showcase their Falcon during the upcoming months.

We need some more CEVO writers to cover this upcoming season of CEVO. It seems that it is going to be the biggest North American TF2 event of the past few years and we need help covering all the matches. If you are interested in writing about Professional, Main, or Amateur, contact me on the forums, on Steam, or on IRC (my username is Loaded|jinn_) and I idle #tf2scrim.

Predictions, league coverage, news, or gossip...we want it all! Get at me if you want to help out in any way.

Yaaaaoooooo.

Yea Dat's Right.

eXtelevision.com baby. We ready to go. Go where? Places... Places where we can do more work.

Would you buy an eXtv t-shirt that said: "Do Work?" These are the type of places we could go. Or YYYaaaaoooo Keychains I dunno.

Either way setting up our own website for eXtv is a huge step. What does it all mean though? Does it mean eXtine is going away from Community Fortress or TGBF.tv and trying to setup his own shit?

NNNaaaaaoooooo!!!!

(TL:DR here is link to post with new eXtv on my site, or read more to get the full break down and the 6 parts are linked below.)

Coming up this Wednesday, @ 10PM EST/7 Pacific, TGBF.tv will be covering the TWL Div 2 playoff final match between Carnal Gaming and Magnolia ThunderKitties. With Schetter on the camera, eXtine will be casting the match and quite possibly be joined by former Carnal Gaming sponsor Med Red (Back when they were Med Red Inc.)

The maps will be gullywash, freight, and badlands with each map being player for a single 30 minute half. Should be a pretty good time :D

The STV relay will be : 174.34.158.203:27020;

An STV relay address has been released: relay.toaster.fi:27020 Thx!

There is going to be a huge Euro match tomorrow, with the ESL Major Series Season 6 TF2 tournament wrapping up with a battle between TCM gaming and Dignitas. Dignitas is coming from the Lower Bracket, so they will have to win two bo3 series back to back.

The maps kick off at 3:15 EST tomorrow August 3rd and currently there is no STV information available. The Dignitas Website has a brief article up, including news that Haza won't be able to make it and will instead be replaced by the former Dignitas starter appe. The ESL match page is here, which currently does not list the STV information but indicates that the first two maps will be Granary and Badlands. eXtine very well might be casting this match via the TGBF mumble server (mumble.tgbf.tv:64742) so keep your eyes peeled for updates on the STV information and Casting possiblities as we get close to match time.

All right guys, one more post then I swear I'm done for a few days. This time im bringing you the matchups and predictions for (most) of the TWL Season 6 Finals as well as a couple of news items related to TF2 at TWL.

First off, three new TWL admins have been announced for the next season of TF2. Those three individuals are Sway, Sinister and me, shdwpuppet. Please give us your support and do not hesitate to contact us via IRC or email with comments, questions, concerns or suggestions. Also, expect an announcement about Season 7 in the next few days. I am really excited about this next season of TF2 at TWL and I hope that the community works with the admins to make sure that this season is the most successful and well run season yet.

And now for something completely different... PREDICTIONS!!!!

I know I have been posting a lot of these interviews, but improper 'demanded' an interview so I obliged. <3 bro. I hope you enjoy n.n

Heya guys, thanks for talking with me. If you would, take a minute to tell us about yourselves and your team

C||| improper: We started out about a year ago this month on the PC as Scout Thugs & Harmony.  We all started playing PC TF2 right around then.  Some of our roster from then was still intact, including myself, Mancakes, Outblaze, and Dim.  We played in UGC at first, then moved on to TWL, and eventually CEVO and ESEA last season.  We've gone through a few different name changes, going to Mad Decent and then MedRed Inc.  Carnal Gaming started sponsoring us a little over a month ago, so that's where we are now.

Mancakes: TF2 is the first PC game I've played competitively--at all. I spent most of my life playing console games, and I got hooked on TF2 Xbox the month is came out. In 2009, when Improper left the Xbox to go to the PC, I followed. Improper was my clan leader on the 360, so it made sense for him to be my leader on the PC.

Hey everyone, I just sat down with Snowblindfrog and Dr. Salvador and talked about their team and the TWL Div2 playoffs. The Magnolia Thunderkitties are scheduled to fight Carnal Gaming for the Division 2 title on Wednesday August 4th at 10pm EST.

Hey guys, thanks for sitting down with me, why don't you take a minute to tell us about yourself and your team?

=^..^= Snowblindfrog: Howdy. I go by Snowblindfrog and I am co-founder, co-captain and pocket soldier for Magnolia Thunderkitty. I've been in the competitive gaming scene since 1996 in QWTF, spent several years in TFC clans, and have been clanning in TF2 since late 2007. I've been running Magnolia Thunderkitty since Aug 2008.

=^..^= Dr. Salvador: I'm Dr. Salvador, been playing TF2 since beta. I started online gaming with CS 1.6 and TFC. About a year and a half ago I decided to try out competitive play and have been with M7K ever since. I play demo and I'm a team captain along with Snow. Outside of gaming, I just graduated college with a degree in computer engineering.

From the CEVO site:

Since Sunday, August 8th is the final day of team registration for all divisions, teams have one more week to get their teams added to the event.

Amateur:

Amateur teams need to be registered with 6 players rostered and @ready (Steam IDs entered) by August 8th if they want to play in preseason. Preseason will last for two weeks until August 21st and final team move-ups will take place the weekend of the 21st (if Amateur teams had not gotten 6 players @ready by the previous deadline). Amateur will have one match per week.

Main:

Main teams must have 6 players rostered and @ready (Steam IDs entered and players paid) by August 5th if they want to play in preseason. This means that aspiring teams must apply prior to August 5th, get accepted to the division, and get paid. Just like Amateur, preseason will last for two weeks until August 21st and final team move-ups will take place the weekend of the 21st (if any Main teams had not gotten 6 players @ready by the previous deadline). Main will have two matches per week.

Professional:

Professional teams must have 6 players rostered and @ready (Steam IDs entered and players paid) by August 5th if they want to play in preseason. This means that aspiring teams must apply or talk to me about being invited prior to August 5th, get accepted to the division, and get paid. Just like Main, preseason will last for two weeks until August 21st and final team move-ups will take place the weekend of the 21st (if any Pro teams had not gotten 6 players @ready by the previous deadline). Pro will have two matches per week.

CEVO encourages teams to have their 6 @ready as soon as possible so that 1) they get scheduled for preseason matches and 2) CEVO can get an idea of this season's turnout.


Below are some links to other news releases about various aspects of this season:

General Information about Season 6:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10572&forumID=2

CEVO-Professional Information:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10668&forumID=2

CEVO-Main Information:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10598&forumID=2

CEVO-Amateur Grand Prize:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10615&forumID=2

Map Rotation and Weapon Restrictions:
http://www.cevo.com/?page=forum&func=viewthread&id=10640&forumID=2

Rules (will be updated before preseason begins):
http://www.cevo.com/index.php?page=div&id=335&func=rules

Configs, Maps, other downloads (will be updated before preseason begins):
http://www.cevo.com/index.php?page=downloads&func=tf2


We are proud to say that this is the largest CEVO TF2 season to date with 138 teams signed up as of the posting of this news release. We would like 10 more Main teams though so if you haven't applied, get your applications in!

Lookin' good everyone!

Hey guys, I will be doing my first show with TGBF tonight casting a TWL division 4 semifinals match. [enigma] Clan will be taking on starstruck to determine who is going on to the final match vs Next Level Shit. Join me on the TGBF mumble at mumble.tgbf.tv port: 64742 at 10:30pm eastern time tonight for a party. Srctv info will be coming up soon.

rk- just posted an article on ESEA News containing the perspectives of TheFragile and Justin about Blight LLC as a gaming organization and the scandal surrounding their compensation of players. TheFragile had been mentioning this upcoming article in the huge GotFrag thread about Blight but in the end the players decided that the easiest way to handle the discussion would in fact be an audio interview. Here is the D/L link from ESEA of that .mp3 audio.

This is something of old news for the organization, which was rocked pre-LAN by similar accusations made by the  Blight.ca CSS team as reported by ESEAnews here, but since the LAN more and more TF2 players are speaking out about Mr. Larsen, including two former players for the  Blight-fanom TF2 squad, Nick "TheFragile" Leon and Justin "just1n" White.

...

Here now is a recording of that interview between myself, Nick and Justin. Please note that time constraints forced us to put this together quickly, so what you're hearing is literally a recording of the three of us talking in Ventrilo. Sadly, my soundcard doesn't seem to like Mumble lately, which forced us to use Vent and deal with the lesser-quality voice chat - so adjust your volume accordingly.