Ladies and gents, welcome back to the Halloween Edition of Screaming Eagles--LOOK OUT A GHOST!

No, I'm kidding.  It wasn't a ghost. IT WAS A VAMPIRE!

To be fair, I've never been very good at this Halloween thing.  I just can't get excited over costumes and candy.  TF2, however, is another story. I love the Halloween updates.  I love them with all the sick passion a zombie cheerleader vampire pirate cyborg bestows on a hard drive full of Blade Runner fan fiction.  I love them the way ectoplasmic entities love on Sigourney Weaver, only I'm the Gate Keeper.

But alas, the Halloween update isn't here yet!  Maybe it has something to do with all the evil spirits of crashing in the recent updates.  I hope it does. I would like to stop crashing.  I would like to play TF2 without being forcefully ejected from the game every ten minutes.  I would like to shoot the Horseless Headless Horseman in the face and I would like to rove about the map collecting candy-themed pickups until the marauding spirit axes my head from my neck, and damn it, I want it now!

Still not out?

Okay.  Let's talk recent TF2 goodness then: Salamancer's 3v3 Cup!

VanillaTV is streaming a big ETF2L match-up between Dignitas and new power house Crack Clan this afternoon. Here is a snippet from their preview article:

Team Dignitas, who during this 10th season of ETF2L, have played 2 matches and lost both, will take on Crack Clan.  The half Israeli and half Spanish team are arguably a pretty tight cohesive unit, and work well together – they’ve played just one more game than Diggy, but have no losses to their name, winning 1 match and drawing the other 2.

If the combination of  Retshock‘s stickies and  Pescanova‘s crazy rockets can keep the threat of  cookye and  longas off their medic, then I’m sure this will turn out to be an interesting game.

At a glance:

1.    Pinball Wizards
2.    Leviathan Gaming
3.    Laser Beams
4.    Farmers Market
5.    Mayhem

In depth:

Please, if I have made any errors, please feel free to correct me. Let it be known, these are only preseason guesses. In all honesty, its hard to tell how well a team will perform before the season even started. Hopefully I didn’t butcher it too bad! Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Pinball Wizards

Rank #1 - Kicking off my preseason rankings, at the top of my list, are the Pinball Wizards. The team has been around for a while, this being their 3rd season together in ESEA. Having finished a mid-pack 7-9 last season in IM, the Pinball Wizards seemed to have a shaky future ahead of them. You might ask “how can these guys possibly be ranked #1?” It all comes down to two players: Sweater and Vhalin. Each bringing to the team over a season of invite experience and an extremely high level of DM, it’s hard to argue against the forthcoming success of this team. Vhalin, now on roamer, has the Invite-level game sense to make the crafty picks that are so essential to his new role. With the extremely high damage output from IM’s potentially top black man in Sweater, Vhalin and the scouts should be able to clean up effectively against opposing teams. Yet, with the addition of new players comes the obstacle of teamwork. Surprisingly enough, the Pinball Wizards have been able to return 3 of last season’s starters in the highly skilled, at times controversial (cough cough, Tang), scout combo of Tang and Squider and the experienced pocket soldier Cannon. Should Cannon and his medic, KBK, a seasoned demo/soldier/scout turned medic, be able to keep up the aggressive pace of their teammates, I don’t see the Pinball Wizards losing very often this season.  Word is, these guys have been beating some high level IM teams down pretty bad, and it’s no surprise. The teamwork of returning starters Tang, Squider, and Cannon mixed with the experience and DM of newcomers Sweater, Vhalin, and KBK will undoubtedly propel these guys deep into the IM playoffs.

Roster:

Medic - KBK
Demo - Sweater
Soldier - Vhalin
Soldier - Cannon
Scout - Tang
Scout - Squider

Projected Record: 14-2

PYYYOUR, friend of CommFT and member of LASER BEAMS, has posted some preseason ESEA-I Season 10 rankings over at VanillaTF2. He thinks that The Prophets are the number one team going into the season and he said the following about them:

The Prophets have the best demoman in NA, b4nny. They also have the best scout in NA, clockwork. These two alone constantly change the tide of battle in their teams favor. b4nny is a student of the game right now, when you watch him you are seeing a player who is constantly pushing the envelope, in terms of what a demoman can do. clockwork is the current heavy meatshotter of US TF2. But one thing that clockwork has, that other meatshotters havent had in the past, is that clockwork is an intellectual. He may be goofy on the outside, but his cognitive ability is reflected in his play. No better scout in America, hands down.

Cyzer, Tyrone, Mackey, and CB round out the rest of this roster. All very very invite capable players. You guys know CB from My Gaming Edge and Muscle Milk Moolians. Mackey is the goofy roaming soldier. Tyrone is the dependable pocket. And cyzer is the passive scout who found his stride last season. THANK YOU CYZER FINALLY

Look for The Prophets to always finish top 2. But like all dynasties, or quasi dynasties, what goes up, MUST, come down.

Check out the full article on VanillaTF2: http://www.vanillatf2.org/2011/10/usa-tf2-invite-rankings/#more-21120

Yyyaaoooo!!! KBK wrote up some nice predictions for the upcoming start of the ESEA-IM season over at eXtv. Go check them out!

MobilityGaming vs The Jabronies

This will be a close one. Both teams have been around for a season, and both teams changed up their rosters in the off season. The Jabronies made a good pick up with kwazi on demoman; but these last second pickups will hurt their team play in this match. Expect Giffy and Rando to do well on Mobility, and expect Kwazi and Panic to do well on Jabronies. I haven’t watched many scrims of these two teams recently, however, I think Mobility will play smart and narrowly escape with a victory.

5-4 MobilityGaming

Match of the week #1

The map rotation for ESEA Season 10 will be as follows:

Week 1 - cp_badlands
Week 2 - cp_warmfront
Week 3 - koth_viaduct_rc3
Week 4 - cp_gravelpit
Week 5 - cp_snakewater
Week 6 - cp_standin_b5
Week 7 - cp_gullywash
Week 8 - cp_granary

This rotation seems to be a reasonable one with all of the selections being competitive 6v6 mainstays except for cp_standin_b5. For those of you who live under a rock, cp_standin_b5 is a new map that uses a new gamemode and should offer a challenge for veteran teams who have grown comfortable with the typical 5CP, KOTH, and Stopwatch medley (NOTE: if you are unaware of the nature of this map, download it and check out an overview of the map by Scorpio Uprising at MGE). Other than cp_standin_b5, ESEA's S10 map rotation should be within the comfort zone of most players.

Community Fortress has decided to sponsor LASER BEAMS for this upcoming season of ESEA Intermediate. CommFT will be providing the team with a scrim server, courtesy of EOReality, throughout the season. The team recently won the MGE Open Cup after toppling the #1 seed, Leviathan Gaming, in the grand finals. The team's roster is as follows:

Medic - drdonutman
Demoman - ben
Soldiers - dearjohncarter, Lange
Scouts - seanbud, pure
Backups - nvc, Zbryan

Many of you will have noticed that one of LASER BEAMS' Scouts is pure who was the Medic of The Experiment during ESEA-I Season 9. After placing third in the S9 LAN, pure said that he did not want to play Medic for a team for the foreseeable future and he is now enjoying working with seanbud as a Scout on LASER BEAMS. I decided to ask him a few questions and I have pasted his responses below:

1. How was the MGE Open Cup? Do you think it was run well by MGE and what did you like most about the event?

"The MGE cup was run very well. CB took control of the forums and his minions operating in the back were right on the ball. I really enioyed the organization and coverage. SO often organizations will put so much effort forward and then slip up when they are needed most. Do not slip up. If you are going to do something, do it right, or do not do it all. Props to MGE for a solid tournament. Almost run as well as the CommFT tourney :)"

2. Which teams would you place in the top 3 of ESEA-IM this season? Who are the players to watch?

"The top three teams, excluding us, have to be Vhalin's pinball Wizards, Shwan's Vector gaming, and the team we just destroyed, Leviathan Gaming. They are all right on the ball when it comes to skill. And instead of a top 3, I've can think of 10 or so teams that all deserve a deep playoff run. I am excited to see which teams buckle down and grow."

3. What do you think of the map rotation for ESEA and cp_standin_b5? How is LASER BEAMS preparing for the season and its map rotation?

"I know that Killing went to the forums and asked people their thoughts. But...it seems that I am playing warmfront, standin, and pro viaduct? Solid maps sure, but if I had the power to control the map rotation, I would put cp_dustbowl and cp_well. I am all for new maps but I would love to see the new "hotness" play some old school maps."


Thanks to pure for answering these questions. I, for one, hope that cp_dustbowl will never again be seen in 6v6 but perhaps that's just me... Stay tuned to CommFT for more information on LASER BEAMS and coverage of their ESEA-IM matches.

I know, I know. I have neglected my new column for more than two months now. I blame the beginning of classes for my absence and I hope to do better in the coming weeks/months.

My previous column introduced the idea that the communication of the justifications for the specific rules, formats, and practices of competitive 6v6 TF2 to non-competitive players should be one of the primary concerns of any effort to expand the competitive 6v6 playerbase. I proposed that the existing rules, formats, and practices for 6v6 are not infallible (or unchangeable) but nevertheless represent nearly four years of reflection and testing on behalf of the 6v6 community. This reflection and testing provide us, the competitive 6v6 community, with the assurance we need to boldly defend and promote our community and the nuances of our play to potential recruits. I concluded my prior column by saying that I would discuss the relationship between 6v6, other formats of competitive TF2, and community growth in the third edition of Splash Damage. Let us proceed to that task now...

Since this tournament was first announced in late June, we have gone through two stages of play and the 62 registered teams have played around 120 matches. The group play stage featured 16 groups of 4 teams competing to advance to a single elimination stage of 32 teams. These 32 teams fought their way towards the finals match over the past few months as ESEA Season 9 wrapped up.

In some ways, the ESEA S9 Invite LAN offered a preview of the final rounds of this tournament with The Prophets aka eMg, Classic Mixup, The Experiment, and Area51 Gaming (the teams that composed our semifinals) traveling to Dallas in pursuit of the ESEA S9 trophy. The results of the ESEA S9 Invite LAN were not representative of this event, though, as Classic Mixup was able to avenge its LAN finals loss to the Prophets and snatch the top spot from the defending ESEA champions Wednesday night. Classic Mixup chose cp_badlands for their half of the best-of-three and won the map 5-3, giving them an early lead. The next map, cp_granary, was chosen by b4nny and his comrades. Their choice turned out to be a good one and the Prophets won 5-2 to push the grand finals to a tiebreak. I selected cp_warmfront for the tiebreak and the teams proceeded on into the night with eXtv in tow. After a fair amount of back-and-forth play, Classic Mixup pulled away and finished the map with a score of 5-2 in their favor to win the series and the tournament.

The results of the 32-team single elimination stage of the tournament are listed below:

We would like to think everyone who participated in this event and assisted us in its administration. Most of all, though, we would like to thank Zalman for sponsoring the event and providing T-shirts and prizes to teams. I will be sending out all of the Zalman goodies this coming Monday. Be sure to support Zalman in your gaming gear purchases and we hope to see them around for another CommFT event!

The CommFT-Zalman 6v6 Grand Finals are going down tonight around 11:30 PM EST. The team formerly known as eMg will be taking on Classic Mixup in an epic best-of-three series. These two teams met in the ESEA S9 LAN finals with the team formerly known as eMg coming out on top (see the LAN recap post here for more details). Thus tonight's match is both the culmination of many months of action-packed 6v6 play between the 64 teams that joined the CommFT-Zalman tournament AND a re-match between two Invite titans. Tune into eXtv at matchtime to catch all of the action!

The 32-team single-elimination stage bracket for the tournament can be found here: http://images.challonge.com/commftzalman6v6.png

It's that time of the year again, folks! We need some more writers for the tenth season of ESEA. We currently have a few who are planning on covering the league for the next few months but we are interested in getting up to five more on board.

Please add me on Steam if you are interested in writing articles of any sort for this coming season. Comment here if my friends list is full.

Hey there everyone, OtakuScott here.  We’ve got a high caliber season in store for us this time, and what a better time to talk about some of the teams, than right at the beginning of Season 10?  I’ve done some interviews and some snooping around to create a list of my choices for the top five ESEA-Open teams.

1) Area51 Gaming

With most of the old Open teams moving up to IM, there's been some big changes in the Open team list. Placing at the top of my rankings is Area51Gaming.  With the help of Tragic, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to place near the top.  As an ex-invite Medic, now playing Pocket, he could easily lead the team to a spot in the playoffs.  I managed to snag an interview with NeoRussia, the roaming Soldier for 51.

1. Hi, can you start by telling me a bit about yourself, your background in the game, etc.?

Hi I'm NeoRussia from team Area 51 of Open, and I play the roaming soldier role. I've been playing competitively since around the time of the heavy update and TF2 since the goldrush update, mostly soldier both as pocket and roamer and some scout as well. I've played on teams ranging from open to the lower part of IM and will be competing in open during season 10 of ESEA.

2. Ok, now let's talk about your team. When and how did you guys form, and how has your team changed and evolved thus far?

We formed over some time during the last few matches of Season 9 playoffs. Tragic (our team captain) deciding to play a new class and make his own team for open resulted in him searching for the players that he thought he would be most comfortable playing with and that can compete at his desired level. I got picked up during a pug with tragic after leaving an open team and not finding the right one to join. Milkysoft our medic got the starting role after ringing medic and Tragic finding she has some talent in the medic class, even though she doesn't have much experience playing that class in a competitive format. As for the rest of the team I have not been there to personally see how they came start playing with Tragic, although Dave_AC our current backup scout got picked up to play in the MGE cup until we find a proper starter scout.

3. Which player(s) on your team, in your opinion, will contribute most to your success? Or will it mostly be a team effort?

In my opinion our team has a very DM-heavy mindset individually. It can be hard to command such a team as we are very prone to chasing kills when getting overconfident (this unpredictability is hard to get used to) over doing well or playing teams that we deem to have an easy victory against, but our combo Tragic and Milky have the leadership abilities that allow them to choose smart plays to put us into the best positions with them. This also seems to a reverse effect when dealing with notable teams such as those with invite players and IM experience, where we are set to focus on communication over our personal dm skill. A seemingly perfect combination that with time would make a team show their full potential.

4. What do you think your team needs most to work on?

Other then finding a replacement scout and the DM thing, our other problems are rather minor. To name one milky is rather new to medic but having an ex-invite medic for a pocket puts her in the best possible place to be confident enough to show her talent for her class, which she has quite a lot to show.

5. How far do you predict your team to make it/what would you say your chances of winning are?

It's hard to say at the moment because I don't have the experience to gauge how well a new open team will do just by their players. But what I can say is that we are looking to play in the top open bracket and all of us are quite confident we will make playoffs.

6. Do you guys think having ex-invite Medic (now pocket) Tragic gives you an edge over the other teams in open?

Tragic is well suited for his leadership role and it's great that we have him to make calls from an invite perspective. Even I personally have learned much about the game just from how he tells us how we should conduct mid fights. He does have some high expectations, but I'm sure we will meet many of them as season 10 rolls in. As for the competitive edge compared to other teams I believe all the top open teams have gotten to the top with their own advantages, and Tragic is definitely ours.

7. Thanks for your time. Any shoutouts?

I'd like to give a shoutout to MR. SLIN for being an amazing medic, Blaze for hanging out in our mumble channel, MemphisVon for sharing some roaming tips, and our backups jonas, rave, spammy, and IDK Ramown. I would also like to give honarable mentions to; Ndy (Mr.Sticky Spammer), pt_ and goldy (WITNESS 22d), Namlay, kuza (for his amazing dedication to TF2), cbear, khorma, Reimu (my bestest bro), notor (gay), aaronlol (going big in SC2), cash (the legend of 50), Garticuno (<3), Kalkin (grats on ESEA admin!), Deth (the cute medic), Vhalin (for keeping me on his friend's list), Zbryan (Zbryan), and wrech aka big will for being a bro.

Area51 Gaming Lineup
http://esea.net/teams/55724
Medic: MilkySoft
Pocket: Tragic
Roamer: NeoRussia
Scout #1: Emperor
Scout #2: TBA
Demoman: Chriz Tah Fah
Backups (the official ones): Dave_AC, Jonas, Rave, Sp4mmy

more after the break...