CommunityFortress

It’s a lonely Monday night, and things just got better tenfold when you find out that there is a match being shoutcasted, and one of your favorite invite teams is playing. In a giddy fashion, you launch yourself out of your sweat grafted chair and run to the kitchen for a drink, preparing yourself for the majesty of sweet frags and hysterical Source TV comments. My only question being…

…what about TWL division 4 and division 3?

I know, I know. The lower tier teams aren’t particularly in everyone’s interest, and I speak mostly for TWL, but I believe we’re all starting to forget that these lower tier teams are giving something great to our beloved competitive TF2 community; they are giving us a future. Without the level of participation in the lower divisions, most leagues would be sapped dry due to the insufficient volume of registered teams, potentially causing leagues to drop TF2 completely, or at the very least be compressed to a single division with a disturbingly small prize pot.

Currently this season, there are a total of 25 division 4 teams, 27 division 3 teams, 15 division 2 teams, and 8 division 1 teams, with divisions 4 and 3 holding approximately 70 percent of the competition. This is quite a landslide between the higher and lower divisions, no? Now of course, it is fair to say many of the higher tier teams have tossed TWL’s nightmares aside and moved on to more important endeavors, but with the number of teams still left in TWL, there has got to be some potential somewhere! There has got to be some teams with the dedication and attitude to make it to the top! Yeah! Well, I planned to find out who these teams were.

d4a
[eniGma] 6-0
Inverted Tea House 5-1
SourceOP 4-1
Team terrible 4-1
Voodoo Gaming 4-2

d4b
Next Level Shit 6-0
Ghz Gaming 5-2
Starstruck 4-1
Double-ought 4-1
Honk Gaming 4-2

As I analyzed division 4, it soon became blatantly clear to me that [eniGma] and Next Level Shit have got this division nearly wiped. [eniGma] has so far aced their season with an astounding 30 RW and 5 RL, with Next Level Shit holding an impressive 20 RW and only 2 RL. In hindsight, it seems the rest of the top teams in 4a and 4b are showing the same story with an overall even RW/RL across the board.

So what’s the deal? Why don’t these guys get any recognition? It is clear to me that these teams will be moving up a division next season, and so it should be, but let’s focus less on the numbers, and gear the attention towards how they are pulling off all of these wins. They are in the same division, should they not be relatively even? I decided to dig deeper into this statistical anomaly by talking with The Forsaken from [eniGma] myself.

verticaL – How does your team prepare for every game?

The Forsaken – Hmm, well we prepare for matches generally by playing or scrimming that map together throughout the week, normally its just to shake the bugs out, and practice different strategies.

verticaL – What is your biggest hurdle that your team has to overcome in order to perform well in a match?

The Forsaken – Our biggest hurdle we need to overcome to do well in a match is generally addressed in the practice, so long as we practice the week before its very rare that a team really even dents us.

verticaL – What sort of advice would you give to the lower teams if you could?

The Forsaken – I give a lot of advice to lower teams, especially since i run a rather large mentor program, but the most common advice I give them is not to be discouraged with a loss, even invite level teams of similar skill levels lose by margins of 5-0 simply because one team is better at a specific map than another, it's just practice and repetition, it will allow you to see more possible strategies that you will eventually learn to overcome.

Some wise words from The Forsaken. It is very important that teams do not take losses critically, and instead look at them positively. Without experiencing loss, teams will never find out their flaws to improve on them. Having said that, let’s take a look at how division 3 is coming along, shall we?

d3
Synchronicity 6-0
Team.momenTum 5-1
Condemned TF2 4-1
Shocker Syndicate 4-1
A¢£ 4-1

Division 3 has been an interesting one so far. All the teams holding the top five spots are within arms reach of each other. At this point, it’s really anyone’s season. The amount of RW/RL is staggered across the board, and at first glance you can’t really make much prediction about anything. Although, it still leaves the question, what are these teams doing that is perhaps more effective and more efficient in pulling off wins. Once again, I planned to find out. I had a little chat with admiral from momenTum and got to know a couple things about how they’ve attacked the situation.

verticaL – How does your team prepare for every game?

Admiral - Before matches, we will always try to scrim the map at least once more. Since the mid fight is really important, our main problem is the positioning at mid. The team has really good DM skills, but when it comes to positioning I don't think we're as good as we want to be. After scrims/in between rounds, we usually call out what we didn't like done at mid and change it up a bit.  Usually what ends up happening is that we don't get aggressive enough and we get spammed out of mid.

verticaL – What is your biggest hurdle that your team has to overcome in order to perform well in a match?

Admiral – The biggest hurdle I'd have to say is coordinating 5 other people to what you would consider a perfect plan. It's difficult since they can't really read your mind, and you're in the midst of battle so you don't really want to lose your focus and get picked early.

verticaL – What sort of advice would you give to the lower teams if you could?

Admiral – Don't get too cocky and overextend, make sure you communicate well with your partner (Soldiers+Medics, Scouts+Demos), make sure when your team pushes that you know your role, and when fighting at mid don't get overly aggressive and always try to change things up once in a while.

Whether it is plain repetition or the refining of strategies, these teams seem to have progressed through the rankings to claim their spot as some of the top contenders in their division for TWL S6. There are a lot of things that people can learn if they are just opening the doors to the competitive world and if you are looking to find a team, it is good to know how you can approach a match situation with some sort of game plan to help lock your team in for a win.