TF2: End of Season, Start of Season

Well ETF2L Highlander S4 is now well and truly over. In the end Keep Calm and Listen to Lefty came second in their division 5C. A good result and one which meant we could stay safely in Division 5 away from teams that did stuff like practice lots. The last match was against nervousENERGY, a community HL team with a profile and history similar to ours. They said they weren’t Div 5. We weren’t sure if that meant they were brilliant or that they were rubbish; we thought we might be more rubbish.

The maps were cp_gullywash and koth_Lakeside_Final. We’d played Lakeside before and won, so we were quite confident. We hadn’t practiced on Gullywash. We were heartened when, 5 minutes before the start of the game, nE hadn’t made up their minds about their line-up. We’d decided 30 minutes before. This meant that nE were more rubbish than us at line-ups. Go us!

nE told us they hadn’t practiced. Nor of course had we. Joint rubbish.

Once on the server, we did a bit of Trash talking, psyching each other out, nE vs KCaLtL.  It was quickly established that no-one had slept with anyone’s mother. In fact, we were informed, the mother of one of the nE team was a very nice lady who had bought them ice cream at one point. She regularly shopped at car boot sales and here it was agreed by both teams, that some remarkable bargains could be had at these events if one went early enough. I think this  may have been:  at trash talking- rubbish.

After this, play commenced and we won 5 -0 on Gullywash and 3-0 on Lakeside. The games were fun. Despite the results, nE made us work and I think they had a good game as well. So they weren’t rubbish and nor were we.

So goodbye S4 Highlander and hello to S14 6v6 and For No Raisin! After their slightly wobbly performance in S13, they are now in Div 5, probably better at the moment particularly as they have a slightly tweaked line-up including a new scout Dohjan (a reg from the WDG server) who hasn’t had that much experience in 6v6. A season in Div 5 should give them the opportunity to get themselves sorted, refocused , and see what happens. They’ve already been practicing more this past couple of weeks than I’m sure they did most of last season.

It’s credit to them that they’ve stayed together. One of the main features that has stood out for me observing the competitive scene, is how unstable teams are. They form for one season (if that) and then fall apart. Referring to my previous post, I can’t help but wonder if this is one of the consequences of having teams that form just to compete and haven’t grown from a community. It could be that Community based teams are more inclined to stick together and keep on going, with changes in name, line-up etc, but keeping the community in common.

Stop press: FNR! drew in their first game against Player Haters of the Year:  Badlands 1-6; Gullywash 2-1 (winning Gullywash). At least 10 avid viewers on the Twitch stream (a record) were treated to two intense matches yesterday evening. PH seemed to be the stronger team on Badlands with a very effective scout pairing but it evened out on Gullywash which is a less scout friendly map, Power playing the Heavy card.

Handbags in the Round Robin

Well the Round Robin is over and Handbags were flourished with style, if with not total success. In the end, five maps were featured in the tournament; cp_steel, koth_ashville, pl_retawdab, cp_croissant and cp_foundry.

The first three were played in the first round, I’ll give a spoiler here and say we didn’t get to play the last two.  We lost cp_Steel which was no great surprise. We hadn’t practiced it much and it’s a map which can be played using many different tactics, as well as being intrinsically confusing with various doors and routes opening up depending on points capped. We talked through a couple of strategies, but our opponents obviously had too, and had already set up counters, so it was hard to work round them on the fly.

We more-or-less rolled the other team on Ashville. We’d practiced this more and koth maps are pretty straightforward anyway. To be honest, the other team wasn’t very good. We’d rather have played against a stronger team since it was our best map and we would’ve liked to have tested ourselves more (though of course it was nice to win). Mid-game they actually asked us if we’d ever played against a worst team. This of course made us feel a bit bad, so we said we’d played against lots (not sure how true this was) and that they were doing fine; which they were as they did manage some time on the point. I’ve been on pubs where one team hasn’t managed any.

Pl_retawdab (mirrored pl_badwater) was a bizarre experience. We’d practiced it once before and found it totally disorientating. Playing it actually gave me a sensation very similar to motion sickness. You’d find yourself running the wrong way, placing your sentry gun in the wrong direction and just generally feeling totally back to front and upside down. In our practice session we’d played against Equipe and won, but things went less well in the official. This time they’d got a very good sniper with them who more-or-less managed to hold us off last on his own. We’d struggled a little to take the first point, but then had managed to steam through the next ones, so it was annoying.

So that was that, one game won, two lost. An improvement on the last Round Robin. Again, it was fun. We enjoyed the tournament and I certainly enjoyed the scrims we managed to set up together. More would have been good, but most of the Handbags were in other HL teams in both ETF2L and UGC,  and so various officials with those teams, took them away. However, it looks like we’ve managed to set up a nice network of HL contacts amongst us all which is useful and we’ll be staying in touch. Here’s to the next Round Robin.

Handbags to the Breach once more!

Well it’s time for another Reddit Round Robin Highlander Tournament and once more Handbags will be flourished. We’ve a couple of changes in the line-up, but otherwise everything is much the same.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/eutf2x/members

The maps we’re going to play are cp_steel, cp_foundry and koth_ashville. The last two are fine, though ashville isn’t a map I’ve played much. Cp_steel, as ever, is a bit of a concern. We played it in our last Highlander Season with WDG and though we won the match, I was never quite sure where I should be going. Handbags have scrimmed Steel, and once again, I found myself getting lost spontaneously taking advantage of flanking routes on a number of occasions.

We also scrimmed on ashville and though we lost overall, it was pretty close. We did better than we did at a similar time last season.

Away from Handbags, Swarthy Sean Connery has still only won one match and still my involvement remains light to non-existent. Keep Calm and Listen to Lefty is battling away to schedule matches. So far we’ve had one default win, our opponents had obviously fallen apart beforehand looking at their roster though probably not because of the thought of playing us, and our Gravelpit Victory. Unfortunately, it looks like our opponents for that game didn’t turn up for their following two games, so most likely they’ll drop too. That’ll mean bye bye to those hard won points for us. We’ve been trying to make contact with a third team but have heard nothing. Since they have played no matches so far, I’m not optimistic.

Our best hopes for more actual games probably lie with Facepunch UK (Div favourites) and nervousENERGY Highlander! ne had to reschedule the game we had arranged for last Sunday due to another game they had, but at least both teams are European so won’t have ping and time differences against them.

Moar Highlander team!

Can you be a member of too many Highlander teams? Berath’s Brain Burps thinks no you cannot and to prove the point is now a member of a fourth Highlander team (or fifth if you count the mercing for Cats Don’t Eat Haggis). This team is perhaps the largest Highlander team  in the world and goes under the rather puzzling name of Swarthy Spanish Sean Connery As far as I understand it, I’m back-up back-up engineer so I’m not expecting the demands made upon me to be great.

The first match has already been played (on Lakeside) and won. I was out at the time. The next map is cp_croissant.

All this is happening in the UGC League. The UGC (United Gaming Clans) League is another TF2 League like ETF2L. It has a Highlander League and a 6v6 League and separate divisions for NA teams, EU teams, South American teams, Asian teams and Aus/NZ teams. Swarthy Spanish Sean Connery (team tag mish) is sitting in the lowest EU division, Euro Steel, which makes sense as many of the members are first-time Highlander players.

In other TF2 news, FNR! has started the new ETF2L Season 14 with a loss. FNR! has been seeded in Division 4B; that’s getting to the position where the majority of your opponents know exactly what they’re doing and have practiced. And I’m afraid it’s the not practicing that let FNR! down. For various reasons, the team had had little opportunity to play any scrims or pcws the previous week or so and it showed. The team didn’t seem to gel, particularly on Gullywash, a map that previously hadn’t been a problem (the first map was Badlands), and their opponents consistently got the better of them, mainly the scouts. Practice has taken place for the next game, so hopefully the team will be back on track. Individually skillwise, they’re already there. So anyway, it’s all eyes on tomorrow’s match.

Handbags are bashed but fun was had

Goodness me, I can’t believe how long ago the last post was written. So much has happened!

Well actually that’s not true. Not much has happened at all. Handbags at Dawn entered the Round Robin and didn’t get past the first round. In fact we didn’t win a match though I think we won a couple of rounds in the KOTH viaduct_pro match. It was as expected really. We had some good players in Handbags but as I said after the Show-match, we weren’t winnning conclusively and reliably enough against the teams we were facing. I’m not sure what we needed, certainly more practice together and it didn’t help that in the European Round Robin they changed the maps from Viaduct and Barnblitz which we’d practiced for the showmatch to Viaduct_pro and Barnblitz_pro which we hadn’t practiced at all.

However it was fun and such a strange experience playing in an all-female team with only female voices on Mumble. This was commented on by at least a couple of women, it felt so odd when you’re used to every other voice being male and you being often so much in the minority.

After it all, we didn’t disband the team. People enjoyed playing together and we’ve said that we’ll look to H@D entering similar tournaments in the future. We’ve certainly increased the number of women we each have on our Steam friends lists and I’ve a few more Highlander players that I can call upon should KCaLtL need any mercs if we enter the next ETF2L Highlander season.

TF2: Handbags slightly bruised; EU best at KOTH?

The Transatlantic Highlander Showdown is over and Handbags at Dawn didn’t do too badly though unfortunately final bragging rights went to the North Americans. We lost on pl_Barnblitz, won on Viaduct (a King of the Hill map) and lost on pl_Badwater.

To be honest I wasn’t that surprised. The payload maps were played on their servers which meant that ping was a bit of an isssue, but over and above this, we hadn’t really been winning our payload games conclusively enough during our practice scrims to be able to be totally confident of victory.

We came close to winning the final map on Badwater though. We managed to hold first until there were just a few seconds left of the game but then they got it with the help of a well-timed uber on the cart. After that, the timer went up after each cap until by the last point we would have had to have held them for about 10 minutes to win.

But whatever, the games were fun (the main reason for it all) and a good time was had by all, and hopefully by the viewers on the stream as well.

It was strange playing in an all-female team and against an all-female team as well. Someone remarked how odd it felt referring to everyone as ‘she’ when ‘he’ is the usual default. So often in teams, the only female player plays Medic whilst the men go out and get the frags (female = healing/support role), there was a joke going round before the match wondering how teams of 9 medics would work. Here fragging, and everything else, was up to us and there could be no snide remarks about girls being carried!

We also had various comments beforehand from the community. On the ETF2L forum, posters stated a desire to tune in simply to hear our comms. This puzzled me. It was later clarified; apparently more than one female in comms = bitching and arguments so the thought of 9 of them blew males’ minds. Alright. There were also the predictable sexual comments in various forums and arguments over the very existence of girls’ teams…basically they were separatist and excluding. An argument I’ve yet to hear over the existence of the national TF2 teams. It’s true that I’d object to an all male team that refused females unless there was a specific reason (gay, male bodybuilders, castratos); why have such a team anyway when 99% of teams are 100% male. If the majority of players were female and a  group of males wanted to play TF2 together for fun though, I’d like to think that I’d respect that as some in-game ‘man time’.

In the terms of a serious competitive all-female team, I’m torn. It’d be nice showing females can compete equally with males and be taken seriously but the final goal really is to have many good female Demos/scouts/soldiers etc playing on mixed teams. That in itself would be proof.

(I can see it…last Saturday, an 11 year old girl watching with her Dad, excited by seeing other girls playing games, thinks ’what a bunch of no-name scrubs, I can do better’ and 5 years later is playing in Prem, because of course TF2 will go on forever)

Anyhow, it’s now preparation for the Round Robin on Sunday. We’re with the EU teams and Lady Fortress 2 with the NA teams. In between planning for our revenge match when we’ll send them packing, I wish them luck.

TF2 Highlander: Handbags are Readied

Team Logo designed by Kovah (H@D soldier)

Yes, we have a team logo, and we have a live cast for the first ever All-girl, transatlantic TF2 HL showdown!

Kip finally got her priorities straightened and realised that TF2 was far more important than any paper she needed to write and is going to cast the game live. I’d imagine, if asked, she’d just give some guff about wanting to support female comp gamers and publicising the Reddit Round Robin the following weekend blah blah whatever, but I think we know, in reality, it’s just so she’ll have a frontline view as, once again, EU faces are ground in the dirt by the TF2 master nation. She thinks! (c.f. i46)

It was a toss up between a cast on her twitch channel or eXtv’s. It was decided to go for Kip’s own, going for community rather than traffic.

So:

Date: Saturday 1st December

Time: 9pm (uk time)

Place:  http://www.twitch.tv/falafel1066

I hope it’ll prove entertaining whoever wins. We’ll have fun I’m sure. Viva EU!

Highlander ends with a squib (a damp one) and a Handbag

The final match in S3 of Highlander ended with a default win. Oh well. We’d all gathered ourselves together on a Saturday evening, prepared to do battle and nothing happened, the other team (Brotherhood) didn’t show. Well actually none of that’s quite accurate. We didn’t ‘all’ gather together, only 8 of us did.  There was some frantic last minute trawling of Steam friends lists to fill that last spot and fortunately we managed to come up with a Handbag who stood in as our Heavy (thanks dok). And the other team did show up, sort of. Their leader arrived, 30 minutes late, apologised and officially defaulted the match; all very civilised.

The end result it Keep Calm and Listen to Lefty are now top of the Division, but the other two main teams have matches in hand that’s not going to last forever. I read the rules and I think after a team has two default losses, it has to drop out. This was Brotherhood’s second so they may be disappearing. This will change the results of all the top three teams, I’m not sure how as I haven’t thought about it much beyond that. I suspect we will finish third.

Handbags at Dawn has continued to practice. We’ve been doing better in our lobbies and this evening we won our first matches against another Highlander team which was a bit of a confidence booster as our Reddit Round Robin showmatch with the NA Ladies is on Saturday. There are still hopes that it will be cast live, otherwise it’ll be the stv demo. Our main caster, Kip, is keen. I’m not thinking about it as I’m not too sure about being live-cast with lots of people watching us. My only hope is that ‘lots’ really means ‘a few’…a handful of fond and incomprehending mothers and loyal boyfriends/partners perhaps. There has been very little publicity so fingers crossed.

Finally I’ve been playing Demo in some of fraac’s mixes in his new/low 6v6 mix group. It’s been fun. I’m amazed that people not only remember me when I log on but actually ask and expect me to play Demoman. It’s shows that my play doesn’t ruin their games! It’s also interesting how playing 6v6 has changed how I play on pub servers. I’ve started to time pushes and note when we’ve a numbers advantage. When I play Medic I look for pockets; usually only temporary ones as it is pub after all. Going on from this I now find I have an even stronger preference for servers where comp players play, not because they are more skilled but because amongst them you’re more likely to find a Demoman, Soldier or Heavy who knows what’s going on when he finds a Medic trailing behind him and will wait for uber to build before pushes.

It doesn’t happen that often (especially without mics) but when it does, and I’m the Medic or the Demo, it’s good. You feel in control of your game.

(Update: forgot to mention, on pl_upward we ended up winning one round, losing two, picking up 2 points to the other team’s 4.)

Handbags at Dawn; The TF2 Round Robin Tournament

It’s been a while since my last post largely due to the intervention of a significant international event (holiday in Turkey) and much has happened in the world of TF2 and the WDG community. Firstly FNR! has continued destroying Div 5H, a total of four teams have now dropped. FNR! is currently lying third with one game to go, against the team in second place. FNR! will need to win this to be promoted. The last game was a draw; two maps were played, cp_Gullywash and cft_turbine_pro. Yes, a CTF map. And guess which map FNR! lost. Further evidence that the WDG community sucks at CTF maps.

A Hive of Scum and Villainy continues to be rolled but a newbie mix group has now been formed which has given everyone the opportunity to practice with equally bad people even when not all the team is available. I’ve joined in a few mixes and even managed to play Demoman a couple of times, the pressure to play Medic is strong, Medic is a less popular class (scout seems the most). It’s a nice group.

Keep Calm and Listen to Lefty is now signed up ready for Season 3 of ETF2L Highlander…we’re in Div 5 again which makes sense, even though there are no CTF maps, as we never practice. One of the maps is cp_steel, a map I have never played without getting lost.

And finally in December, there is the  Season 6 Round Robin one day TF2 Highlander Tournament. This originated on Reddit with the aim to involve players at all levels and all experiences both already in teams and as individuals grouping together, and soon spread beyond. It was suggested on the TF2X sub-reddit, a gathering place of TF2 she-mercs, that it would be fun to form an all-female mix team and so Handbags at Dawn was formed. HaD are an EU team, there is a second NA team. Most of us are already members of clans and teams but have never played in a same-gender team before. It’s unusual to get more than a couple of females together and we want to know what 100% is like, though we have a few he-mercs along too for our delectation and to keep us happy! Anyhow, I’ll be back in my normal Highlander role as Engineer, I think we’ve got the other classes sorted and I think they’re all female.

FNR! in (relatively) Dramatic TF2 Div 5 Drama

It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted so I thought it time to have a leisurely stroll thought the latest TF2 happenings in the WDG community; out of deference to the older members of the Readership, I’ll go no faster.

For No Raisin! are currently (that could be a joke) at the top of Division 5H (but see update).  After their first game was a draw, they went on to two victories and one default win; the other team got confused and didn’t turn up.

The first game was against a polish team, NIGDY NIE MIAŁEM LEPSZEGO BRZUCHA. This team had already won their first match and were heading the Division. I’m very sorry to report that NNMLB did not behave well. They claimed that they would beat FNR! 5-0 (providing no evidence). They changed their names to pastiches of FNR! members in mockery and, most distastefully, they used a highly offensive racial term against one of the FNR! Soldiers (a reportable offence).

This was a match FNR! had to win.

Psychology played a part here. At the start FNR! could have risen (or rather lowered themselves) to the taunts of NNMLB and emotions become involved; hot tempers = poor play. Instead they worked to remain calm and focussed on the game. The first map was Gullywash. NNMLB played well but FNR! had the edge and won 3-0. I think this rattled NNMLB. Their previous match had probably been easy, they felt untouchable, already Kings of the Division, now they’d met a reasonable oppostion.

The next map was Granary and you could see the style of play change. At first it was less focussed but then they increased their aggression and took two rounds from FNR! Again psychology was important. FNR! became a little too relaxed as NNMLB organisation went initially and didn’t respond quickly enough when they suddenly switched. FNR! then , re-focussed and stepped up to meet NNMLB who then promptly seemed to fall apart, I’d guess their comms were chaos.

At the end, most of the team ragequit the server.

The following day, one of the members left the team, two weeks later a second went. It now looks highly likely the team will fold. If it does, this will void the victory and FNR! will lose their points.

The second game was against vier//green. This was an easy victory. A couple of days later, the team folded. The latest match was facing trauma, who didn’t turn up. So far they’re still together (but see update). The next match scheduled is against MPGaming. By all accounts these are one of the strongest teams in the Division so the match will be tough.

Apart from all this, a Hive of Scum and Villainy is continuing to get rolled in every game though we’re starting to get pretty good at holding last and a few times have managed to hold middle. There is still much we have to work on as a team (comms and positioning) and for myself, individually. It has been hard to get everyone together for practice and we’ve had to rely on backups. We’ve tried to vary them so we don’t wear them out with our ineptitude.

Finally a bit of Highlander action. Keep Calm and Listen to Lefty entered the  ETF2L Highlander Experimental Cup #3, a one-night cup playing maps new to the League. Our first game was on a CTF (capture the flag) map. We had to capture the intelligence and bring it to a central point. We were rolled; observers on the stream said communication was almost non-existent and we failed to tactically respond when the other team were obviously drawing ahead. I remember we lost badly on the last CTF map we played. I can only conclude that we suck at CTF.

Update: trauma have now folded as well, voiding the default victory and losing FNR! their points, I’m seeing a theme here. FNR! are now 2nd in Div 5H but have a game in hand over the MPGaming who are now first.