First off, on our end, a big welcome to Synthos, our newest soldier after Panda decided to move himself to backup. A week or so in and we are making some progress getting settled down, and we should be good to go once CEVO picks up and TWL starts. We played VIR evenly in our qualifer match for TWL, so expect us to move up to Div 2 (since 90% of Div1 and 2 teams currently are dead or not doing TWL). As for CEVO, we may get a forfeit win against Infinite Rage (which died a few weeks back), which works out since we are still getting used to scrimming together.
ESEA teams are finalized and ready to go, with 40 teams in Open and 8 in Invite, 2 (or 3?) of which are sponsored by Blight this season, who is also sponsoring an Open team as well (!). A lot of last minute roster changes, with some familiar names coming back after a break from competitive TF2. Viaduct is the first week’s map, so hopefully we will get a chance to learn the map as well.
CommFT has put out two good articles, one is a roaming soldier roundtable with some good comments about what to think about as a soldier playing away from the medic during holds and some pushes; the other article is put out by Sigma talking about things to consider before deciding on a push. Both are very, very enlightening especially for teams who are looking to improve their chemistry and become more aggressive in their playstyle; check them out!
Finally, a couple of good frag videos from the Invite teams, with Area 51 (Muscle Milk and Moolians) putting out a team-oriented frag vid, and Pandemic (who is now sponsored by Blight I think) with some sweet frags in their vid as well. Both are very professionally done, worth a watch just for some of the movement and coordination from the A51 vid.
So last night we had a couple hours of very good scrims. We played a lot of Badlands and even some Granary, as usual. Looks like we are finally completely recovered from those weeks we took off for spring break. There was some inorganization but not nearly as much as usual.
Also, since Panda decided to take a little break from competitive TF2, we have picked up a new soldier. His name is Synthos and he used to play for the Thunderkitties team and he is pretty nice. So hopefully now that we have three soldiers again there will be fewer scheduling issues! Yay! We have our qualifier match for TWL Division 2 on Sunday night, so we’re glad that we found him already instead of having to negotiate about using a ringer. Hooray!
Today (Wednesday) is the first official match of CEVO season 5 for us. Scheduled on badlands vs. Team What! (who we remember scrimming from way back in our reverseHarem days – although I’m pretty sure they’ve had roster changes since then), we’ll be playing at 11:30EST/8:30PST tonight. Badlands has, sadly, always been one of our weaker maps, but we’ve definitely come a long way since we first started out. We have been trying more aggressive strats and faster pushes, but we still choke up when making transitions during pushes.
In the past week though, we seriously considered ESEA after being approached by one of the new admins, Killing, offering us a few (2) free Premium accounts, which is a common incentive the old admins used to use to get more teams to sign up. However, the higher-ups at ESEA (not the TF2 admins, necessarily) are being as strict as ever with everything, and in the end we just decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Not enough competition at our level, plus a map rotation that could definitely use some work (koth_sawmill and cp_coldfront), and the possibility of serious scheduling/roster issues discouraged us from signing up. ESEA requires 2 matches per week, and although we would have dropped CEVO, we realized that we would probably burn out quickly from frustration and scheduling around real life obligations. Just to make things clear: we would’ve loved the challenge of ESEA, and would love to post about our thoughts and experiences going through the league as a low-mid team to share with all of you, but then we would run the risk of spending cash on a league that would end up being more of a frustrating chore than an enjoyable challenge.
So, responding to Leia’s post below about having a team not die, an important thing I’d say is to discuss these things with the whole team if you intend on sticking together for the long term. And of course we’re all still busy as ever – school, work, MOVING UP IN THE WORLD :3 But we always seem to find time for TF2. We are still toying with the idea of finding a solly to complement our roster, and we’ll see how that goes.
I mentioned before in our looking thread that while we’re all usually the most lovable and chill team you could find, we do have our moments in scrims where we get frustrated and ragey at each other. Case in point: a few days ago we needed modopo and Leia to fill in, with Baldy on soldier to get a scrim in. That’s already 1 of us off-classing, plus modopo, having scouted maybe a total of 5 scrims before, was not very familiar with his expected role, and Leia wasn’t exactly warmed up. The map was badlands, the scenario – our initial push to mid, and our push onto spire from mid.
Hey all just an update on what we’ve been up to. We decided to keep me on med, and to pick up an active backup solly. We are talking to someone (with experience on a mid/high team) who is interested in filling in for us and helping us out with some strats, but I won’t know for sure until a week or so later. If you still think you’d like a chance at a tryout, talk to me anyways and we’ll try and fit one in for you.
We’ve also been watching the ESEA-O playoff series, with Gpit this week leading to 3 upsets, unfortunately including AG Definitely an intense game, most of us were in mumble watching most of the 3 rounds (joining the party late because of a scrim that dragged for a while). Gravelpit is definitely one of those funky maps that benefit from some funky strats – spies, snipers, engies, natasha heavies kritz, suicidal pushes, the whole deal. Also a good deal of airshots because of the verticality of the control points – you gotta get control of the roof at B if you want to have a chance to hold/capture. It was pretty neat to see how different teams came up with their own unique set of tricks to get an edge – sniper picks on med are extremely deadly on B, so be sure to watch both B and C entrances. Panda always reminds us to stand on the C-side cliff while defending B to prevent a lucky sniper from getting a headshot. This also allows you to make them pop uber (if they come from C) early on, and away from the gun that is usually on the shady side of B for defense. We can definitely put up some of our gpit ideas in a separate post too.
Welcome to those of you visiting via the TWL forums page. Shoutout to holy for bumping the thread (how’s that team building going? ), and G-mang: yes Leia plays TF2 in Spanish for fun. Go ahead and sign up on the right – eave those comments here as well That applies to all you lurkers as well. As of now we have an average of 30 visitors a day but only 3 subscriber accounts. More fun site stats? We have 111 unique visitors in the past week, with ~300 page views, so I know there are people out there reading the blog!
To give a preview, I’m currently working on a collection of rocketjumping tips I’ve picked up over the months, and I think luuser will put up some of his favorite stickytraps as well for you guys to take a look at. I’m sure other people on the team have ideas that they’ll be sharing as well. We also owe some of you an explanation about a nice little freight mid strat (courtesy of Sigma), as well as some other things we’ve been working on. The fun thing about running through random/crazy strats – sometimes it just works, given how your team plays. Some teams have a deadly scout combo, some have an aggro demo, some have sollys that airshot everything and do work, some have medics that drop ubers; it all comes down to picking what works and not trying to do something that relies too much on, say, scout DM skills when you know your scouts aren’t exactly at the top of the league in that department.
Hey all – sorry for the lack of posts and such – homework (and being a TA) has been keeping me busy; I haven’t even touched TF2 in 2 whole days (I know right, isn’t that horrifying). Today I just wanted to mention a couple of server things on our end, for those of you who might not yet have your own private server for competitive scrims and matches.
The FF podcast had an episode with some information on maintaining a 24-slot server; I just wanted to reiterate a few things from them. I personally use HLSW occasionally when I’m not ingame yet and want to change up the map or the password without booting up TF2 or getting into AIgaming’s control panel. The rest of the time, just hop ingame (if you’re not already) and use rcon to change settings, quick and easy. As for FPS and tick and all that: 500 FPS. You won’t regret it. 1000FPS is only necessary to make people shut up when they complain about how crappy the server is.
We run a 500FPS Team Fortress 2 server from AIgaming, and I’m not going to lie: I am 99% satisfied with it. We’ve had minor blips in downtime (once every month or so), and only one update wouldn’t install immediately in the past 5 months. The rest of the time, smooooooth and stable. If it ever gets choppy, restart the map (worst case, restart the server), it should get rid of the choppiness that results from having the map/autorecord on for a long time. It’s a 14 slot server + SourceTV, which is enough for 6v6 plus one in-game spectator for each team (and as I learned recently from Sigma, you can even kick the STV temporarily and it’ll come back when you change the map). We pay ~32 dollars a month for the whole package; split that between 6-10 people and it’s definitely worth it.
orzTF2 is now sponsored by SavageGaming! ESEA Season 8 registration ends Jan 3rd, make sure you sign up!07:10 AM December 14, 2010from web
CEVO is over! 1-2 loss vs. natures on gpit. best of luck to everyone else. orz is looking for a solly and scout for next season!07:13 PM November 09, 2010from web
ESEA Season almost over - 3 losses in a row :( but 2 last badlands matches vs. carnal gaming and the terribles. Hope to finish strong!11:52 PM October 22, 2010from web
Definitely an intense game, most of us were in mumble watching most of the 3 rounds (joining the party late because of a scrim that dragged for a while). Gravelpit is definitely one of those funky maps that benefit from some funky strats – spies, snipers, engies, natasha heavies kritz, suicidal pushes, the whole deal. Also a good deal of airshots because of the verticality of the control points – you gotta get control of the roof at B if you want to have a chance to hold/capture. It was pretty neat to see how different teams came up with their own unique set of tricks to get an edge – sniper picks on med are extremely deadly on B, so be sure to watch both B and C entrances. Panda always reminds us to stand on the C-side cliff while defending B to prevent a lucky sniper from getting a headshot. This also allows you to make them pop uber (if they come from C) early on, and away from the gun that is usually on the shady side of B for defense. We can definitely put up some of our gpit ideas in a separate post too.
), and G-mang: yes Leia plays TF2 in Spanish for fun. Go ahead and sign up on the right – eave those comments here as well 
That applies to all you lurkers as well. As of now we have an average of 30 visitors a day but only 3 subscriber accounts. More fun site stats? We have 111 unique visitors in the past week, with ~300 page views, so I know there are people out there reading the blog!
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