You remember that a few months back I attempted to join the Pubs VS Pros?
We fought for one series of matches. But now time I’ve entered a group for a Highlander Tournament.
This time I entered as part of Team Kritzkast. The team is named after KritzKast is a Podcast that is about Team Fortress 2, and named after the Medic “weapon” the KritzKrieg.
I entered as I’d expect to play Engineer. This is class for me is my Main Class. I did say that I’d be willing to Off Class, or go to one of the other 8 class.
Since we have three European hosts in Kritzkast, they took their “usual” classes.
- Team Captain, Agro, the Pyro.
- Tempest, Soldier
- B00bies, Spy
We now have 4 classes out of nine filled.
The Heavy position is filled by the person who made the Heavy PolyCount pack items, Ruskydoo. As he has them, he has a shiny versions of all his items.
AlmightyBob actually chose Engineer, but can better off class than I can in the problematic classes. AlmightyBob was the Engineer chosen to be in the Pub’s team.
Also from Pubs vs Pros’ Pub team, the Soldier, TehLemon, joins to fill take Soldier.
DayStar is the Medic. However he is willing to off class, if his skills are better than other Members.
JimboMcB, is the Demoman, who often goes Scout. JimboMcB is known for making Team Fortress 2 video, or break down of the modern psyche, nope.avi. (Actually, Jim said it was never an .avi file, and the file uploaded was actually called nope.mp4.)
As you can see this team is not filled with nobodies, most Team Fortress 2 players would know of the team member, if not they know about they did.
We had more people going in to this tournament, however we lost a few. B00bies lost his computer and couldn’t play for the first few weeks, so we have a sub Spy in place.
The Set up is Double Elimination, where all Teams start in the Upper Bracket, and when a team lose they get placed in the lower bracket. Their location would depend on how far they got in the Upper Bracket. If a Team lost in the Lower bracket they would leave the map.
Week 1 – Coldfront
Coldfront is a 5 Control Point Map. The Basics of any Control Point map is to own the points. In the case of this Map and almost all 5 Control Point, the goal is to be in control all 5 Control Points at the same time. Except for the Start with the Mid point, there are only two points that are active at any one time. The other Points are locked. The points in play are always the previous point the any team took, and the next point that the capturing team will need to take.
Coldfront is about a year old, so many teams would have played on this, and is identical on both side of the middle point. For a player walking from BLU spawn is identical as the Walk from RED spawn, with the exception of the Colour scheme.
Due to the luck of the draw that Team KritzKast had no opponent and was treated to a free win.
Week 2 – Viaduct
Viaduct is a King of the Hill map. There is one Control Point. To win, One Team must hold it for a set amount of time. Each team has a “stopwatch” for this time, which only counts when they own the point.
In the way of layout map is mirrored down the middle. However there are is one minor exploitative Glitch. However, this can be countered if the other team is paying attention.
We were scheduled to play against Buy More, who managed to get a though the first round by the other team unable to bring a team at any times.
Buy More had team troubles in Week 2, they couldn’t bring a team, so they forfeited. We got through to Week 3 Upper Tier without needing to play.
Due to Buy More was part of a online community, Agro asked them to bring a team, and we’ll have a practice match. It would be conducted under the same conditions as the official matches would be, but not actually counted as an official map. We won this match on Viaduct. They also agreed to another practice match with on our next map.
Week 3 – Gravel Pit
Gravel Pit is an Attack/Defend Control point map. This is one of the six maps that were included in the game at launch. This Map has 3 Control points. Each Point is given a letter. In this map, A and B start unlocked and C is locked, All points start under the control of the Defending team RED. When BLU captures point A or B, it is locked and can not be recaptured. Only after A and B are captured, point C unlocks and allows BLU to capture it. Capturing C will win the Game for BLU. This map is played under a stop watch based system. If BLU are unable to capture C in the time available, RED Wins. Capturing either A, or B will add time to the clock, making it easier to capture all 3 points. Sounds Complicated but it’s not that difficult.
During week 2, Buy More agreed to run a practice match on this map. We lost, quite quickly.
The majority of Buy More’s Team are in a 6v6 Division 6 team. In European Competitive TF2 teams, being Division 6, you be in the bottom tier of Competitive teams. Buy More had to bring in some people to bring a full roster. Our next Match was with an experienced Highlander team, Turbopoop, and good ones at that.
We had several more Matches with using TF2 Lobby, using similar rules to the Tournament. We lost them all.
After this last match, Agro called Comedian. Comedian is one of the Casters from TF2TV.com and does know a lot about Team Fortress 2 competitive scene. He gave us some pointers and the biggest was that not to play the same way as most teams usually do. He also said that this map makes our problems more Pronounced.
Soon before we started, to play we got a message from Comedian, He wanted to Cast our match. We agreed.
This Match is Available on Free Video on Demand:
CommFT Highlander – week 3 – Team…
Yes, we lost. But we where not out. We were now in the lower tier, we still have a chance to win, but our next match could be our last.
After the match, Comedian went though what we did right and wrong, and what we could do better on our next match. The Main trouble is that we were not playing as a team and getting our timing wrong and our position out.
I’ll do a write up for our future matches each week.