Hello people!

Right now, the biggest TF2 LAN up to date (in attendance, not prizemoney) is going on around me. At the time of writing, the final matches are going to get played rather soon. For Insomnia 40, we had a total of 4 vertex teams travelling to Newbury from all over the world. The Stinson Edition, Team 2, Team 3 and a mix team of former vertex people under the name of What Would JimmyBreeze Do were ready to go and play the groupstage matches at Saturday morning. And even though I heard someone say "before this event, I never heard of Vertex before", it shows that we did a good job in promoting ourselves and getting good results.

In this post, I'd just like to round up what happened yesterday and what places we finished during this weekend, because yes, we all got knocked out yesterday. As I said, we had 4 teams entering the tournament the tournament in the groupstages, and we got seeded 6th (WWJBD), 9th (SE) and 14th (vertex2) . Vertex3 didnt get seeded, and therefore had to play two higher seeded in the groupstage. And even though they put up a good fight against Beer and Rockets and Sir, they didn't make it to the playoff round.

The other three teams did make it to the playoff rounds though. Vertex2 was the second seeded team in a group with Team Dignitas, and managed to win the rest of the matches with which they managed to secure a place in the playoffs. In group D on the other side, WWJBD and the Stinson Edition got placed in the same group, which lead to an amazing end of the groupstage. For both teams, -9m2- , BreachLAN and WDG were not problem, winning with the maximum score. When the teams met on gullywash after those matches, it was as tight as you could get it. The scouts from WWJBD were insane (both playing high level tf2), but the SE heavy classes had the edge on the other side of the battle. After 30 minutes, the score was 3-3, and both teams were tied on every single statistic. A golden cap had to be played, and the Stinson Edition won that one, making sure that their playoff opponent would be relatively easy.

WWJBD lost to a stronger TwistedPlay in the round of 16, and had to play in the lowerr bracket. There, they had to played boX?2 , a match they won pretty easy. Then, in the second round of the lowerr bracket, they had to play eMpathy on badlands. As far as I have seen the match, WWJBD was pretty much crushed, losing with 6-1, with which they finished in a 9th-12th place.
Vertex2 had to play Epsilon eSports, 3rd place seed, in the first playoff round. Without a chance, they got knocked to the lowerr bracket, where they had to play a time named Beer and Rockets. To my surprise, they lost 3-6 on Obscure, finishing in the top 16 in this tournament.
The last Vertex team left in the tournament was the Stinson Edition. They won the first playoff upper bracket match against Beer and Rockets with 3-1 on Well. After that, we had to play Epsilon, and even though we had some chances, they were way better at putting pressure on us from multiple sides. Being knocked down to the lowerr bracket, we had to play snuke! on Badlands, which lead to a convincing 7-2 victory.

At that time, it was already 21.00 BST, and we still had to play eMpathy on Gravel Pit. They were the 7th seed, and had knocked out WWJBD earlier and looked very strong. After some delay, we defended first and hold them off for 10.35 minutes. That was more than enough time than we needed to attack, so we were 1-0 up. The next round, attacking first, we didn't have a chance. We didn't really get a crack in eMpathy's defense, and so we lost the second round. In the third round, eMpathy attacked in 2.45 minutes, and that was just too quick for us to handle. We had 3 guys on last with 20 seconds left, but it was just too much to handle. With that somewhat disappointing result, we ended 7th/8th, while we were seeded 9th. With none of us (apart from me) having any LAN experience, I'm proud of my team!

So, a quick roundup:

Stinson Edition (9) - 7th/8th
WWJBD (6) - 9th/12th
Vertex2 (14) - 12th/16th
Vertex3 (N/A) - Knocked out in groupstages.

The event is not over yet, but I feel that we, as a brand, have put our name in the TF2 community by coming to this event with four teams. I'm glad we did, but I feel a bit disappointed that we only had games on one day out of the four that I'm in Newbury.

That's it for now, stay tuned for some updates on all the teams just before ETF2L Season 8 is gonna start. I have a feeling there's gonna be some changes in some teams....

See you on!

Patrick "ThePledge" Fuchs

PS. wer should change his name, because every time I type lo wer bracket, it comes up like this

[6] comments

Hello everyone!

I'd like to start by introducing my squad that has joined the Vertex community under the name Team Vertex - Clandestine Edition. The team first started on 18th October 2009 when MooBie (an old CS 1.6 friend) offered me the opportunity to run a team within his community boX?. The team gradually built up a core of players that had great potential and in some individual cases a lot of experience. We entered into ETF2L and WPTF2L where we claimed both division titles with ease. We progressed quickly with this core of players and were achieving excellent results against high div4 and low div3 teams. Unfortunately, this progress grinded to a halt when I had to take timeout to focus on university work and at the time, no-one was available to steady the ship. However, after a delayed return, I found many of the core players looking to pick things up from where we left off and continue our progress. Our main lineup is:

Snezza (medic)
hys (solly)
achy (solly)
Mördi (solly)
ZeyOrk (demo)
mont (scout)
hunter (scout)


We are hoping to keep a steady core of 7 players for our main lineup that will chop and change around as little as possible. We are aiming to play at div 3 level and are hoping to attend any iSeries events hosted at Stoneleigh Park, as this is the best location for us as a team.

I apologise to my team for how long this post has taken to write and the anti-climax you will probably get by reading it. I had a severe case of 'blank page syndrome' and I'm aware you have been itching to get on mumble and mingle.

I'd like to finish by thanking D2M and everyone at vertex for this opportunity to join the family and we will look forward to meeting everyone involved on mumble. Thank you.

[14] comments

Editor's note: Sorry this took me 2 weeks to post xx (d2m)

During the post game 'what went wrong' talk everyone will invariably agree upon one statement, "I just can't seem to keep those damned crocodiles under control!" It is therefore with great pleasure that we introduce the Team Vertex Crocodile Training School (cts\\), fulfilling all your crocodile coaching requirements!

Back in the spring of 2009 a few like-minded players from The.O.C. TF2 pub server together decided to have a go at competitive TF2 and after a surprisingly successful first season (gaining promotion to div5) we decided to get a bit more serious.
Unfortunately, this resulted in some players leaving as not everyone wanted to put more time into the game.

But this wasn't going to stop us! We got some other pub friends to join our squad and started the next etf2l season with high hopes. Hopes that got completely destroyed, to put it lightly, after the first games. Apparently, dm skill alone wasn't enough anymore, real team play had become necessary. Which is easier said than done, especially without a stable lineup!

Luckily for us, the pieces soon began to fall into place. For the first time ever, we had a steady lineup and some strategies for different maps. With renewed self confidence we started season 7 and finished second in div 5. A place we are still annoyed with as we all feel we should have won that division, unfortunately circumstances weren't in our favour.

Things were looking up for us however, we had an active roster and were hoping to quickly get to a solid div 4 level. Again though, it wasn't meant to be...yet. Some of us lost interest in the game or lacked the motivation to continue. Only a month or two ago things looked very grims, having just 4 players for some time.

The return of one of our former players and the recruitment of former Vertex Stinson player Comedian however, proved to be our saving grace and we were all set to start kicking arse and taking names in div4 of the AFS season.....alas somewhere, someone forgot about us and we ended up in div 5 again (thanks d2m!). So our goals now are to win the division, continue improving and hopefully do well in div 4 of the next regular etf2l season. We'll see where it goes from there.

So like many other teams, we have struggled with stability and roster changes but we have come out on top and retained 4 players from the original team in our main lineup and found three other great guys. So, without further ado, we present to you a colourful bunch of personalities and nationalities, the new and improved Vertex Crocodile Training School!

cts\\ is:
Feer - Soldier, Clan Leader
Warmaster - Scout, Clan Leader
Comedian - Soldier
Red Herring aka DeadDecoy - Scout
Snyyppis - Demoman
CGS - Medic
Joey - Soldier (Backup)

All that remains is to say a huge thank you to vertex for taking us in. We look forward to a long a fruitful relationship!
Feer and Warmaster x

[13] comments