miNt TF2: Update (BOTC)

The miNt TF2 team is currently competing in the TF2: BOTC v1 tournament. This is BOTC’s first TF2 tournament and because of this there has been no entrance fee and also unfortunately no prizes. Only 9 clans entered this tournament and when compared to 17 teams entered for both COD4 and CSS the number of TF2 teams seems small. There are many reasons for this low number of teams and some of these reasons have been discussed in this BOTC interview. Out of these 9 teams, 2 of the teams (namely Zero Limit and Implicit) disbanded throughout the course of the tournament. All the remaining teams continued to complete all of their games and the results of these games can be found here.

I have written up a short overview those who do not understand the way that competitive TF2 works; Competitive TF2 is played 6vs6 with no-crits, no-random damage and with class restrictions. ‘Crits’ are 3x regular damage critical hits that occur randomly on regular public servers and are displayed by a glowing projectile. As you do more damage so your ‘crit’ change increases. This randomness has no place in competitive TF2 where a team’s skill and teamwork should determine the winner rather that a random element to the game so these critical hits have been removed from competitive play here in South Africa as with every major international TF2 league. In ‘vanilla’ TF2, each weapon has a damage spread for example the scouts scattergun can do between 85 and 105 damage from point blank range. This damage spread also random and for the same reasons as ‘crits’ was removed from competitive TF2 a while ago. The main 4 classes out of the nine that are most commonly played in a 6vs6 competitive situation are the scout, soldier, medic and demoman. The restrictions on all classes are 2 per team with exceptions being the medic and demoman where only 1 is allowed per team.

The main type of map that is played competitively in TF2 is a ‘push’ map with examples being  cp_badlands, cp_granary and cp_well.  A ‘push’ map consists of 5 control points in a linear layout where each team starts off the round by having 2 of these control points on their side of the map captured by default. The middle control point is open for either of the teams to capture at the beginning of the round. The two teams spawn on opposite sides of the map and rush to the middle capture point at the beginning of the round in order to ‘cap’ it and then proceed to the next capture point that the opposing team controls and hopefully win the round by capturing the oppositions final capture point. All points are ‘locked’ (meaning that they can’t be captured) apart from the one that a team captured last and the one after that in the direction that the team who captured last would be pushing. This may not be the best way of explaining it but in essence it is a very simple gametype to grasp. With this said, by no means is TF2 a easy game to play at a competitive level.

For more information on competitive TF2 check this local article or GotFrag’s article.

miNt’s first game was played vs. Implicit on the 14.02.2009. The map cp_badlands was selected out of the list of maps we could play and in the 30min allocated we managed to beat them 7:1. It was a relatively easy game for us as Implicit were having some team issues and sometime after our game broke up as a clan.

Our second gave was vs. Schizophrenia and was played on the 15.02.2009. Both teams decided to play the map cp_granary. It was a relatively straightforward game with our team having the upper-hand for the majority of the game and thus the end result was 9:0 to mint.

Our third game was played vs. qpac on the 25.02.2009. This was the only game so far where we have had to call in a substitute player because of us not having enough players at the time. P|Numb was more than happy to step in and help us out and we thank him for this. This game turned out to much more of a challenge that what we expected from qpac. It was a very stressful game for both teams and there were some great moments in the game in terms of close captures and strong pushes/defenses. We managed to beat them 4:2 in the 30min allocated but it would be a lie to say it was an easy game for us.

Our fourth and final game of this stage of the league (26.02.2009) was played against probably our biggest rival, that being Pantheon. We had a full strong team playing as did they for this game and all in all it was a tough and intense game. Pantheon managed to beat us 3:2 on the map cp_granary with some excellent play by most of their players combined with some strong organized offences. It was a thoroughly enjoyable game because of the challenge they gave us and we look forward to another game vs. them in the next round.

On a side note, there are 3 new promising TF2 teams that are currently starting up in this country that will not be able to take part in the current BOTC TF2 comp but hopefully will be around in the future to compete. These 3 clans are ‘swift’, ‘Opt6′ and ‘KI’ and we hope to see them competing soon. For more information on our Team Fortress 2 team please visit the following link.

miNt > Bobalas