Toast’s Road to Greatness

Toast is the best Spy in European TF2, but he is now within touching distance of becoming the greatest of all time.

Toast carrying Villdjack after winning DeutschLAN 2016 with Strong Opinions.

“Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.” -Frank L. Gaines

Jonatan “Toast” Clausen is arguably the greatest European Highlander player in Team Fortress 2’s history, taking into account his accomplishments, both team-wise and individually. Everyone knows his signature combination of the Dead Ringer and Ambassador, yet his opponents stand helpless when facing the 19-year old Dane.

Soon to compete in his fifth ETF2L (European Team Fortress 2 League) season, three years after breaking into the elite tier, Toast remains a consistent performer in the highest level of competition. In this piece, we will take a closer look at what forged one of the game’s greatest players, and how he may be remembered in the future.

Chessclub Junior Prodigy

ETF2L’s Season 7 is by some seen as Highlander’s peak in terms of competition and skill ceiling. During this point in time, renowed players from the dominant Tourette’s Chessclub such as Scissors and Khazul decided to put together a roster to mentor and develop. The Scandinavian-mix of players making up Chessclub Junior lost one match in the course of the whole season, taking home the 1st place without having to worry about playoffs due to the format of the season.

Was Toast playing checkers or chess? Image via Chessgeeks

A few members in the team clearly stood out more than others. The Danish talent was definitely one of them, but not to the extent the active community back then might recall. However, looking back at some of the Junior’s statistics in form of logs, the developing Spy main bears slight resemblence to the ever-prevailing Toast of today.

Toast was clearly a player heading towards the top. After the conclusion of Season 7, players being picked up by more well-established teams made the up-and-coming team meet a quick, bitter end. Chessclub Junior’s Scout serfs summed up the dispansion of the team by stating:

Too many key-players got picked up by team’s in higher divisions, the desire to rebuild simply faded away

The Bread and Butter of Megakillerz eSports

As one door closed for the Dane, another one opened. Foungi, a German Demoman, started his own team called Megakillerz eSports Fanclub eSports, or simply Megakillerz. Apart from Toast having left Chessclub Junior, teammates serfs, Mr.Palmsky, Pothenar and Husky followed suit by joining up behind Foungi’s new roster to compete in High for Season 8. In similar fashion to Toast’s former team, Megakillerz rose to the occasion, stomping their opposition by going undefeated throughout the 7-week long regular season.

On the 17th of May 2015, in their semifinal game, Megakillerz clashed against many familiar faces in Strong Opinions. Not knowing Toast would later on play under the Strong Opinions banner, the Spy alongside Sniper nik and Scout serfs topped the scoreboard, destroying their opponents. Despite Toast not achieving the most kills or damage dealt, his impact on the game was arguably greater than any other player on the server. Boasting 13 Medic picks on CeeJaey, one being an Überdrop, he unquestionably led his team to several advantages. Comparing Toast to the enemy Spy, ElazuL, would not only be offensive to the Frenchman, but utterly pointless due to the contrasting technique and gap of efficiency.

The Grand Final saw Megakillerz go up against Mad?, a team on paper significantly weaker than their counterparts in the semifinal. Pressure was without doubt immense heading into the first map, Product, not only because of its being the final, but also the fact that the winners would secure a spot in the highest division in the upcoming Season: Premiership. Just under 13 minutes in secured Toast’s team a 3–0 victory, without losing more than 2 minutes on the clock. Steel ended in a similar fashion, 2–0 with Foungi’s team finishing undefeated from start to finish.

Analyzing Toast’s growth with Megakillerz can be summed up with one word: style. Both maps ended with the 16-year old Dane having 12 backstabs and 25 headshots in total. Comparing this to his previous statistics in Chessclub Junior reveals a much greater use of the Ambassador as compared to a more knife-heavy approach from Season 7. Toast, likewise, evolved his positioning to suit a more gun-spy oriented playstyle, increasing his ability to utilize the combination of Dead Ringer and Ambassador.

Legendary Status in Strong Opinions

In truth, Toast’s transformation from what had been a hungry player in early 2014 to something quite different began when he joined up with Strong Opinions. Season 8 was a Season of progress, now having acquired two 1st place medals after only competing in two Seasons, his record and individual excellence made Strong Opinion’s CeeJaey turn his eyes toward Jonathan “Toast” Clausen, due to Elazul stepping down.

At the same time, internal discussions on leadership between Foungi and Toast led to the young talent seeking to continue playing under a different form of command. This stopped a very possible Megakillerz-era from emerging.

CeeJaey plotting how to improve his MvM world record at DeutschLAN 2016.

Shortly after turning 17, now under CeeJaey’s leadership, Toast helped take a map off of Highpander, former Premiership runner-ups under improbable circumstances. Highpander was seen as one of the favourites, still sitting on elite-status, while Strong Opinions were the new kids on the block. After a swift 3–0 on koth_warmtic, the underdogs fell short on cp_process 1–2, ending the match in a tie. During the post-game interview with, CeeJaey answered the question “Are you dissapointed by the results tonight?” by proudly stating “In our minds this is definietly 3 points lost rather than 3 gained”, clearly displaying the team’s ambitions for the Season.

Throughout the remaining part of Season 9, Strong Opinions played phenomenally together with the Dane, only losing out to Premiership winners Tourette’s Chessclub, eventually encountering them yet again in the finals. Saloon.tf, a website formerly used for gambling in-game Team Fortress 2 items on Premiership matches, gave the clear favourites Tourette’s Clessclub a 80% chance of winning the game, while Strong Opinions boasted a mere 20%.

Saloon.tf created by CHERRY, was shut down on August 6th 2016.

cp_steel saw Grenjabob, a Spy known for adopting the knifespy rather than gunspy, sub in for Toast, as he had not yet returned home from school. The map, which was picked by the favourites ended with Strong Opinions falling short 1–2. On the second map, koth_product, the major underdogs rose to the occasion with Toast finally back home, ready to prove why he was Strong Opinions’ main Spy. Similar to how nik went off when Toast had a great performance, his teammate Cloudy on Sniper, had a showing, later on earning him the prestigious Sniper of the Season award. Together they supernova’d koth_product in a swift 3–0, to become the biggest stars on the server and subsequently win their team the deciding map, pl_badwater 2–0, ending the series in a victory, arguably the biggest upset in Highlander history.

To essentially the entire Highlander community’s surprise, Strong Opinions was now on top of the throne. From a positive, but not in any way amazing, Season 8 in High, ending 3rd, to winning the Grand Final in Premiership, is something rarely witnessed in any of Team Fortress 2’s divergent game modes. After the conclusion of Season 9, Toast and Cloudy were voted by the public as the best players at their respective class, together with Stevepander on Pyro. From this point onward, we who have followed Highlander know what kind of seemingly unfair array of qualities Toast has obtained, which make him capable not only of dominating the opposition, but also of finding consistency in every scrim, warmup and official, undoubtedly reaching legendary status.

Meet The Gunspy

Further to my previous comment on style, if you perhaps have been hiding under a rock for approximately four years, in short, two very contrasting methods of using the Spy’s mechanics are dominating the Highlander format. The most basic and commonly associated with the stealth-class is called knifespy. As the name suggests, the use of a Spy’s melee weapon is primarily used for taking down enemy players, together with either the Cloak and Dagger, Invisibility Watch, or Dead Ringer.

On the other hand we have the gunspy, beloved by some, infuriating to many. The style is regularly compared to playing as a Sniper, but on the French rogue rather the Australian hitman. The typical gunspy often wields the Ambassador as his primary weapon, along with the Dead Ringer and standard Knife. By faking his death, a Spy can scamper behind enemy lines unseen, taking off shots at a long range, safe from danger. One player in particular is often cited as the creator of the gunspy-playstyle.

The one and only, the fabled Swedish beast, the original gunspy, inso, is a name which if you are from Europe, should invoke goosebumps when spoken out loudly. He is by many seen as the Godfather of all gunspies. Before his time, no one had made much use of the now accustomed combination of the Dead Ringer and Ambassador. Spies were supposed to be sneaky, hiding in the shadows, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge. But Inso looked at the class from a isolated and somewhat unimaginable perspective. He took the liberty to change how not only the class was played in the current meta, but also how it would come to cultivate the next generation of Spy mains.

To quote Premiership player Clark from Super Dickmann’s KANNONEN:

inso was the first gunspy to ever make a huge difference for his team. For years he was unmatched in terms of pure skill and technique. Toast on the other hand improved on what inso had built before his time, which allowed him to become even more influential and be instrumental in helping Strong Opinions win the title of The Best European Highlander Team three times in a row.

Parallels to how active Counter-Strike:Global Offensive members playing the role as lurker, Toast has supplemented inso’s play-style with countless positions and maneuvers to throw his opponents off-guard. Not only are his headshots with the ambassador extremely dangerous to the likes of Medic, Sniper and Engineer, but the sheer amount of pressure it provides is often more beneficial than the actual damage dealt. A visual demonstration and thought process behind Toast’s actions against Fair Enough on pl_upward in the Season 10 finals is uploaded on Medic CeeJaey’s Youtube channel, seen below.

ETF2L Season 10 Premiership Grand Final Strong Opinions vs. Fair Enough.

Listening to Toast’s soothing voice explain his decision making to CeeJaey gives the viewers vast amount of information to analyse and take into consideration when improving their own Spy tactics. For example, Toast discloses how he ordinarily would try to make room for his team on the first point when attacking by positioning himself in the tunnel, to take safe shots at the enemy combo. This time however, he does not wield the Ambassador and Dead Ringer, instead he utilizes the mix of Cloak & Dagger and L’Etranger to deadly effect, neutralizing the enemy Medic.

Statistical Breakdown

Thanks to Stacked’s leader b33p, we can take a closer look at last season’s statistics by reviewing these charts made with information from CeeJaey’s data gathered in the course of Season 11. The full data, with statistics on all 9 different classes is included in a google document here.