One could be forgiven for thinking written coverage was a thing of the past in Europe, but I’m here to flog that dead horse once more. In the spirit of the condensed one-day playoffs I also deemed it fitting to do absolutely no promotion until one day before the two months of Season 20 were set to come to a dramatic end.

So here we are. The obligatory hype article to remind you all why you should tune in to see the best three teams in European Team Fortress 2 whittled down to one over back-to-back excruciating best-of-threes. If you haven’t been paying attention since the previous season a glance at the rosters below might yield a few familiar faces, but there is much to set Season 20 apart from those that preceded it.

Not least the fact that every single Premiership game was streamed live right here on TeamFortress.TV (if you missed it enjoy this playlist), but also the incredible success of the crowdfunded prizepot, the implementation of the Swiss System (not actually applicable here) and we finally got rid of Permzilla! As it turns out, the Season 20 hype was and still is real.

On this, the eve of the ETF2L Season 20 powered by Tt eSPORTS Grand Finals SonnyBlack will surely be bathing one last time in €3000 (count ‘em!) worth of lustrous golden coinage before it will be divvied up three ways; €1500, €900 and €600. As you can see that is quite the swing from first to third, but for now just focus on the image of our Head Admin immersed in a bath of €1 coins like Scrooge McDuck. Massive shoutout to CanFo and Tt eSPORTS for contributing €1000 to the now tainted coffers, which combined with the fundraiser created a Premiership prize equivalent to the previous three seasons combined.

Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.A.M. Get the money. Euro, Euro coins y’all. A relative abundance of which was to be the catalyst for an incredibly competitive season in the top flight; despite the sticky nerf, the legendary English demomen were queued up round the corner up to make their returns to the game and we actually saw a “Russian” superteam form... and stay together for an entire season. Meanwhile, big bucks were luring the Frenchies out of retirement too, but ultimately eluding them; Awsomniac were to miss out on playoff qualification by two points.

The pre-season sirens song was also to ensnared KnOxXx, perhaps the greatest leader to ever grace Team Fortress 2, meaning one Frenchman remains with a very real chance of scooping the top prize. Reunited with former Epsilon eSports comrades MGEMike and numlocked (who actually isn’t shit despite playing some other shit game for 18 months prior), this trio of champions would be a shot in the arm to Übersexuals then severely depleted roster. The titleholders were to be rebranded and renamed as SUAVE, but their position at the head of the table remains untouched.

The Show

So Sunday March 29th 2015 is the date and 18:45 CEST / 12:45 EDT is the time upon which Admirable, CommanderX and Sideshow will dribble their first dribblings accompanied by all manner of stats and graphics courtesy of Gentleman Jon. You can expect to hear team comms, interviews and witness a menagerie of bells, whistles and toucans courtesy of our production team.

The order of business sees third place Reason Gaming battle second place Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers at 19:00 CEST over three maps to be determined through a modified map elimination system, before the winner has to go and do it all over again against SUAVE at 21:15 CEST.

Thankfully BK’s own pocket powerhouse AMS has combined all the important details here with some moving pictures featuring videojuegos and plays extraordinaire, with the whole thing set to a jaunty tune. This is the part where you get hyped up!

I should mention also that the winners of the ETF2L Season 20 Fundraiser Raffles will be drawn during the show, giving those who contributed a chance of winning the ETF2L T-shirt signed by the Who's Who of i52, a Tt eSPORTS Ventus Gaming Mouse, a Tt eSPORTS SHOCK Gaming Headset and 10x 3 months of serveme.tf Premium status.

The Contenders

We’ve been truly spoiled for statistics in Season 20 – never have there been more ways to size up players and teams in European competition. Gentleman Jon’s TF2PlayerRankings.com gave everyone the impetus to try their very hardest in pickups and lobbies, whilst fraac’s eu.elo.tf rankings become the de facto standard by which teams were to measure their collective e-peniseses; both of which have spawned from zoob’s incredible logs.tf... incredible in that we all just take it for granted these days. Can you imagine a life without logs?!

The gift that keeps on giving, Gentleman Jon, has recently granted public access to a Season Summary compiling statistics from every Premiership fixture that we can all pour over in preparation for the impending Grand Finals. These are the same stats that power our stream stats, snapshots of which I’ve taken to lay out the case for each of our three candidates for the championship. Cheers Jon!

Reason Gaming have actually had the longest running stable roster of all three playoff teams, despite being the newest team, and as such have commanded our respect from the earliest days of the pre-season when a lot of people were expecting them to be contesting first place in the main season rather than counting on SUAVE to secure their playoff spot for them.

The honeymoon period hype was dispelled by Week 2 when a reality check delivered at the hands of SUAVE demonstrated the thin margins between Premiership players and the Premiership elite. In this roster only kaidus and wltrs can claim to have that true top level experience. Whilst the rest are certainly excellent players, all of them are still on the learning curve, still acquiring experience of playing in pressure cooker fixtures where they actually have a genuine expectation of winning and aren’t simply the underdogs with nothing to lose.

This will come with time, but in each of their fixtures against the top three Reason lost control and lost points. Talented players like kaptain, Hafficool, zoob and even veteran medic skeej know that they can beat these top teams - they do it in practise often enough, but up until this point it seems like they haven’t truly believed it.

Over the season the team have had their training hampered at times by kaidus’ recurrent wrist injuries, but he has been able to mentor them from the bench with HYS as a surrogate sticky slinger. Honestly, I feel their biggest hurdle as a team now at the thin end of the competition is genuine self-belief; the champion mind-set.

Towards the end of the season Haffi and zoob were able to find the big game performances that I had been calling out for since the early casts, although their overall stats might seem underwhelming I honestly don’t see single reason (heh) why this squad couldn’t be draped in gold come tomorrow evening. Let go of the fear. No tears now, kaptain, only dreams.

Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers better known as BK, have been on the up and up since Season 19 when they overturned their third place seeding to finish a close second in the Grand Final over three maps. A fairly stellar main season performance has been muddied only by underestimating France’s E-SHOCK ESPORT and their super-sub, fl1p, on Week 3’s Gullywash. I mean everyone loses to SUAVE; it’s cool.

Zebbosai has really done a remarkable job of building a team that seems to actually enjoy playing together, whilst also competing with the very best in Europe. Identifying and nurturing the talents of a rookie like AMS and giving Herr_P a chance to develop as a player and blossom as a young man has been a heart-warming thread to follow, but it would be the strict headmaster who was to take this roster to the next level...

Enter Starkie, Europe’s most toxic gamer whose seemingly innocuous comments have reduced legends of the game such as MGEMike to tears on Mumble (well I can only assume he was crying when he pulled the plug back in AYOGURL) - let’s just say he’s very direct in his assessment of the game.

Stepping in for the disheartened zappis right at the start the season, Starkie has jumped around from roamer to pocket to scout and back again. Although he is a true Premiership-level multiclasser, his biggest contribution to the team has been the demands he has placed on his team mates to up their game and actually fucking think about what they are doing.

That’s no mean feat for a team that had long prided themselves on a chaotic and reactionary playstyle. His clarity of comms and read of the game has given the team that all important strong voice on the flank, with Zebbosai now firmly holding the reigns of the combo and doing the talking (and shouting) as medic.

That late season roster reshuffle came about when Knutsson had to withdraw from the starting six to work nightshifts. The obvious downside of moving their star scout to medic has been tempered by their quick acquisition of Lithuania’s brightest talent, nukkye, who plays under the mercy of Reason and SUAVE. No longer feeling the need to babysit Henrik “The Burger Baron” Knutsson appears to have freed up a lot of slack in the BK war machine.

Although both Zebbo and nukkye’s stats are skewed by a small sample size of four maps, remember than two of those maps were against Reason Gaming. I have a feeling they are only just warming up, but ryb’s season has been distinctly tepid. Perhaps only CPLAY.Tt’s kr4tos seemed to have more trouble adapting to the new stickies (and he ended up throwing in the eyepatch). Yet, in an age where people live and die by their stats, the old king of the north continues to deliver value for his team (if not logs worthy of a spot on the refrigerator door) and can never be underestimated.

SUAVE have seemingly waltzed to the top spot on the back of a fairly lackadaisical practise schedule that slotted in around numlocked’s League of Legends career, KnOxXx’s holidays and Kiler’s gym time. They tried everything they could to donate points, using that low div shitlord, Larval Extract, and even letting KnOxXx play demoman that one time, but to no avail.

I do love to credit KnOxXx as the mastermind behind this team, but I think the reality is that it is simply the Mike Effect. The kid is too. Fucking. Good. On all the important statistical indicators he ranks as the third best soldier, which you might think is not that impressive, but he’s the fucking roamer, man! He causes all this devastation with a fraction of the heals of his supposed soldier peers.

MGEMike is the guy that allows KnOxXx to play the pussy pocket style and only get his hands dirty when the battle is already won. MGEMike is the guy that enables a geriatric retiree like numlocked to somehow emerge as the top demoman. MGEMike makes these chumps look good, man! The sad part is I’m only half-joking here...

He and SVMZI have been the bedrock foundation of this team, putting out solid performance after solid performance in Season 20 and enabling creative players like Mirelin and numlocked to showcase their talents (dropping ubers and walking to middle, respectively). In fairness, KnOxXx is actually a ruthless decision making machine, a certified master of the art of uber exchange and combined with numlocked and Mike, forms a triumvirate that is an absolute joy to see in action - Epsilon magic, baby.

Of course, someone has to be at the bottom of the heap and in my eternal caster’s quest for the negative I have pointed the finger at Kiler4fun for some less than impressive performances during the main season, but honestly what does it matter when drop only 2 points from 42. Undefeated, but for the golden cap points distribution.

Recently the defending champions have even started to practise and immediately found themselves atop the Elo Rankings; a spot that had eluded them for most of the season. There may just been too much raw talent on this team to overcome this time around, not to mention literally years of experience of winning titles for many of these players. Really, who is going to stop them?

Potentially we could see a one-sided Grand Final, and in that event I want to reassure Reason Gaming and Ze Knutsson Rollerbladers that they are definitely on the right track. Time will close the gap. I think Season 21 should be pretty incredible, but I yearn for a dedicated IPZIE-esque character to emerge and challenge the status quo, I mean really try hard to dethrone the remnants of the Epsilon Empire. I feel like it should be Starkie, but I’m not convinced it will happen this season.