The topic of Overwatch has become all too pervasive in Team Fortress 2 circles in recent weeks and months. Whatever your expectations are for Blizzard’s much-hyped, soon-to-be-released team-based “shooter” there is no denying that it is already having an impact on our competitive scene.

It is a polarizing prospect that seems to have many of our greatest talents going weak at the knees with presumptions of easy eSports dollar, and equally as many dismissing the title and declaring their undying love for a Team Fortress 2 that is supposedly on the cusp of a matchmaking revolution.

It hasn’t been all idle speculation either. Players are forming new alliances. We have already seen The Last Resort’s scout NiCO picked up along with former E-SHOCK team mates DeGuN and baud by melty, and I have heard of several potential Overwatch rosters on both sides of the Atlantic featuring top tier players past and present from our very own competitive family.

The clandestine whispers have been just about audible if you listen hard enough, but post i55 it turned in to quite a racket when it became apparent that Epsilon eSport had been courting their former Team Fortress 2 players with the aim of putting together an Overwatch roster. These advances have already thinned the ranks of Reason Gaming and killed nerdRage.tf2 outright.

If this all sounds like a disastrous turn of events to you, don’t panic just yet. As it transpires, the players that have been pledging their allegiance to Epsilon’s pre-emptive Overwatch team are also more than a little interested in playing a game without assisted aiming in in the meantime.

That’s right… Epsilon are coming back to Team Fortress 2… sort of!

This all seems to have largely come about due to Sideshow leaking all the top secret gossip about several tournaments with significant cash prize pools that the competitive community’s powers that be have been quietly planning in the teamfortress.tv Slack. I’ve already said too much…

The silver-tongued caster of the season turned powerbroker has not only spilled the beans, but he smeared them all over Sebastian Barton and Michael Adams who have been frantically trying to put the band back together. The as yet unconfirmed roster that will (probably) be playing in ETF2L Season 22 and the unannounced cash money tournament(s) is looking something like this:

KnOxXx

KnOxXx numlocked

numlocked Mike

Mike GeaR

GeaR schocky

schocky Starkie

I say unconfirmed because apparently this has all happened so fast, no one has really bothered to ask schocky or GeaR yet. You should be worried too, because the team likely won’t happen without one or both of them.

You can also expect to see the usual contingent of backups and familiar faces in the squad; Raymon and Tek are prime candidates for warming the bench, and with Mike apparently under a Welsh blood/cum oath to Coleman to play for TEZC this season even ShaDowBurn’s name has been bandied about as a potential acquisition.

The perfect storm of numlocked having devastated Turkey’s kebab industry and being released from his LoL contract, an Overwatch reunion and Sideshow’s pillow talk might just have heralded the return of the Europe’s kings – a fully accredited super team. All we need now is for them to be terrible at Overwatch… or Overwatch to be terrible.

I’d personally like to start the speculation about how active this roster will be and whether it will stifle or encourage competition amongst Europe’s elite. I’m also starting a petition to change their team name from the current moniker, scream2frag, which most definitely should have been left in the annals of ETF2L history.

The hesitancy to assemble under the Epsilon eSports banner almost certainly comes from the fact that they have tentatively agreed to play Dirty Brink 2: League of Watchmakers or whatever it is called and the management would like them to be focused on said potential cash cow. No one wants to see Greg Champagne blow his cork.

If you thought that pun was bad, let me just remind you that we all know the real cash cow is Team Fortress Moo. Take us to the Promised Land, Valve, and someone please put me out to pasture.