It’s been several months since we last saw Highlander played in ETF2L. The highly successful Community Challenge saw thousands of players getting a fresh taste of competitive TF2, and concluded with our pub heroes SNSD taking the crown. With such great success and so many new players getting into TF2, we couldn’t resist giving the community a new challenge and opportunity to play competitive TF2. Therefore, we are happy to announce the opening of our inaugural ETF2L Highlander season!

Prizes

Alright, we might as well get this out of the way…… Yes, there will be in-game items awarded to all participants to finish their season, courtesy of Valve! More details will be provided at a later date.

Dates and Setup

Sign-ups are currently open and will close on October 30th, with week 1 starting on Sunday November 6th. We aim for a short and sweet five-week regular season with a promotion/relegation system and play-offs to resolve ties.

As mentioned before, everyone is welcome to take part. The ETF2L veterans (who might still remember the 2009 Highlander cups) are as welcome as the new Free-2-Play folks. We will seed teams into different groups and divisions based on their experience.

North Americans and other non-European teams are welcome to participate, providing they are willing to play during European times and on European servers if necessary. We will group regions together as much as possible in order to ease scheduling and avoid server problems.

How To Sign Up

To sign up to the league, you first need to be part of a Highlander (9v9) team with a minimum of 10 players and a maximum of 20 players on the roster. You can find or form a team in the Highlander recruitment forum. Once you are in a team, your leader or deputy can sign your team up to the competition here.

Your team can request a division and skill bracket when signing up. Division 5 and 6 are the best choices for most teams who are starting out with competitive TF2. Division 4 is good for those who already have experience with Highlander, while division 3 is best for trained Highlander teams and those with 6v6 experience. Divisions 1-2 are meant for the top teams, so don’t sign up to those unless you are very confident in your team. Teams can send result screenshots from Highlander matches to [email protected], to prove that they belong in the requested division. Please do so before sign-ups close on the 30th of October.

For detailed information on how to create an ETF2L account, create a team and add players to the roster, please visit the FAQ page.

Map Schedule

Due to the length of the season, we have decided to only include some of the most familiar and widely liked maps, although in the future we would like to experiment with newer maps and add them to the map pool.

Week 1: Badwater – Viaduct

Week 2: Viaduct – Upward

Week 3: Upward – Gravel Pit

Week 4: Gravel Pit – Steel

Week 5: Steel – Badwater

Due to a recent bug relating to overtime capping on the maps Gravel Pit and Steel, we cannot guarantee that (the official versions of) Gravel Pit and Steel will remain in the map pool. We are hoping for an official fix before the maps are to be played.

Unlocks

All weapons allowed.

Set hats banned. These are the affected hats: [picture]

Any weapons released after this announcement will be banned until the season ends.

Additional Info

You can find all the relevant info and rules for Highlander on this rule page, and the general league rules can be found here. Make sure you read it through! An updated Highlander config to be used for all matches will be released soon.

If you are looking to learn more about competitive TF2 (especially 6on6), you can find valuable information in the Training & Tactics forum. Be sure to check out the player guide and the new team leader guide.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact an admin.

Feedback

As always, we encourage the community to give feedback to us, especially with the Highlander scene being relatively new and experimental. Please take the time to visit the links below and share your thoughts on the topics presented.

If you wish to give feedback on anything other than what has been suggested by us, feel free to create a new thread. Your feedback is very much appreciated and necessary for making the league better.

Good luck to all teams that sign up, we hope to meet you on the battlefield in a few weeks!