Archive for November, 2009

ENSL S13W4 vs. 250 de ping

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Status: Finished

 

Match: 9L vs. 250 de ping

Date: 29th of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_metal, ns_tanith

 

9L: dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, Pizza (vax), sherpa

250 de ping: BatraxJr, cond0r, CrovaX, fitoX, Herrsheimer, Hitman, Hudson, LaTOO, Snail

 

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

 

 

Recap

 

Fortunately Pizza was able to step in, as we were unable to field six from our regular roster. Embarrassing.

 

As expected, the high pings resulted in awkward gameplay. Nothing game changing however. 250 de ping put up stiff resistance on our metal alien and tanith marine especially, but we prevailed in the end. Our metal alien started out tragically bad. No teamplay and poor individual choices let them get a big early advantage. Morphz fortunately pulled out his oldschool fading skills and we managed to get the second hive up. They camped PGs and defended res until they had JPs and HAs, but once we managed to get the third hive building they had to push — that’s when we devastated their res and won the game. Split MOTM to sherpa and morphz for cool commanding and reliable fading.

 

Preface

 

Judging by the results so far, this should be an easy one for us. However, we’ve never played against this team and we don’t really know what to expect. Add to that the high pings, as Europe plays against Argentina on an American server, and suddenly there’s a volatile mixture in the pot.

wltrs, pizza and i38

Friday, November 27th, 2009

It’s been a few weeks now, so it isn’t really news per se, but I thought I’d give a shoutout to wltrs and pizza (aka. växjo) — current and past 9L.ns players — who recently won a TF2 LAN tournament. Together with the rest of their team, Power Gaming, they claimed the top spot in the i38 TF2 tournament. It was a fairly high profile tournament with decent prizes and some e-rep on the line, so it’s nice achievement for them.

 

For those of you who don’t know, wltrs and Pizza have been playing TF2 at the highest level for a while now. After our ENSL season 10 comeback and subsequent fold, they created a TF2 team called coolclan with sherpa, Admirable, Altbst and several other familiar faces from NS. They eventually worked their way into the top 10 TF2 teams, before folding this September. Wltrs and pizza had a reputation as one of the best Scout duos in Europe and were quickly picked up by a fledgling MGO called Power Gaming. Since then they’ve been fighting for the top, being rated as one of the top 3 European TF2 teams. i38 is part of the i-series LAN parties, the biggest in the UK and one of the biggest in Europe, and wltrs and pizza got expenses paid to attend. Pretty cool!

 

According to pizza the level of play at the tournament wasn’t very high, with only six teams in attendance. Fortunately for the players and spectators, two of those were top 3 teams. Power Gaming and Team YoYoTech duked it out a total of three times, before Power Gaming could climb the podium. First in the group stages, where Team YoYoTech came out on top. Then in the upper bracket final and grand final, both of which Power Gaming won. Very close matches and good fun from what I’ve heard.

 

Tournament coverage can be found on resupply.eu, for instance this article about the grand final. The coolclan website also has a bunch of pictures from i38, featuring wltrs, pizza and more.

 

Congrats dudes!

ENSL S13W3 vs. take over

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Status: Finished

 

Match: 9L vs. take over

Date: 22nd of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_veil, ns_metal

 

9L: Almaty (merc ns_veil marine), dux, Fana, koetje, morphz, pantsu, Sublime

take over: beefcake, Danny, franky, king_yo, s4druid, Scale, x-man

 

Result: 1 – 3

Downloads: HLTV demo

 

 

Recap

 

Not a good day in 9L land. With three commanders you would imagine we have it covered, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. Sherpa lost his connection to Steam and couldn’t reconnect, while our two other comms were nowhere to be seen. And if that wasn’t enough, the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join on our ns_veil marine round. We tried our best to cope under the circumstances and I think we did fairly well, but it wasn’t enough.

 

I’m actually pretty happy with our alien rounds, even if the score doesn’t reflect it. We lost both rounds, but it was mostly due to specific mistakes. Our scouting was abysmal, letting them get PGs up all over the map without any opposition and my Fading was worse than ever. There’s a good chance you’ll be seeing me do something else in our next matches. With some more practice I’m confident we can work out these issues and more however. Taking on Saunamen in the semi final is going to be a monumental task, but we’re going to give it our best shot.

 

As for a quick and dirty recap, here goes: We started out as alien on ns_veil, with a spunky new strat. We controlled the game fairly well early game, but let them get a PG up in C12 unopposed. They quickly reacted to the Hive being dropped and with me completely failing as Fade, it was game over. Second round marine we decided to shotgun rush, as we didn’t have a comm. Unfortunately the plugin malfunctioned and refused to let Sublime join the team, so we had to do it with five players. We made a good effort, but failed to kill the hive. After a quick map change, take over agreed to replay the last round. After a lengthy debate between the teams, we got Almaty from UGO to merc as commander. We tried to play it properly, but as is often the case when you play with a comm you’ve never played with before, things got very confusing. We pretty much got rolled and the score was 2-0 to take over.

 

Change of scenery to ns_metal, with 9L starting as aliens again. This was pretty much a repeat of the ns_veil round. Solid control early game, followed by horrible Fading and confusion mid to late game. On marines we once again opted to go for the cheesy shotgun rush, after some group therapy on vent (read: rage). Take over quickly realized what we were doing and dropped SCs. Hilarity ensued, but in the end we managed to come out on top through mixed skill, luck and OP mines. Round very much worth watching.

 

Thanks to take over for replaying the round where the plugin malfunctioned and to Almaty for stepping in as merc one round.

 

Preface

 

This week’s top match and Group B’s deciding match, as old school meets new school. We’ll be facing take over, the recently formed clan that stole franky from us earlier this season. We’ve been slowly but steadily improving lately, while they’ve been simmering on a reliably high level since day one. There’s no denying that they’re the favourites going into this match, but we’re going to do our best to put those predictions to shame.

 

Not only is this going to be a very exciting match to play and watch, it’s also of great importance to both teams. The winner of this match is likely going to win the group, and thereby getting the number one seed for the semi finals. A likely prediction would be that the winner of this match faces UGO, while the loser faces Saunamen. While both Saunamen and UGO are formidable opponents, UGO seems like the easier route to the final. I’m sure both teams are well aware of this, and the combination of prestige and rewards should make it a very tense match indeed.

ENSL S13W2 vs. Tuxedo Men

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

Status: Finished

 

Match: 9L vs. Tuxedo Men

Date: 15th of November 2009, 20:00 CET

Maps: ns_origin, ns_veil

 

9L: dux, Fana, morphz, Oetel, pantsu, sherpa, Sublime

Keen Edge: Dw, Hanzo, jiriki, Maxx, psyc0mus, scary_jeff, Sonder

 

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

 

Recap

 

Another rough performance that still left us with all the points. The forfeit timer actually almost ran out the first round, as three of our players were having connection problems. From there on and out it was a rollercoaster of good and bad. We got some good teamwork going at times, but constant small mistakes kept holding us back. Still, it was a fun and at times challenging match to play, and that’s really all you can ask for.

 

The last round of the HLTV demo got cut off, but you’re only missing a couple of minutes of spawncamping after I run into the hive. Not entirely sure what happened, but I’m guessing the HLTV disconnected from the server before it was able to catch up to the HLTV delay.

ENSL S13W1 vs. Keen Edge

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

Status: Finished

 

Match: 9L vs. Keen Edge

Date: 5th of November 2009, 22:30 CET

Maps: ns_eclipse, ns_origin

 

9L: dux, Fana, JustMe, morphz, Sublime, wltrs

Keen Edge: Arj, Chb, Cursed, huhuh, marmotte, Meyfarth, Terra

 

Result: 4 – 0

Downloads: HLTV demo

 

Recap

 

This was a bit of a strange one, as it was played entirely on a whim. We’d been struggling with arranging a date and time for the match, as kE was unable to field a team on the default time, and we didn’t have any commanders available on thursday, friday or saturday. On thursday however, it just so happened that we had JustMe — of late BM fame — practicing with us. I noticed that kE were also playing, and decided to give it a go. JustMe isn’t formally on our team, but kE allowed him to play (fair play gents). A bit of a risky move since we’d never played with him before, but that didn’t turn out to be a problem at all.

 

Rusty we may be, we were still the overwhelming favourites. This turned out to be an accurate description, as the match was pretty one-sided. It wasn’t very exciting, so I’ll spare you the details. JustMe did great as comm, especially considering neither him nor us knew what to expect from each other and wltrs brought the ownzor. Our Alien teamplay was also pretty decent — definitely improved in the last few weeks. Sublime’s Lerk was especially deadly. In the end I think wltrs deserves MOTM for his Marine on origin, but Sublime was only a hair behind. My Fading was terrible, but at least I didn’t die this time. Improvement!

 

Nec0, from the Korean team Demonic Soul, made a short highlights clip from the match. Great idea, so creds to him for that. There were some problems with the HLTV demos on ENSL, but that should be fixed now. The file on ninelegends.com contains both maps and all rounds in any case. I’d also like to thank x-man for reffing on very short notice, even when he didn’t have a proper computer available.

Another year, another comeback

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

It’s no secret that we’ve been at it again lately, playing some games and getting revved up for NS2. We’ve even joined what is probably the last NS tournament ever, the thirteenth season of the European Natural Selection League. We were there in the beginning, albeit under the knife guise, so it seems fitting that we return for the proper ending too. Fortunately, several other teams have also been feeling the NS addiction return and it looks like we have a lot of matches to look forward to.

 

Now some of you reading this may be thinking “wow, deja vu… didn’t this already happen?”. Which is of course partly true. About a year ago, during ENSL Season 10, we also made a short return to NS. We went through trials and tribulations, from the lowest lows of drama to the highest highs of championship matches. In the end, through an almost miraculous combination of blind luck, latent skill and dogged perseverence, we managed to claim the title. Against all odds we beat The Sproggalots — who had 4-0ed us earlier in the season — and added another golden e-trophy to our collection.

 

A lot of good times were had, but winning let the air out of the balloon and we once again sunk back down into the quagmire of inactivity.

 

But now, we’re back again! Our last adventure has apparently given people big expectations. Unfortunately — I feel it’s appropriate to start with the bad — we’re in no shape to fulfill those expectations. It’s been over a year since the last time most of us played, and even then we were far from our top form. Even worse, the only past 9L-er who’s still on form, franky, (AKA. Kira or iwb) decided to join our main opponents. I can’t blame him for that though. The lack of a good Fade is especially hurting us, as I haven’t been able to get anywhere near decent in the couple of weeks we’ve played so far.

 

Since we started playing, we’ve gone through a little bit of drama and a lot of heavy defeats during practice. As the season is starting this week already, it’s going to be very difficult for us to get our form back in time for the tough matches. As it is, we’re likely aiming for the semi finals, possibly even a bronze finish if we can get back on form in time. Who knows though, another miracle may be waiting for us just over the horizon.

 

Now for the good. We’ve been placed in the arguably weaker group of the two, Group A. Keeping up with Take Over — our main opponents in Group A — will be tough, but we’re definitely going to try. The real kicker is the players we’ve managed to scoop together. When we started talking about mounting another comeback, I had no idea we’d be able to get such a legendary roster. Packed to the brim with old school ownerers, ready to mangle the opposition. Any experienced competitive player will certainly stop to think for a second when they see b1, Fana, dux, morphz, mu, Oetel, pantsus, sherpa, Sublime and wltrs join the server!

 

Will it last? That’s anybody’s guess. All I know is that we’re going to give it our best shot and have some fun together. Our first match is against another recently returned old team, Keen Edge. It’s probably being played this Sunday at 20:00 CET. I’ll post an update when I know for sure. An HLTV should be available for anyone wanting to watch us try to stumble our way back into the limelight.