[videogamesteroids-blog]

i’m dead

sorry everyone, real life is taking precedence over even writing articles at TF.TV now. not sure if I will continue doing this.

sorry not sorry

[videogamesteroids-blog]

The Season that Will Hopefully be Forgotten

Its been a really long time since I last thought about TF2. After the season ended, I went on a very long video game vacation, mostly to pursue things like work and music. I came back to what can only be described as the shitshow that season 18 promises to be. Some key points so far: Lange "quitting" the game through a pretty rough youtube video, Shooter throwing the book at the community to force participation in ESEA, CEVO dropping TF2 from their league after lackluster sign ups, and the threat of the death of Invite and subsequently our beloved LAN event with the best of NA TF2. All of these things have rocked the community over and over, met with outrage and shitposting. Please God, kill me now.

Where do I start? At the place most people have revered as the "end all, be all" of competitive TF2, the tippy top: ESEA Invite. The season almost started without the third division, mostly due to the lack of teams in IM and Open, but also with the absence of the caliber of teams to even play in the division itself. Classic Mixup calls it quits after almost 4 years of playing together, leaving B4nny with only 2 teams left to challenge the throne. The rest of Invite looks like it was scraped off the bottom of the barrel. 6cuties, The Hurricane, and Wood Pig all drop from the division, and with Mix^ also leaving, it has caused a profound skill vacuum in the division.

The only competitive team that is "new" to Invite this season is Cisco Adlers Balls, the team that won IM handily last season. Boasting a roster with a lot of experience, nobody questions their place in Invite this season. Boink is probably my favorite roamer of all time. Thats all I'm going to say.

The new Mad Men roster appears to be a Frankenstein version of 6cuties and some of the Mad Men circle jerk, but because Pharaoh removed be from his friends list like an asshole I have no idea who is actually playing besides him and Mike. I assume Bronze and Shrugger will make appearances as well, but as to the rest of the team I'm not at all positive. I'm too lazy to look at forums and scrims. But if I had to guess, I think Mad Men and Cisco Adler will be battling for the 4th spot to LAN this season. 

Ding Dong Daddies enters their second season in Invite after going 3-13 last season, with a bunch of new pickups. Mostly I don't know if Phorofor can handle the pace of Invite and the stress put on medics in this division, but the rest of the team looks pretty solid. If this was an IM team, I would say they would be at the top, no problem. This season in Invite, they might hang out around 6th or 7th which would be better than their essential last place finish in season 17 (6cuties was dead very early on). Congrats, boys: you're no longer the worst team in Invite. You did it. Progress.

Runaway 5 makes a return appearance to Invite, albeit with a very different roster. Skarlett and Overseer make the return as some of the only members of the original R5 roster, with Paddie and Chingoo returning to Invite after the death of the Hurricane. My boy Rikachu makes his Invite debut this season, and he's always been a great demoman. Brandon is the only question mark here, as I have never seen him play TF2 before. This 15 year old prodigy is going to have to prove hes got the balls to hang in Invite...Oh wait nevermind there are only like three teams in Invite this season he'll have to worry about. Godspeed.

The Yomies finished fourth in IM last season, and with the automatic move-up of Cisco Adler and the "death" of Japanifest Destiny (heh, y'all got tricked) and the actual death of Blockback Mountain, the boys have found themselves in Invite. Besides the new team with MarmadukeGrylls (which actually might be pretty decent) I would have to say the Yomies are going to be pretty outclassed this season. ATT is pretty great, Zilly is a decent medic, and Rekuso and CJ are both good soldiers. This is another team like Ding Dong Daddy that would have made really good IM teams maybe 2 seasons ago, but because the skill bar across divisions is rapidly declining at the top its not surprising to find them in Invite.

Hungry Hungry Ogres might have some good people on it if the rumors are true, but even with the god that is Marmaduke, I don't see them breaking into the top half of Invite. They'll sit on top of the "bottom of the barrel" teams but other than that...I'm just talking out of my ass here.

I will be committing to writing power rankings for IM this season on TF.TV, passing the Open torch to Dr Shadowpuppet (maybe? not sure). Tery will continue writing for Invite this season, lets hope he gets the interviews he wants. 

I also will be streaming IM matches throughout the season @ http://www.twitch.tv/londoncalling_

Good Luck TF2, a lot of people have spent a lot of money to make you keep being a "competitive" game.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

What I've Learned this Season

The end of the regular season was a little underwhelming for me, mostly because it was exciting to watch other teams try to make playoffs in their respective divisions, and some just missed the mark. Goldman Sachs died before they had a chance to stay in the game and make it to playoffs, which stole my thunder. We had built so much hype around this team and elevated the drama to the point where if they DIDN'T make it, it was going to be a big deal. Pangy and I both expected them to be in it, but after all this talk of them playing and all the quiet little jabs the team had poking them, I guess they just didn't want to play anymore.

That sucks. That makes me wonder how much the things I have been writing have hurt or helped a team and their morale. They had a rough season, even after they had such big expectations for themselves. The losses they suffered should have served as a wake up call and instead became this unbearable weight that eventually killed the team. 

I also felt bad when I was talking about Sparkle Bunnies cutting Lydi, even going so far as to quoting a pastebin between Lydi and her friend. I painted them in kind of a bad light and stirred up a conversation that was largely negative. I learned my lesson though, when Cake Dough Cheddar cut cMw and picked up Dingo, I only mentioned it very briefly. cMw was cut because of some in game performance as well as some personality clashes, perfectly valid reasons for cutting someone. But the fact that Dingod was picked up in place of him and Lush moved to demo would have caused people to assume the worst (ie cutting their way to the top). It may possibly mean that this team will win Open, because Dingo has insane demo DM and his movement is god tier. 

Even though I learned a lot about team dynamics and power ranking politics this season, through my own experiences I feel that I've grown as a player as well. Mechanically and in game I don't feel as if I've changed that much, which kind of bespeaks to hitting a ceiling of some sort, and to be honest unless I play in Invite and am forced to get better I don't think I'm going to get all that good at surviving better, which is my main issue when playing medic. I have learned how to play a bit more calmly, and to start losing with grace. Our 3 losses this season were all disappointments to be sure, mostly the two against Cisco Adlers Balls and Blockback Mountain. I didn't really think we could have beaten Block's team at the time, but I expected to do a bit better against them than getting rolled. With Cisco Adler, I wasn't really sure what to expect but we were having a lot of trouble with metalworks, and when it came down to it we just kind of dropped the ball as a team. A lot of silly mistakes and frantic comms don't make for a good game. The game against God Complex we probably played the worst all season, which is a trend that continued every match when we would inevitably drop the first round to teams we probably shouldn't be losing rounds to.

These losses didn't really upset anyone too much on the team, nobody really came up with bullshit excuses as to why we lost them other than we didn't play well. I felt that in the past, a loss could spark a downward spiral for everyone, and the general mood would be pretty low for the next week until another win would lighten everyone's mood. Learning how to lose and not let that effect how your team plays in scrims and in matches is one of those things I never really did well with in the past, and this season it seems like I've found the right group of people. Does it suck to lose? Absolutely, but you don't have to let that tear your whole team apart or have people start quitting because its not fun anymore.

This post season is going to be fairly exciting, I'm eager to see how these first matches will go, and if everything goes according to my predictions (not likely) then we'll be playing God Complex first. Revenge time.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

Match Watching Schedule

So I actually have very little idea of how many people actually read this shit, but I'm going to try this out to see if people interested in this kind of stuff will be better informed. This week I'm going to schedule some of my free time for match watching from Open/IM/maybe some Invite (in the future) matches in the next week for power ranking purposes. It was fun doing it a few times, so maybe I'll start to make it a regular thing.

the stream is http://www.twitch.tv/londoncalling_

edit: I will start streaming in the morning on 8/28 @ 10a PST/ 1p EST

match watching schedule for thursday 8/28

IM blockback vs revenge of the yomies (4-3) metalworks the grime vs cisco adlers balls (2-5) metalworks goldman sachs vs satan take the wheel (5-1) metalworks goldman sachs vs god complex (-) viaduct

OPEN airheads vs kawaii 5-o (5-2) metalworks cake dough cheddar vs sparkle bunnies (-) metalworks dddddddddddddddddddddd vs sparkle bunnies (-) viaduct kawaii 5-o vs i paid for the wrong wowzers (-) viaduct

for Monday 9/1

IM Satan Take the Wheel vs Revenge of the Yomies (-) viaduct

OPEN Kawaii 5-o vs Sparkle Bunnies (-) viaduct Graveguns Aneurysm vs Airheads (-) viaduct Siblings with Benefits vs Rolling with Rolling (-) viaduct

[videogamesteroids-blog]

Mid-Season Blues

By this time in the season, this is typically when teams die or start making big roster changes. This season isn't any different, a lot of the teams that aren't very obviously successful are either calling it quits or cutting their way to a win, in which case some of those teams will find themselves more successful than the first four weeks of the season. In this poorly timed but well inspired article, I'll talk about a few of these pick ups of teams attempting to salvage their season.

Starting in Open, the most notable and hilarious of these attempts was made by Bsc's team, which turned into a crazy disaster. After losing to Do It For Bill (now known as luca goers) Bsc turned around and cut just about his entire team and brought in some old teammates to assuage the pain of an upset loss. Jokes were made that Bsc was hurrying along the death of his team by cutting no less than 3 players (maybe 4? it is unclear) until match time against Off Top came up and Bsc realized he had paid for the wrong wowzers. Closer inspection of this impostor wowzers showed that he had last signed in Dec 31st, 1969 and had never played on any league teams in any division of any game, making this the first real evidence of space time continuum activity in the world. Unfortunately, because the paypal account they were using to pay for his league fees was shared with Wowzers and his brother who had used the paypal balance to buy Lucky Charms marshmallows off of Amazon, they were unable to pay him up in time for the match. Bsc begged Defiance to come back to play one more match, despite the fact that Defiance left the team after Bsc cut his lady friend Hyphen from the team just a day before. The result was Hans Fan Group playing a 5v6 with their new roster up until the last round, where Defiance joined and closed out the match after he was done playing his Dota game to end the travesty of a game 5-0. Since this funny debacle, the roster has solidified and hopefully Bsc can keep the team alive up through the post season, unless he decides to pay up some more time travelling ESEA players.

A more positive pick up was made by Pinoy Boys with the absence of their roaming soldier Chunkey (he will be missed) with IM champion BroKing to fill in. BroKing has given up the soldier role to play scout in Open after his failed debut in Invite on 6cuties this season and then diving off the sinking ship that is Boys Anus Smell Bottle. I'm honestly intrigued to see how he will do on scout, I have no doubt his DM is just as good as his soldier DM which can be insane at times. My biggest criticism of the king of bros has always been his timing being off, where he can be a little too eager to jump in and make space before his team is ready, and instead turn over a point or two with the subsequent backlash. Pinoy Boys have been having a pretty solid season so far, and with his old teammate Zambler, BroKing could be the change that this team needs to push all the way to the Grand Final against whatever Open sandbagging team ends up there.

In IM, team death has been a running theme throughout the division's history. Usually around the middle of the season a team can decide that it won't be worth it to continue if they don't make playoffs, seeing as how a high place in IM playoffs could mean a graduation to Invite for the next season. Most teams who are just starting in IM don't always have this goal, usually saving those lofty expectations for their second or third season. This season has seen the fewest number of team deaths in recent memory, with only WELOVEANIME, LoLBEASTMODE, and BUDSQUAD dying, which leaves only JAPANIFEST DESTINY to use all caps in their team name. The rest of the teams that are getting stomped on this season will probably stick it out and keep their rosters for next season, which will be an IM division filled with Open move ups and ripe opportunities. 

Nothing 2 Prove TF2 has been a team struggling a bit this season, acknowledged by most in the division to be a solid team capable of beating most teams in the division with a select few. After beefing both of their gullywash matches, Rave (scout) ended up leaving the team after some consideration to their dedication despite N2P coming back from a 4-1 to a 5-4 victory over Revenge of the Yomies. Interestingly enough, about a week ago Mangachu got cut from Wood Pig in Invite, presenting an opportunity to change up some classes for their second half of the season. Mangachu's first match with N2P was on an alt for some strange reason, and his performance was game changing with the team. Even though they lost their first match with Mangachu, with more time playing with him (other than just one night of scrims) his presence will allow them to finish the season strong.

Invite has been less player transaction happy and the only team to die has been 6cuties very early in the season after their loss to Hurricane Fu. Ding Dong Daddy's first season in Invite has been pretty typical, with them losing just about every match so far. Wood Pig, Street Hoops, and The Mad Men are all competing for the fourth place spot, with Street Hoops looking the most promising at the moment. The most exciting matches will be in the next few weeks, where it should come down to rounds for and against to see who gets to go to the highly precedent ESEA LAN.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

Japanifest Destiny

Just for the record, Cody wanted me to name this series "Anime butts drive me nuts" or "If I see a nigga, I pull the trigga". Needless to say, his affinity for alliteration is god tier. 

Now that I will be writing about ESEA on TF.TV again, I've decided to use this space as more of a journal for my opinions about the game, and this new series that I haven't found a clever name for yet. Essentially, I would like to relate my experiences with my team this season playing in ESEA-IM and CEVO-O. We wanted to play in CEVO Main this season, but the divisions got merged. Such is life.

I also have a team or two in UGC that I hardly ever scrim with, I feel like if I put more time and effort into that team it could be good, because I do have a ton of fun with those people, but for lack of time I can't really dedicate the time to them, both writing about my experiences with that team or making them into the 1337 squad they could be.

This season I will be playing medic for Japanifest Destiny, a team formerly known as the Jews, with my buds Conductor on demo, Doll (sakura, a little girl) on pocket, Kev and zZa (pizza) on scout, and Lunacide on roamer. The team dropped their combo at the end of last season, and are bringing myself and Doll to replace them. 

Our preseason scrims were mostly against Blockback Mountain, where some days we would get rolled by them, and some days we would do well against them. I couldn't help but feel that most of our fuck ups had to do with my mistakes, and so have been endlessly pouring over my POV demos to see what I could have done wrong. Danny (Doll) talks a LOT during the course of the game, and as a pocket this is something that is very essential. But because of this, I don't feel as if I can talk a lot in some situations, and more importantly I have to learn how to communicate different information than I'm used to.

Miwo (the former medic for the Jews) and I had a really good conversation about comms in TF2 a couple months ago, where he talked about comms that benefited the whole team as opposed to mindless chatter or "wasted" information. This season, my biggest area of improvement will be communicating uber advantages, our combo's positioning (ie if we're in, getting out, etc), decisions I'm making during an uber (ie if I needed to flash another player, if I'm leaving the fight, where I'm ending the uber), and when and where our team needs to play heals during team fights. I've already been working on these things, but my problem is consistently doing these things. 

Despite my self imposed adage that weed is video game steroids, I've also tried not to be high during scrims anymore like I was doing with AG Chilluminati. Most of the time I would smoke a couple hours before scrims so that I wouldn't be too high during scrims, but just enough to keep me calm and collected. Listening to quiet chill music was another thing I would do to try to keep my head calm to make decisions in a way that wasn't frantic and not impulsive. To be honest, I have no idea if any of those things helped at all or just served to be distractions. All I know is that I can't do these things while playing with this team and feel like I'm taking it seriously.

Our first match of the season was against Sharknado, who had made significant pick ups over the off season to appear much stronger than previously. Trisk was gone but replaced by Rekuso, a roamer known for his crisp beautiful rockets and amazing jumps. Downpour and River would be replacing their old scouts, and Jodd would be replacing Psyche on medic. To me, the biggest difference in their play was directly because of all the new players. Jodd had played on the failed AG Unagi last season before returning to Open, but it seems that his instincts were better than his predecessor, who was always the weakest link on Sharknado. Either way, he played a pretty solid game despite one drop to Kev. Downpour did a fuck ton of work during the match, almost always being the last one up during fights and cleaning up the kills. 

The first half I felt like I played pretty well, but this team was electing to park pretty hard during this match for some reason. Even in situations where they could have pushed out of last because of uber advantage and even in one situation a man advantage, they just didn't. The second round of the game ended in overtime because we were forced to push because of the round timer dwindling down to nothing after 10 solid minutes of failed pushes. They ran an engineer which gave us a lot of problems, but more importantly I felt like Sharknado was just waiting for us to make a mistake instead of trying to make a play. Rekuso jumped a few times but was never successful in getting a forced uber after our suicides, but that was about it. We tried a conch push, a spy play, and sniper to no avail. When we just pushed in with uber to get the gun and force their uber, we ended up winning the round off of pure DM. At the end of the half, the score was 1-1. How fucking boring.

The second half started really well for us with a pretty decisive round win, bringing the score up 2-1. The rest of the match I started having some pretty weird connectivity problems (timing out for about 10 seconds at a time) which led to an unfortunate death to lose the round, and then a few other times in the middle of a couple fights that didn't let me get heals out. I only paused once because I knew there was no way I could fix it, and just felt like I had to deal with it. A couple times I think this effected the game to the point where we lost rounds to it, but also we were getting out played on mids a lot too. The match ended 5-2 in favor of Sharknado, a pretty embarrassing defeat to be honest. The only thing I'm mad about this match is that we didn't have time to scrim before it because it was scheduled on a Monday and that I was having performance issues that caused us to lose rounds.

Even though I've known Blueberry for a really long time, I was a little annoyed that the scheduling game came into play. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they weren't trying to get an edge on us by having us play at a somewhat inconvenient time, but its what it is. The connectivity stuff was nobody's fault but still really frustrating.

We lost because we haven't figured out how to win the spam game at mids and transitions against teams that like to approach this game in a really slow, park the bus style. Our focus fire needs a lot of work, and our playstyles are well known enough for people to counter us easily.

Our next match will be against The Subspace Emissaries on Wednesday which I hope to stream, hopefully it goes a lot differently than our match yesterday night.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

The Return

I will be returning to teamfortress.tv to write power rankings next season for ESEA Open and IM, and will be using this space mostly as opinion pieces. Stay tuned, I guess?

 Conductor and I are working on the IM awards for this season, so at least have that to look forward to. Until then, my job keeps me working a lot of days in a row and stuff right now, and I have less and less energy to write and come up with cool ideas. 

I need some medical inspiration.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

ESEA IM S16 Playoffs: The Beef, the Throws, and the Upsets

My my, this particular post season has been quite exciting and absolutely unpredictable. Just about all speculation was thrown out the door as the Meat Market solidly defeated the second, third, and fourth seed to land themselves in the Grand Final. This series of upsets was eclipsed only by Blockback Mountain's performance in the lower bracket, but were eventually defeated by Xero Error Gaming, who beat them initially in the upper bracket.

But before we talk about Mud Market's road to improbable victory, lets talk about the two defeats by Quantum Heartz that had them packing it in at 6th place this season. Both of their matches against Ding Dong Daddy and Xero Error were close 5-4 matches, with everything coming down to that last round. During the match against Ding Dong Daddy, Benk had the most relentless string of shit talk I've ever seen out of him, with sgp frequently taking the bait to reply. Normally I would never condone psychological warfare in this game of TF2, indeed: every team I'm on I discourage it from my teammates as much as possible. But watching this match, it seemed to be entirely effective because after some sloppy play by Quartz during the second half, it looked like these bros were tilted as fuck. Peyote and crew led some pretty devastating ubers that caught out Quartz more than once, and Benk was there to make sure everyone knew about it. Despite all of that, it came down to a pretty slick sniper play by Alec defending their second that was the turning point in the round that won them the match. 

Their second loss to Xero Error was another bout of throws, with Quartz playing uncharacteristically sloppy, even coming up 4-3 against Mangacrew and somehow managing to lose it. More than anything, some untimely deaths in some weird situations by Blinky and some silly bleeding on the flank was what killed it for them. Since these matches were played back to back, I would attribute their first loss getting into their heads a little more than it should have, leading to the throws that would leave them with a 1-2 record after a perfect regular season.

The Jews were one of those teams close to my heart, not just because I know most of them really well, but because Kev and zZa were my vote for the best scout pair in IM this season, and I expected them to carry Conductor to victory. Their losses in the post season was the hugest side of beef I've ever seen, watching the flank from the Jews make these crazy plays. Lunacide in particular made some intense plays against Blockback Mountain, including a sick sniper play that dropped Erika during the last round that should have won them the match, but it turned out that Miwo had gone kritz to defend last which was a classic fuck up disguised as a desperate decision. 

While I would be the first to say that medics have it hard, and that they only have so much in their power to control, both of their losses this post season can be pretty easily attributed to their combo. Miwo is a great medic, but I feel like at match time he tends to try to make these off the wall plays that are usually uncharacteristic for his otherwise conservative playstyle. These playoffs were no exception, going back to ubering Jake in some really bad places and otherwise setting up the team to fail. When you have scouts like Kev and zZa, and an up and coming roamer that makes the plays where it counts, it might pay to have a little more faith and maybe show up to scrims regularly. Not yelling, just sayin'.

Xero Error has fought the good fight, making it all the way back to the Lower Bracket Finals to lose to Ding Dong Daddy at 4-3 on process in what was the most boring match of the post season. The only thing I'm really going to say about this match is that teams that elect to "not lose" are fucking stupid and deserve to lose 4-3 after parking the bus on mid when they're up 2-1. This whole mentality of doing nothing and baiting bad pushes has been a thing for awhile, and I wish people would just play the game. But I guess when you play like you're scared of every single player on your opponents team its better to just not push than to risk fucking up a 5v6 push with 3 points capped. 

Ok, I'm done being a bitchy little girl. The IM Grand Final will be Meat Market vs Ding Dong Daddy sometime next week, with Ding Dong Daddy having to win both badlands and viaduct, and Mud Market only having to win on badlands. Bl4nk is looking at his second IM Grand Champ title, and Ding Dong Daddies will be looking to make up for the 5-3 loss against MudMudMUD and to take home that fat check. I'll be doing a more in depth match prediction later tonight.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

ESEA IM S16 Playoffs UR 2 / LR 1

The first round of the IM playoffs was pretty decent, with some interesting results. The only upset in my mind was the game between Meat Market and Xero Error Gaming TF2, where the Mud Market handily won 5-1. The first half came down to the mids most of the time, but the biggest culprit had to be the multiple failed kritzkrieg attempts by Xero Error, even opting to run kritz while defending their last at one point, which is usually a bad decision. It appeared that a lot of the kritzkriegs failed because of a lack of good information for the combo, where a lot of that critical damage went straight into empty space. The second half seemed to be a little more even, with the rounds boiling down to stereotypical metalworks stalemates with each team going between their second points and catching their opponents out during transitions. Why is this an upset? Well, in my opinion Xero Error should have the best combined DM of any team in IM besides Quantum Heartz, but these little hiccups during transitions were all that was needed for Meat Market to push right in. BroKing had a good game, as well as their god-tier scout CheesyMacgyver. 

The rest of the matches were pretty predictable, although the match between Subspace Emissaries and Ding Dong Daddy was incredibly entertaining to watch. Peyote is my first pick as a medic to watch this post season, as I believe he is the core of that team more than anyone else. The plays during this match were huge and hilarious, but more importantly it shows us that once again The Subspace is fuckin real. These dudes have improved exponentially each season, and had some surprising upsets during the regular season to make it this far. Their match this round against Blockback Mountain will be an exciting one for sure.

At the start of this season, I really had no idea what to expect out of Blockback Mountain. Over the course of watching these guys, the only thought I have is that I wish they weren't so gimmicky. ChinGoo and Pie Hero are capable of making some decent plays, but time and again the whole "bait the team so the demo that hits every pipe can come in and clean up" strategy is working less and less. This round on snakewater against The Subspace Emissaries will be one I hope to cast, as it is one of those matches that I think could greatly influence how the rest of the post-season goes depending on the outcome. For some reason, my money is on Blockback to win out over the Emissaries, just judging from how much pamphlet threw during their last match and how big the Blockback flank can really go. Cbn is going to be a big threat on these mids, methinks.

The upper round has the biggest potential for an upset, but to be honest I think its going to end in some pretty obvious results. Quantum Heartz has been on fire all season, where their playstyle of taking every fight they can is accented quite nicely with Chriz and TicTack's big damage output and Sherman and Romeo's +forward tendencies. While I think that this can also be their undoing in a lot of ways, after watching them win 5v6 just about every mid against Blockback (with SGP jumping around like a giant retard constantly) I think the fact that no matter how obvious their strategy or playstyle might be, there isn't a team out there in IM that has quite figured out how to counter it. Ding Dong Daddy has the coordination to give Quartz a good game coupled with the fact that snakewater is one of Peyote's strongest maps, but when its all said and done, TicTack is a god tier pocket and Chriz can make the most out of the inevitable kritzkrieg from Blinky. 

The Jews vs The Mud Market will be the first time these teams have faced each other this season, surprisingly. Of the two Upper Round matches, I think this one will be closer than some people may think. I always think of the Meat Market's playstyle with one word: smug. When they spawn camped Xero Error in their forward and somehow got like 3 kills out of the gate, I could smell the self satisfaction through my computer, it was so strong. The Jews haven't been scrimming as much lately but Kev and zZa will never lose their effectiveness when it comes down to game time. When I stack up all these players against eachother though, I don't see Meat Market coming away with more than 3 rounds, although if miwo starts throwing it could end up being a whole hell of a lot closer than that

r5 vs Xero Error could go either way pending on if Rikachu's sister comes home and destroys his internet, and if Sandy can somehow go about not dropping Mangachu when he wants to get aggressive. Both Boink and Mangachu will probably make mids pretty unbearable for r5, but as long as they can keep people up to defend 2nd, the match will be close. If not, expect a swift victory for Xero Error where literally every mid will determine the outcome of the round.

Open playoffs have been a joke, with most of the first round resulting in forfeits and only a few good matches here and there. Hopefully within the next couple rounds we'll see some close games, and maybe even get to see one of our Open hopefuls dethrone the Arizona Iced Out Boys before the grand final.

Next week I'll hopefully be casting Blockback Mountain vs The Subspace Emissaries depending on when the match gets scheduled, and if I have time the open match between Arizona Iced Out Boys and Goldman Sachs. Stay tuned! 

[videogamesteroids-blog]

Get Zone'd

I apologize for the lack of posts, I've been working a ton (like 10 days in a row) and doing little except eating and working, which blows. Never grow up, it sucks.

But outside of all that shit, I've been zonin' super harsh lately! Zoning can be many things, namely a tactic in TF2 where you herd the enemy team into a position where its easy to collapse on them or they are forced to back out completely, awarding free real estate. While watching Gls's stream, I heard this call for the first time by Mad Chad and was instantly confused as to what it meant, After talking to some friends who were smart enough to explain it to me, I've decided to start reinventing the term to include my daily injection of video game steroids, as well as a few other things. Here are some examples:

"Yo, put that kid in the zone, bruh!"

"I'm so zoned right now, but I could zone some more!"

"Damn, that guy is in the harsh zone fo sho"

"Listen, I'm just trying to zone down with my bros!"

"Careful, don't overzone!"

#zonedisthenewstoned

I encourage you to use this term in your everyday life.

Season 16 is all but in the books as far as the regular season is concerned with all of the remaining matches for every division is being wrapped up in the next week. The LAN teams have been decided at this point, with the final seeding looking pretty competitive. Street Hoops has emerged as the fourth place seed, stomping both Wood Pig (now known as yolotech) and Rent-a-Homies in the second half of the season to finish with what should be a 10-6 record with their final matches against Classic Mixup and WELOVEANIME. Not too bad to have a positive record in your first season of invite, 20b!

The other 3 LAN teams were pretty much decided before the season started, but it was cool to see the other 6 teams battle it out to achieve ultimate glory in Dallas, TX. The LAN event will being on June 27th, where all of my friends and I will stay inside on what will undoubtedly be a beautiful day to see some sick plays live. Maybe I'll have a BBQ and put it up on the big screen and nerd out super hard.

IM has a few matches left to play, with a rematch between Blinky and Seanbud as the last really exciting match, mostly because its the only thing left before Quantum Heartz will claim a perfect season before claiming their first seed for playoffs. BUDSQUAD vs Quantum Heartz will be tonight at 9:30p PST as part of the Buds' double header night to finish off the season. There are only a few other teams that have any matches left to play, namely Blockback Mountain, who look like they will squeek into playoffs with an upset 5-4 victory over The Jews on gullywash. Depending on who the get matched up for on their viaduct match (either Sharknado, 120, or a rematch with The Jews) this most likely means they will secure the 8th spot and for all intents and purposes the seeds are pretty much decided already. Meat Market will probably get shoved down into 8th place, but it hardly matters at this point. 

First round of IM playoffs will probably look like this:

Quantum Heartz vs Meat Market

Xero Error Gaming TF2 vs Blockback Mountain

Ding Dong Daddy (aka Terminal Chillness) vs The Jews (MOTW for 1st round IMO)

The Subspace Emissaries vs Smoke Threed Everyday (r5) 

I plan on casting at least two of these matches, and will put up times and dates when that happens. Hopefully I can get some homies to cast with me, but if I have to enter the solo zone its all good. I'm an expert zoner.

Open playoffs are somewhat of a joke, with the prerequisite to making playoffs being more of an issue of whether your team is alive more than your record, but nevertheless my prediction still stands that Arizona Iced Out Boys will win pretty easily. Not much else to be said about that except that The Grime and SYOPs will probably be in second and third place, and if nothing else I hope they meet in playoffs so I can cast a game of theirs. 

What I think is most interesting about this season of Open is that we pretty much sacrificed a whole division in order to make IM and Invite way more interesting. This is the first season I can think of that hasn't really been that interesting, with a flat and predictable story that had a lot of potential to be riveting but ended up being boring. Either this is the evolution of the TF2 player base in action, or every other competitive Open team just ended up playing in CEVO. The latter is probably not true, considering a lot of the top CEVO teams in both Open and Main are also playing in ESEA. 

Hopefully next season's Open will be a bit more exciting and a little less predictable, but congrats to the mid-Open teams that will get an IM roster next season. You "earned" it.

CEVO playoffs have already started, and will probably be finished before ESEA even starts their playoff matches. You can find the brackets for Main and Open from these links, as well as playoff info here. Also, Happy birthday to CEVO | Pipher last week!

Stay tuned for some more write-ups as we get down to some playoff predictions for both ESEA and CEVO, as well as some sassy as fuck casts where I sound like I know more about this game than I actually do.

pz!

[videogamesteroids-blog]

Hero of the common man and frequent injector of video game steroids, my man Rick has started posting some very chill dnb and other such musics on this youtube channel. I dig it so much i wanted to give him a little plug. Check it out.

Also, new feature article coming out tomorrow and later we revisit Invite to see what LAN is going to look like :3

[videogamesteroids-blog]

The Conductor Corner (big gay baby's diaper talk)

by Cody "Conductor" "Dongs" Roth

Hello again you people - you may have noticed that I haven't really been around much lately (or haven't been writing anything at least); I don't have much else to do on this glorious Easter so here we go. First off I'm gonna talk about a couple things I just feel like addressing and then I'm gonna throw around the upper end of IM and go over what I think about them.

So first thing's first, "journalism" and how it pertains to this community. I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but for me it's honestly been pretty easy to forget that the divisions of tf2 that I'm not playing in even exist, Open in particular. Now is that just because high open is currently being occupied by lower level players than it has been in the past or because there's just really nobody talking about it? I'm feeling pretty compelled to think it's the latter. ESEA having dropped the news section has really been a big deal - sure we're still here and obviously still playing the game, but I've had so many people tell me that in the past they would really try to improve and put forth their best because they loved getting to see themselves talked about in the latest articles or having their team put into a power ranking - with an absence of people writing that incentive isn't there anymore. When london and I stopped writing (well, london still writes so that's a lie but not the usual stuff) part of me was sort of expecting somebody to rise up from the masses and take over our spots, and , well, I guess that just never happened. While it may just be a motivation issue for me, surely there are other people still playing who are invested in what's going on and are willing to give it a go; so I guess my question is this, what's stopping any of you guys and gals out there from taking a swing at writing? I'd personally love to see some more people getting involved with this side of things, but I don't know if people just can't justify the time commitment with getting paid or if they're scared of people rejecting their opinions or what.

Now that I'm done with my spiel, let's get down to what I originally started writing this article for - the upper competitors of IM and what playoffs are shaping up to look like. I'm honestly a little disappointed in this season; scrims in the preseason between all the top teams were really close, and it was looking to be one of the most competitive seasons of IM to date. But things happen, as they always do, and some teams got better, some teams regressed, some teams died, and now we're left with what looks to be a, once again, pretty schismatic division. I'm gonna run through these teams in order of what their ESEA seeding is because I don't care to do a formal power ranking right now, but I'll give some of my thoughts on them and criticisms of their play just so we can get something going for people to talk about (the forums have been dreadfully boring). As always, I tend to focus on negatives over positives and what can be improved, so if I sound like I'm just ripping into people and being a bit harsh try not to take it to heart, hell maybe you can even try and improve from it - nobody ever seems to be interested in that.

1. Quantum Heartz

Ah yes, blinky's team, the current undefeated first seed. They're an undeniably strong team within this division and I do like them on a number of fronts - as a functional whole they're pretty much always on the same page, their uber management is usually pretty spot on, and best of all they actually move quickly and play a really aggressive style which is actually fun to watch and compete against. Like everybody, they do have their shortcomings though. Their biggest drawback by far has to be their tendency to over commit, their aggression ends up being a double edged sword. Their match against my own team (the jews) is a good example of this - Quartz has a habit of getting too aggressive at times and bleeding most of (if not their entire) team during transitions.

2. Xero Error Gaming TF2

Coming in at number 2 is a team that I honestly expected to do way worse than they have been, Xero Error Gaming (formerly Mangacrew). Everybody on this roster is pretty capable in their own individual right, but I never expected them to work all that well together. You have two soldiers who are really aggressive, a medic who has to play passive position and use ubers 3 years early because of her ping, and baity/passive scouts and demo. All of this ends up culminating in a team that plays their combo in a really passive position trying to bait pushes and then force ubers/create favorable situations with soldier bombs. It's not a style that should really work against a team that knows how to play against it, but it isn't all that common so I guess unless you scrim against this team in particular it's hard to prepare for. I really wish this team would play a more standard style where they actually do something because I know that they have the aim to just out dm most of the teams in the division. I don't know if they play this way on purpose or if they just lack confidence or what, but I personally really dislike it.

3. The Subspace Emissaries

This is another team who has been doing scores better than I ever expected them to, and to be honest I'm still not sure if it's from them improving by leaps and bounds or if everybody else has just been throwing against them. This team is a lot better than they were last season, don't get me wrong, but how the hell are they 9-3? I haven't really watched them play that much this season aside from their match against my team (I could write a novel about that match but I'll just summarize it as we basically threw), but today I just watched them barely take a 5-4 win from a severely debilitated sad zone roster in what could only be described as hilarious for all the wrong reasons. They're probably going to finish out the season relatively strong with only another loss or 2 since it looks like they've already played most of the better teams in the division, but I expect them to hit some rough waters come playoffs. Maybe they're actually really good and will prove me wrong and make me look like a big gay stupid baby, who knows.

4. the jews

by London

When I look at Cody's team page, I am in awe of the beautiful wave of blue on their roster, where the team has shown some remarkable commitment to Judaism. zZa and Kev are one of the strongest scout pairs in IM right now, but recently there has been some hiccups on their road to glory with losses to Quantum Heartz and the Subspace Emissaries. Nevertheless, I believe the Jews to be playing their last challenge of the season on sunshine against Ding Dong Daddy, and then they'll enjoy a relatively easy end of the season to roll into 3rd or 4th place. By playoffs, I think this team will have gotten tighter than they have been showing in the last few matches, and have a decent shot at ending up in the grand final, but not before some beef that drops them down to the lower bracket. Lunacide is another player to watch, as I think he is fast fulfilling his potential in the role, creating a lot of plays in awkward places. They'll need to get some revenge for all the Jews by beating Blinky's team playoffs, and show the world what it is to crush facism. Because Nazis.

5. Ding Dong Daddy

Firstly I'd like to just say that this team has horrible taste in names, jesus christ. As for the team themselves, this team was doing way better in the preseason than they are now, and I'm not completely sure what series of events led them to where they sit. They still have a pretty respectable record, so they should still make playoffs. Here's hoping they can hammer some stuff out in the next few weeks and make stuff more interesting. My biggest criticism of this team is that they have large problems with players committing, or, as yuki would say, they have a serious case of lemmings. During transition fights they tend to have players commit and then die one at a time, which comes back to bite when they play against anybody who has decent focus fire. The other thing I've noticed about this team is that they don't really seem to have much of a flank, their players tend to blob up a lot and ranga tends to always be off somewhere by himself trying to get a flank or bomb off which leaves them pretty vulnerable during holds.

6. Smoke Threed Everyday

Well, this team used to be Runaway 5 and I have no idea what's up with the new name, but hey it's downpour so I can't say I'm surprised. This team had a really strong start to the season and hit a recent rough patch having lost 3 matches in a row and then giving up an ffl. It seems like downpour's acquisition of a job leaves them with hardly any time to scrim so that's definitely been hurting them. I've only gotten to ever play against this team once, and I haven't really watched them much, so I'll just note the things that stood out to me in my own match against them. First off, this team is really scared to do anything most of the time (in this example they were really slow and really timid when it came to trying to push out of their last point). Unless skarlett makes some huge play, nothing ever gets done. Their other quirk is that their healspread is really lopsided. Rikachu plays somewhat similar to how Mausy used to play in that he was baiting the ever living hell out of his team, but he didn't really have a lot to show for it other than a stat line. The rest of their team all actually have pretty decent aim, so shifting heals to them (especially when Rikachu isn't really in positions of danger that often) couldn't hurt.

7. Meat Market

This is another team where after seeing them play at the beginning of the season all I can think is, how the fuck are they 8-4? They got bl4nk to take over on medic at some point this season, but after watching them get worked by the old sad zone roster they didn't really strike me as a team to sit this high up in the division. I haven't actually watched them play all that much, but as they did in the past they pretty much still play just like the old mad men style for better or worse. I did watch them play viaduct earlier in the season though and the one thing I have to say about that is that cheesy macgyver is a god.

8. Kawaii Washing Machines

Well, this used to be the sad zone, but the roster is almost entirely different now and I have no idea how they're going to do or what the complete lineup even looks like, so there's not a whole lot to say in that department. Bsc is still on pocket and topshot is still on roamer, but the scouts have been swapped for youmustmike and seymour, and as far as I'm aware, zambler and sakura have both left/been cut as of yesterday, so their replacements are still up in the air.

9. Blockback Mountain

This team was really strong in the early season, but seems to have fallen off. I'm actually pretty surprised that they have as many losses as they do - as a whole they're usually pretty coordinated, and I didn't really expect for most of the teams in im to figure out how to play against them for a while. Blockback plays pretty heavily around their namesake and reminds me of Xero Error's playstyle in some ways. They like to play their combo in a really passive position to try and bait pushes, but the difference is that instead of just bombing soldiers to try and make stuff happen, this team likes to run their entire flank behind the enemy team. It works really well against people that aren't prepared for it, but it doesn't really keep working after the other teams begin to figure it out. If they played their combo in a more proactive position and had Block trying to make stuff happen instead of just baiting the other 4 combat classes I think that they could do a lot better - the dude's dm is crazy.

And, well, that's all I really care to write for now. I don't see the teams below this point making much of an impact come playoffs, but there are still a couple who have the potential to make it in there (sharknado, maybe blue hurricane). I might try and do some predictions for playoffs once those roll around but who knows. Thanks for reading guys and as always feel free to let me know if you think I'm a shithead who has no idea what he's talking about.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

SteveC: A Love Story

SteveC is an Information System Management major at U of Maryland with a 3.5 GPA, his favorite movie is Spirited Away, he sponsors a team with a guy on it that likes to ejaculate on pictures of people, has played at the top level this game has to offer, and still plays for the joy that TF2 brings him. Late one night, I decided to inject video game steroids and talk to SteveC: namesake of SteveC Games and scout extraordinaire in both 6s and Highlander. We talked about his story...nay his legacy as one of the most celebrated back-ups TF2 has ever seen on a journey that was both fun and entertaining. His gamer resume is incredibly impressive, having played in just about every division of competitive TF2 you could imagine with some incredibly talented players. SteveC is known as one of the most fun people to play TF2 with on a team with his ability to keep the game fun and to perform some game changing antics on the fly. The only player to have been banned from ESEA for tauntsliding, SteveC's story is unusual and incredibly human to say the least.

Steve's TF2 career started when his cousin bought TF2 for his birthday in 2007, although Steve's computer was so terrible he wasn't able to run the game at first. It wouldn't be after he started taking computer classes that he would finally update his computer with a new graphics card to play with a whopping 55 frames per second. His competitive career started in the now de-funct TWL (Total Warfare League) season 4 in division 2, playing with some people he met on GAME FAQs. His team was able to make playoffs in the first season, but the team folded because the game was pretty bad at the time, and Steve had yet to unlock his potential. Soon he would join a team with CtrlFMuffin of demoman fame, as well as zeron from his old TWL team. While Steve did try out other classes, he would go back to playing scout when it was clear the other classes didn't speak to him on a serious level. The CEVO team he joined, Euphoria, had what are now pretty well known players, also legendary in their own right: BigDaddyRick, CtrlFMuffin, Blinky, and Seanbsly. However. the only thing Steve really could recall from this team was Sean running into the pillars on granary second repeatedly, and that he's pretty sure Sean still has the same computer that he is currently playing on back then.

Even though Steve was only a back up at the time, it didn't stop him from trying to join teams like Lore's Merry Men (Ghostayama, KillingintheName) or the old AG team with Clandestine PZ and Squiggling with Squiggle. One would think he would finally start for a team, but alas it was not to be so. Right around the time that ESEA started to emerge as the main league for TF2, Steve got a job at Chucky fucking Cheese's as a cashier, and his TF2 playing stopped for a hot second. “I had to wipe every machine down whenever I worked there, and it took like 2 hours every time. So I quit.” So, Steve traded one evil for another and started working at Micro Center as a cashier instead, where they didn't make him clean machines for two hours. While working at Micro Center, he stumbled into doing some contract work for Google and Bing where he was paid a lot better, but at 18 with no self motivation, he decided to just go to college and play TF2 3 months later instead.

Season 9 of ESEA would mark the beginning of Steve's actual playtime on an Open team called “We Go Play Hoop”, with the likes of Rando, Technosex, Kapow, Drogo, and Spanker. Steve recalls some fun times trolling Technosex with Rando, on the subject of “baked or fried wings”, where Technosex was the only person in the history of forever to prefer his wings baked. The team would make it to 6th place after beefing it against Sin City in the losers brackets, but it was good enough for the roster to move to IM. Like most TF2 players, however, Steve would not be tied down to just one team, and promptly left the team to play for a one of my personally favorite team names, Banned from eHarmony in season 10 ESEA-IM.

Banned from eHarmony was defy, CHE, June, Shrugger, and BOLT_ with Steve joining them on scout. Unfortunately, the team didn't do all that great that season, so the team died with two matches left in the regular season and Steve would join forces with Remedy to form the Carl Sagan Foundation. At the start of season 11, Carl Sagan was Remedy, WaffleB, ChrizTahFah, Spadez, and Chimpfeet. The team had a decent season and made it to playoffs, where along the way Waffle got cut for Ma3la. Steve talks a little about some of the issues the team had: “It wasn't that bad most of the time, but Remedy would go days without sleeping at times.” Once they got to IM playoffs, they would lose the first two matches and finish 7th. This had been the farthest Steve had made it in his TF2 career, and even though Carl Sagan died that season, a new team was formed that would go further than any of his previous teams.

Wowow Kapow was formed from the dead Carl Sagan roster with Chriztahfah and Steve keeping the roster alive with the likes of Boink, Rando, Drogo, schicken, rave (who got cut after playing only one match). Eventually Steve would leave after playing 6 matches and be replaced by first oov and then Powah. The team would go on to change their name to SteveC Games before they beat Xensity in the Grand Finals, which Steve will take to the grave as the season he technically won IM. The roster would go to Invite that next season without Steve and be sponsored by AG, dropping the SteveC monaker. Eventually that roster would go to LAN in season 14 after getting rolled in season 13, while Steve would essentially take two seasons off. Around the time Steve left SteveC Games, he would start his illustrious Highlander career on the gold team known as Quality Control.

During his time on Quality Control, he would stream non stop and become a popular TF2 streamer, often streaming late at night with his shirt off, injecting video game steroids. Eventually he would make it to Platinum with the team DEATHFORCE 9, but then real life started to catch up to Steve. During that summer, Steve got a job at Burger King and started school at University of Maryland after graduating community college. A step up from cashier, Steve was a delivery driver for Burger King, whom nobody orders from and therefore Steve never got tips. At some point along the way, Steve realize he hated not getting tips, hates his minivan that he delivered Burger King in, and hated traffic because it was awful. So of course he does what every normal human being would do: he quit Burger King and started smoking medical marijuana.

Steve's preferred method of injection is with a vaporizer, and more specifically a vape known as Da Buddha Vaporizer, or DBV as it is commonly known. Before the DBV he had been using the Magic Flight Box, which was a wooden box with a battery in it that could act as a portable vaporizer. Steve's steroids of choice are OG Kush when he wants to sleep better (being a very potent indica) and Durbin Poison when he's feeling more like a potent sativa. “I don't want to die from smoking, but being high can be incredibly uplifting. Its not a feeling I can really explain, but if you have felt it you know what I'm talking about.” Funny enough, Steve usually didn't smoke during scrims and matches, but on stream with his shirt off eating bananas, he guessed he was high about 25% of the time. His routine would usually be to vape right after more serious scrims and matches, sometimes using the vape with a bong so it wouldn't produce dry coughing that could destroy his throat. I've never even considered using a vape with a bong, and so I consider SteveC to be a genius video game steroid injector.

Season 14 was the ronin season for Steve, where he reverted back to backing up for a variety of teams, including eGO, SYOPs TF2, and Down to Pound. Funny enough, around the same time that he started vaping a lot was also the time of his biggest opportunity in Season 15. Despite not having played on a team full time the season before, Steve was “invited” to try out for Ggglygy's Invite roster on Show Me the Monet. During his try out, Steve can only recall baiting his whole team and doing well, even though Steve had no fucking idea what he was doing. But big Gig wants SteveC, so Steve gets the spot over Sal and has his shot at the big leagues. Show Me the Monet was Ninjanick, Milehighmilitia, Grape, Ggglygy, 38special (for a hot second) and Ranga. The team would finish with an 8-8 record at 5th place, one spot away from making it to LAN. “Gggly was probably the nicest and funniest person I've ever played with. Sometimes he would do Nick's homework for him...he even did my homework sometimes too.” Right around the middle of the season, Ninjanick would start his video game steroids addiction, and hilarity ensues. Even though they did well enough to hang in the middle of Invite, Steve's efforts of trying to keep the roster alive are to no avail, as all his teammates parted ways after the dream of LAN was gone.

Where is Steve now? Steve plays for The Sad Zone in ESEA IM, backs up for Menace to Society in Platinum HL, and sponsors the Gold Highlander team SteveC Games, which really just means he pays for the server. The highlander team he sponsors has some of the biggest trolls in highlander, posting pictures of their dicks with people's faces on it and doing other ridiculous things. Even after all his playtime, Steve prefers 6s because he feels that pyro mechanics ruin the game, but still enjoys highlander to a certain extent. I asked him who were some of his biggest influences in the game to which he replied, “I didn't really look up to anyone because I didn't want to fear them if I had to play against them. I love watching Shrugger, but for the most part I don't like watching TF2 because it can be a little boring. Extine is my favorite showcaster because he actually makes the game fun to watch.” And to Steve, thats what its all about: having fun no matter what division you're playing in until its not fun anymore, which is something I think we can all relate to.

Big thanks to SteveC for putting up with my bullshit and talking to me for like 4 hours about his TF2 life and for being the chillest dude to play games with. Thanks for the patience, homie.

SteveC's Gamer resume:

Show me the Monet(ESEA-I S15) 5th

Lonely Hearts(UGC Platinum 6v6 S13) 12-0 1st

Yancy Dick Sucking Club(UGC 6v6 S8) 1st

DeathForce6 (Cevo 6v6 S1) 14-0 1st

SteveCGames (ESEA-IM S12) 1st

eGO FFA 2012 1v1 1st

TEAM SIREN (GXL Lan 2013) 1st

Menace to Society(UGC Platinum HL S12) 2nd

DEATHFORCE9(UGC-Platinum HL S10) 4th

Quality Control (UGC-Platinum HL S9) 5th

Paddie's 2v2 Bball TF2 tournament 2nd

Carl Sagan Foundation (ESEA-IM S11) 5th

We Go Play Hoop (ESEA-O S9) 6th

Banned from ESEA for tauntsliding

+30 or so of other teams I backed up on.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

The big feature article isn't quite done yet, but to appease the people that were waiting for it, here's a few clips from a badlands match I played pocket on for UGC Steel Playoffs. k.L. is the demoman!

tomorrow, the biggest feature i've ever attempted to write will be out, i PROMISE!

[videogamesteroids-blog]

State of the "Union" pt 3

Its been about 5 days since I last smoked the dank, and as a result the motivation to write about Open dwindles. But to be fair, we all start somewhere unless you're a freak of nature or just really well connected, and for most people the place to start is in Open.

...scratch that, the usual place to start is UGC Steel, lets be real.

But I digress. Open deserves some coverage now that the beginning of the season is over, and we can finally see who is bad and who is...less bad. In what is one of the smallest Open divisions that ESEA has ever seen, the competition for the $600 grand prize actually looks pretty close. And with some added dough headed towards the top of the division from Platinum (unless its these sandbaggers obviously) this might be the most lucrative season to play in Open to be honest.

Unsurprisingly, the two undefeated teams in the division are Goldman Sachs and Arizona Iced Out Boys who have some big names on both rosters. Goldman Sachs is a team led by MR SLIN with a starting line up that should probably be in IM this season. While looking at this roster, I actually didn't think they were all that scary, but seeing their competitors I can see why they've been able to roll through Open, albeit with 3 forfeit wins. X is a solid demo, Goldfish is a decent pocket, and Devon is a pretty annoying scout, so mix all that up with the big brain on Slin and the team is sure to function well enough to make it to the Grand Final at the end of playoffs. 

My money on who will play these dudes? Obviously the remade team formerly known as "My Noodle is So Moist", now known as the Arizona Iced Out Boys. For such blatant sandbagging, I haven't seen a whole lot of whiny threads on the forums about this team, but that may also be due to the lack of exposure and coverage for the division this season. If I was to make a bet at the beginning of the season for a team that was going to win Open this season, it would be them. Rest assured, this team is probably not scrimming a whole lot, but I know they are also playing in CEVO as well, which is kind of like scrimming.

Some of the other teams getting some time in the limelight with the absence of real competition in ESEA are a newly reformed SYOPS TF2 featuring everyone's loveable mom medic CHEERIS, the legend that is Wilson, and some kid named Geknaiir that thinks he's good but he's REALLY POLITE ABOUT IT. Another team that was pretty mid-open last season, The Road to El Blocko, has been thrust into the echelons of high Open suddenly. My synopsis? Neither of these teams are ready to play anyone good. Even for all the hype that these teams have around them because they are finally having a good season, I don't see either of them putting up a fight against even the worst IM teams this season, but they'll do fine in Open.

And then there is The Rill Dill. I want this team to be good so bad because they have such lovable sweethearts on it, but it seems like they aren't taking this season all that seriously. Bosh is still a great player, and probably the nicest dude in the game, but the team themselves are going to chill themselves into playoffs and then chill right out again most likely. Ross and Rill are two other sweethearts that should make this team a pleasure to play with, but my question is this: have you guys been playing TF2 lately? It doesn't look like it to me.

The rest of Open is pretty hard to talk about, even though I want to give a few shoutouts to The Grime as the most underrated team in Open right now, Ducks Per Interface for the sick LAN shirts (I hope they wear them during matches), and to Chillin to North Korea for hopefully being the newest recipients of the POM award as long as they don't die. Stay alive, Tery, you're almost there!!!

This concludes the State of the Union series, and this Friday will come a special article about a special man that y'all know and love.

Here's a hint: his initials are SC.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

TF2 White Knights: The Ruwin Crusade

So if you've been paying attention to TF.TV today and yesterday, you'll have noticed the ridiculous threads that have been popping up about how Ruwin has exploded or something. The truth is far more ridiculous, but lucky for all the soap boxing stream viewers, he has presented an opportunity for them to save a damsel in distress.

Late one night, Ruwin allegedly called a girl he hooked up with in highschool fat on stream. This prompted a response from both try hard apologists and try hard forum white knights, where they call out Ruwin for being a scumbag for calling a girl fat in front of 300 people. Because of this outcry, Ruwin fired up his stream again and responded with this video.

Basically, Ruwin is saying "I'm the realest nigga, and its as simple as that. You don't need to watch my stream and you don't need to like me as a person. But all I get is shit from people that watch my stream and call me a piece of shit."

He also goes on to say the whole thing with Froyotech was really poorly handled, where the team was trying out other pockets without really talking to Ruwin on what to fix in his play. 

The rest of the video degenerates into him calling out the "vocal minority" that thinks hes a piece of shit, but to be honest if I was him I wouldn't give a fuck about a few people talking shit when he literally has more stream viewers than anyone. He specifically calls out Rikachu and Shrt, which is hilarious to me.

Anyway, the best part of the whole thing is this random guy named obe_ on the forums who has taken it upon himself to oust Ruwin for his "horrible" behavior in slut-shaming (...nay! Fat-shaming!) this random girl he has no interaction with because he showed a picture of her on stream. Why anyone even gives a flying fuck what this guy thinks about some girl is beyond my comprehension, especially to spend an ENTIRE DAY talking about it on the forums.

Lets break it down: All these fucking morons wanted was some drama, and they got it. Ruwin leaves Froyotech, he calls some girl fat, everyone expresses their opinions on the forums and fall asleep happy that everyone in the TF2 community knows they think its wrong to call girls fat on the internet in front of a wide audience. The first milestone of juicy drama has finally come, and everyone is having a great time with it.

This is more of a reflection of how fucking stupid the people in this community actually are. He used the word "robust" to describe her. Are you joking? Are people's lives this fickle they have to jump on the bandwagon of whatever crusade the stream viewers have created?

Ruwin goes on at the end of the video to call people nerdvirgins and ask how you could be offended by stuff like that. Especially in a community where the words "faggot, raped, and nigger" are used a large portion of the time by the people that play this game competitively.

I'm going to take Ruwin's advice and go outside for awhile.

[videogamesteroids-blog]

State of the "Union" pt 2

Today I'm going to extrapolate about the current state of Invite, which is actually interesting for once. Not to say we will be denied a Grand Final of FROYOTech vs Mix^, which will undoubtedly happen, but the competition for 3rd and 4th place is heating up with all of the teams here for their first season of Invite. Sadly, 6cuties and Blame Game seem to be doing pretty horribly overall, and neither of them have yet to win a single match. Blame Game looks like they'll be on the verge of death, while 6cuties is waiting to get their 2 wins off of Blame Game and pack it in for another season.

Right now, Exertus eSports looks to be the favorite for 3rd place right now as one of the only teams that will be able to really give a good game to either Platinum or B4nny. Their only two losses have been to both Mix^ and FROYOTech currently, but I'm waiting for them to rack up some wins to clinch that third spot. At this point, I don't see the other 3 teams in contention this season unless they have some crazy break out performance in the second half of the season, which is approaching fast. For all intents and purposes, however, I will go out on a limb here and say that we will see Exertus at LAN for playoffs.

The other three teams are somewhat of a mystery right now, all of them with their strengths and weaknesses. The first team we'll talk about are the little highlander heroes that could, Street Hoops eSports. Granted, they've cut most of the original players that were on the highlander team in order to stay ultra competitive, but perhaps just the fact that they have the same name as their HL team counts for something. Street Hoops has lost to Rent-a-Homies but beaten wood pig so far this season. To my experience, I would say that the outcomes against these teams will come down to what map they will be playing on, but we can make some match ups when it comes to the individuals. Overall, I'm not sure if wood pig can beat Street Hoops at this time, mostly because Duwatna is a god-tier demo but also because of the scout match up. Arctic Joe is better than Paragon and Deadbolt on an individual level, but I would say that Bape is slightly worse than them. As scout pairs, nobody has as much dedication and synergy as the Street Hoop scouts, and I would expect more than just some random gimmick to outplay them. 

Rent-a-Homies' strongest players are undoubtedly their soldiers. Serv0 and fuuzion are dynamic as fuck, and make a lot of the plays that can make big differences on maps like granary or snakewater, where it pays to have soldiers that can hit every shot. If Rent-a-Homies want to go to LAN they're going to need to beat wood pig on gullywash, but to be honest I don't know if its in the cards for them. I would expect wood pig to take most of the mids, but I think if the rentable homies play tight during transitions they can overturn rounds. It will be one of the matches with the biggest implications towards LAN, that's for damn sure. Their second match against Street Hoops will be on granary, which is exactly the kind of map they would hope to play on against this particular team. Nothing is set in stone, obviously, but its fun to speculate how it will come down for these teams. 

Wood pig have been having a decent start for their first season in Invite with a convincing 5-1 win over Rent-a-Homies on badlands, and alternately losing 5-2 to Street Hoops on the same map. During their snakewater match they were able to take 3 rounds off of FROYOTech after shade starting getting 800 ping and dropping from the server repeatedly. Some speculate that Shade was DDoS'd during the match, but most likely it was just miraculous bad routing to an ESEA server. Personally, I think its funny that whenever anyone has connection problems playing against Bape, because it just looks so ridiculously suspicious. My theory is that someone is out there DDoSing Bape's opponents just to make people think its him, because according to Conductor that kid is too stupid to set something up like that.

Regardless, the team has some opportunities coming up in the second half of the season. To get some revenge and get closer to a LAN spot, they'll be playing Street Hoops on sunshine. I haven't played this map much and unfortunately I don't know enough about it, but I think this is the wildcard map that wood pig needs to get dat W. Either way, this match is going to be a good one to watch, as both teams have the capacity to beat each other. Maybe Paragon and Deadbolt's internet will magically stop working right in the middle of the match, anything could happen!

This means that there are 6 matches towards the end of the season that will decide who gets that last spot outside of any upsets that these three teams can produce. WELOVEANIME, 6cuties, and Blame Game will fill in some blanks but lets be honest: WELOVEANIME has gotten a shit ton worse and 6cuties and Blame Game just aren't cutting it anymore at this level. The sad truth is though that despite all this effort but the mid-Invite teams, the top two are all but confirmed since the beginning of the season, and we won't get to see the real deal until the Grand Final.

But that's nothing new.

Next week, I'll continue with an unprecedented part 3 of State of the "Union", where we will finally talk about my favorite (yeah ok) division, ESEA-O, by popular request. Until then, get fucked.