SauerLeague on 8/4/19 – a tiny recap (No, not really…)

Disclaimer: Again, as people might just have overlooked this disclaimer or are simply harebrained, I hereby want to repeat once again that the following text may contain some shallow traces of personal opinion and also a grain of banter.
In case you have no idea what I am talking about, please close this page and burn your computer; but if it actually rings a bell with you, you are allowed to continue. On your journey, please keep in mind the following quote which perfectly substantiates my opinion (and is, by the way, also a nice food-for-thought):

“If a joke causes a national crisis, it is not the problem of the joke, but of the nation.”

– Jan Böhmermann, German comedian and TV-moderator

Well, I found myself with a couple of hours to kill – so here we go! After my inactivity period which lasted nearly four months, I am back and ready to type my fingers bloody. (Truth be told, I’m on vacation at the moment and seriously no fuckin’ clue what to do in my leisure time. Thus, I am able to draw up a tiny and short (!) review on the latest run of SauerLeague tournament. So here I am, and hope you will enjoy my review.)
I know, it is already been some time that I wrote my last review for the SauerWorld page, but I hope I will be able to do it regularly now.

♠ THE FUNDAMENTALS

 Now, after I cleared up in fact completely mandatory things and probably half of my readers have already fallen asleep (or have grown old and have kids!!!), I can move on to the interesting shit.

As we all (allegedly) know, on Sunday, the 4^th of August, we had yet another SauerLeague event (I dunno the exact number, and SauerLeague is down, so fuck my number fetish for once.). This time, it was eCTF 3vs3 making use of our well-known map pool with the addition of some maps from the SauerWorld map pack. Indeed, a couple of clans showed up:

Note: I am not certain who actually was the sub in w00p; either Acuerta or Elisabeth.

We can easily comprehend that we had lots of great teams – veterans as well as newcomers – and definitely a very entertaining stream by our beloved twitcher notas (+ Frosty this time) who even experienced some games firsthand for they were playing for their own team, sp4nk.

♣ THE TOURNAMENT FLOW (mandatory gap filler incoming)

Just for those who do not know how the tournament works internally – and I am sure you guys are out there – is here a tiny footnote: At the beginning, seeding takes place to determine who faces whom first. Generally, the best-seeded clan vs. the worst-seeded clan, the second-best-seeded clan vs. the second-worst-seeded clan, <insert more nasty and inconvenient expressions here>… Moreover, there are two brackets. A winner-, and a loser-bracket. In the beginning, every clan is placed in the winner-bracket. The clan which loses a bo3 (best-of-three) will be sent to loser bracket to play bo1 matches. If a clan loses a game in the loser-bracket, it is eliminated and out of the competition for this tournament. The grand final will be a bo3 between the winner of the winner-bracket and the winner of the loser-bracket.
In a bo3, the first two maps will be picked by the facing teams – the better seed picks first. The tiebreaker, however, will be vetoed out by both teams; of course, only if it is actually needed. The bo1 is a veto game, so both teams veto out maps – the last map in the pool will be played.

♥ OVERVIEW  

I already said that the tournament was, as always, a great success and a nice way to keep the community and its members alive (Yes, I explicitly said its members, too.). To wrap up the whole thing before I go more into detail, it was a great tourney! We saw lots of thrilling games as well as complete devastation. I personally loved that so many people participated and almost wished I had done the same – even though I am not really into the competitive scene of Sauerbraten since I am neither good at CTF games, nor am I a member of a clan. But watching and afterward writing this lovely post-game analysis is also quite enjoyable for a fetishist like me…

♦ A QUICK WALKTHROUGH  

The tournament started off with a seeding, in which every participant had to frag as many players as possible in order to build a who-vs-who-constellation (neologisms ftw). Just a few seconds before it started, Jumper approached along with his DOPE| clan – featuring Bitcoin (who was actually Shinnok), ready to participate. Inevitably, he wasn’t allowed to play and vanished right afterward. I then annoyed Bertolt_Brecht by saying all the time that I know he is the real Jumper, disguised as a member of [sQ]. After the seeding (in which the |noobs| clan did surprisingly well) took place, groups were made. One of the first bo3s was |sp4nk| #1 vs |sp4nk| #2. It was a little hilarious as sp4nk needed to send their own clan members to loser-bracket. In the end, after conversations between notas and Frosty, chocolate ads, coffee breaks, falsely assuming player smurfs, holier-than-thou attitudes, and some actual great commentaries, |sp4nk| #1 got eliminated by w00p| on redemption in a spectacular match which came down to the last minute and ended 3 – 2 in w00p|’s favor.
So, the finalists were w00p| and !s].

♠ SHINY/HILARIOUS MOMENTS OF THE DAY

Throughout the tournament, we saw many nice plays, hilarious moments, 2 as well as 200 IQ plays. But two moments are still stuck in my limited mind. The first one was not really a moment of glory, but a fail. During |sp4nk| #2’s match vs w00p| in the loser-bracket, at stream time 02:26:32, notas failed to return the flag which eventually helped w00p| to win the game. But anyway, it was two overtimes and see, regardless of that one fail, indeed some high-level plays. The second one was a true moment of IQ when Acuerta mocked the enemy’s flag runner on forge at 03:28:58 by tactically jumping down in the water and immediately nade-jumping back up to land a critical shotgun on impressive squad’s flag keeper, Gangler. – Absolutely unbelievable!
I do not doubt that there were many more hilarious and shiny moments, but given that I could only watch the VoD, it is clear that I was not able to see every moment. So please, if I did not mention your personal moment of glory/fail, do not feel offended.

♣ THE GRAND FINALS

Well, this time, I thought the finals would not be that exciting. We have a very strong w00p| team, though, with one excellent flag runner missing, and an exceedingly well !s] team that is, in my opinion, almost unbeatable when it comes to team performance. So, it was clear to me that !s] was going to win that thing. Anyway, let’s jump right into it.
The first game of the finals was played on fusion, a custom map from the SauerWorld map pack. I thought it would have been a really dedicated, but still clear win for !s]. – But no way! We saw excruciating five overtimes, many, many touches, many returns and after twenty minutes, a score of 5 – 4 in impressivesquad’s favor. What I can tell is that w00p| had many chances to return the flag, many of them almost worked out, but as it is, not everything can always work perfectly.
The next map (and last game if !s] manages to win) took place on forge, picked by w00p|. This game was also full of great plays from both teams, especially the water-trick by Acuerta which I mentioned earlier. Both teams fought fiercely, but after ten minutes, w00p| did a final score and won with by 6 – 5. I see that the game was relatively chaotic (probably because forge is a chaotic map in general), but very nice to watch. As for me, I watched the finals three times just because they were thrilled and, indeed, something for the history books.

After both !s] and w00p| won a game each, we had to break the tie. To equate the right of co-determination of both teams, the tiebreaker had to be determined through each team vetoing out a map of the pool until one is left which will then be played. So, it appeared that the last and final map will be reissen which is more of an !s] map than any other one. – Well, at least to my mind.
My proposition was that w00p| was going to take an L, and so it happened that I was right.  After ten furious minutes of nade-jumps, jump pad sounds, and flag run attempts, the last touch by Acuerta in order to change the tack did not work out at all. – He fell down and the game was over. During this match, notas learned about a very annoying bug in Sauerbraten: If the enemy flag is right on your spot, you have to walk out of the flag zone in order to score. Frosty informed notas about it right afterward. This bug is really dangerous, and it used to fuck me up many, many times during my CTF games. I should have mentioned it in my highlights-section above, but that would have been a terrible spoiler that pretty much devastates the flow of this lovely reca

♥ RECAP

Now, friends, what did we learn? Even if your team has a significantly lower damage output, you can still win a tournament full of experienced fragging machines. At the end of the day, it comes all down to the teamwork and the map choice – and, undoubtedly, pro spawns. Of course, it also matters a lot how the own and enemy team is playing, and how well the teammates of both teams can function together.

The final scoreboard flows as follows: Our new supreme champion is !s] – well eared, guys! The second place goes to w00p|, and the third one to |sp4nk| #2. We saw many close combats, moments of failure as well as moments of glory, and an ever-entertaining commentary by notas and partly Frosty. Credits to these guys. But no tournament can happen without enough participants; thus, special thanks to all who played. And furthermore, no team can be good without cheerleaders, so big kisses to all spectators and those who watched the amazing stream. What I did not quite like is the fact that some active clans were not able to land a team. In particular, I mean =DK= and |DM|. YES, I MEAN YOU! Hence, I would like to see you guys fighting as well next time.

♦ EPILOG

Well, dear reader, it is time for me to finish my post. Did you like it? If so, like, favor, subscribe, ring the bell, and write a nice comme… sorry, I had to bring up that excruciatingly bad YouTube pun – on purpose, of course. Anyway, in case you liked my post, write a nice comment. If not, write a non-nice comment in which you are free to criticize me in a constructive way.
I know that I am already quite a bit late with this post, but you know, continuously writing a recap on recurrent events is more difficult and time-consuming than you might think. Firstly, I need to watch the stream if I have not already done live. Then, I have to think about what I want to write, cherry-pick highlights, give good information from reliable resources, and pack that into a neat text. But the most difficult thing is not to repeat things from previous posts as, by the time, this would look like an uncontrolled and cheap copy-and-paste orgy. And last but not least, there is also some kind of ambition inside me that requires me to write stuff I am satisfied with and not afraid of publishing. I can only be pleased with my work if I like what I have just done – and you know me and my exaggeratingly high expectations, so actually getting something done takes a lot of time.

However, I am happy that after so much time of inactivity and previous controversies, I am still allowed to write some stuff which you guys hopefully like (Though you do not have to! I want to emphasize that you can always utter constructive criticism.).

Much love,
Tophy (セバスチャン)

◊ LINKS’N’SOURCES

If you are into /texreduce porn: CLICK HERE
If you have a number fetish: CLICK HERE
If you are a man/woman of wealth and taste: CLICK HERE
If you want to play too next time (discord): CLICK HERE