Oh, hot damn, 4 hours of excitement, explosions and completely impractical high-velocity needleguns? Where were you last weekend?

Last weekend saw host to the first of hopefully many TC Ultduo cups. It was a damn fine competition that was tight from the get-go. Probably something to do with there being eight teams who played, but as 1988’s Yasmin ‘Yazz’ Evans once yelled at an entire populous until they were all infected with a dreadful earworm, the only way is up!

For those of you who don’t know, Ultiduo is a 2v2 TF2 gametype where the only classes allowed are one Medic and one Soldier, and teams fight on close-quarters King of the Hill maps to determine which Medic main knows the best Soldier which team of two has the strats and deathmatching abilities to overcome their opponents and claim the ultimate grand prize: a shiny, brand new, probably worth something in real money, pixellated medal on TC’s community page (eventually)! Those who joined forces to fight tooth and nail for this prestigious prize include:

2 players
• Cnozzz (Soldier)
• JustJosh (Medic)

3edgy5me

• hpqoeu (Soldier)
• sidestep (Medic)

cyka-blyat.gtd

• Marik (Soldier)
• Xearo (Medic)

Czech urself b4 u rek urself

• mohawk (Soldier)
• swellfoop (Medic)

Double Useless

• Oxy (Soldier)
• Useless (Medic)

FromCowToDoorstep

• Der_Milchmann (Soldier)
• FromZero2Hero (Medic)

gibe airshoots pls

• Lythiium (Soldier)
• Rugzy (Medic)

Team Winmix

• Genmix (Soldier)
• W1nco (Medic)

Teams were randomly split into two groups of four, where a round robin style mini-tourney was held in best of three matches. The maps played were the classic koth_ultiduo_r_b7, the fruity and fun ultiduo_baloo, and the new girl ultiduo_nicecicles; yeah she smells a little and doesn’t have great fashion sense, but underneath that frumpy, snow-white sweater is an untextured mess that one hot librarian from every film ever. Points were awarded depending on the outcome of the match; 2 points for a 2-0 win, 1 point for a 2-1 win and 0 points for a loss. The top two teams in each group went on to compete in the finals bracket.

Group A consisted of teams, 2 players, 3edgy5me, cyka-blyat.gtd and FromCowToDoorstep. Competition was fierce in this group with across the board 2-1 win-losses, except poor cyka-blyat.gtd who fought valiantly but were ultimately smote down by the Three Horsemen of Duopolypse. 3edgy5me narrowly grabbed first in their group with 5 points, with 2 players and FromCowToDoorstep sharing second with 4 points apiece. Unfortunately, only two teams were allowed in the final, and it was ruled that the spot go to FromCowToDoorstep since they dropped half of the points compared to 2 players.

Group B was a much simpler affair, with every matchup resulting in a 2-0 sweep. Participating in this group were teams, Czech urself b4 u rek urself, Double Useless, gibe airshoots pls and Team Winmix. Taking charge of this group was Czech urself b4 u rek urself, who didn’t drop a round to anybody and proceeded to the finals bracket with second place, Team Winmix who only dropped points to Czech urself. Third and fourth went to Double Useless and gibe airshoots pls, respectively.

Finals

Oh, baby, it’s finals time! And what a final it was! But we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little here, semifinals haven’t happened yet.

Semis had the top seed from Group A facing the second seed from Group B and vise versa on ultiduo_baloo. Czech urself b4 u rek urself faced a very high damaging, airshot-filled couple of rounds against FromCowToDoorstep but ultimately managed to continue their streak of not dropping a point. Across the server dedi-bridge, 3edgy5me wanted to continue bringing the pain against new opponents, Team Winmix, but they forgot their can opener and Winmix secured their position in the grand final after serving up a serving of diced, jellied whoopass (sealed for freshness; store in a cool, dry place; serves 2). After their defeat, 3edgy had to gracefully back out, leaving FromCowToDoorstep with third place.

They’ve been here once before. The undefeated team of Czech urself b4 u rek urself once again find themselves facing off against teammates Genmix and W1nco from last season’s division 1 team, Team Colonslash as Team Winmix. This isn’t the first time that mohawk and swellfoop have played together either though; they took second in division 4 of ETF2L’s season 17 on Team Colonslash: Vintage before taking a break. In the group stage, Czech urself and Winmix faced off on ultiduo_nicecicles, which is a new map to grace the Ultiduo map rotation. Due to being an unknown to the teams, it turned into a matter of who discovered the cheesiest place to stand when defending the fastest. Czech urself had the edge and took the game 2-0.

Now, the final was played on the map that started it all; koth_ultiduo_r_b7. The second meeting of these two teams was really going to show who had the teamwork and knowledge of the gametype to deserve the top spot. Game one continued on the same trend that was stated at the beginning of this tournament, with Czech urself taking an early lead and going up 1-0. Perhaps it was complacency, perhaps it was swellfoop’s calls of, ‘mohawk go kill them, ima be over here,’ likely it was W1nco’s flying Ubersaw of death giving him 14 kills and 9 ubers over swell’s 4 kills and 3 ubers, but Winmix finally stuck it to their div 4 community-scrubmates and equalised the score at 1-1. The next game was it; the winner would finish their evening as champions of TC’s Ultiduo cup. Taunts were taunted, laughs were had, tears were shed and pants were changed. The clock ticked down to 00:00 for Czech urself. Overtime. 00:00 for Winmix. Double overtime. Winmix wipe. Victory for Czech urself b4 u rek urself!

From mohawk and myself, g fucking g.