9men

9m has existed as a group of casual gamers for over 8 years! Thanks to the long awaited release of TF2, a collective decision was made to bring the clan out of hibernation.

This section chronicles the early history of 9m and its roots in the fortress scene. Written by Dogs.

Clan 9m was formed as a Q3F clan in April 2001. CGS, Semtex and myself were looking to start a new clan, having just finished playing in the Barrysworld League season 2 with MrMen. Unfortunately we were having limited success in finding suitable players, until we met Ebonix on IRC. It seemed we both had the same goals in mind, and as a result clan 9m was born!

The early days were tough and we continued to struggle to find enough players in order to field a full team. Thankfully we managed to bring back both Skunkpussy and DG Grim (ZzzZzzz) from the wilderness, and along with Kdenz, Minkee and TFC player Sinister (who came to the party with Ebonix), we now had enough players to start playing some matches!

We entered the Jolt Castle Cup, which we thought would be a good laugh, and as it only required 5 players we were confident we could field a good team! Surprisingly we made it to the final, only to lose out to the two Luv teams but ahead of the other finalist TA. In fact it was TA’s last match as a clan, but this turned out to be nothing but good news for us as we signed up TA Snowie straight afterwards

Then came our first real test in the first ever Barrysworld Cup. In the time leading up to this we had also managed to sign up ex-DG clan leader and all round player Retro, so our confidence was now at an all time high! (Don’t tell anyone, but we even did the odd practice before a match!)

Rounds 1 and 2 came and went with some excellent wins against NBK and AGO and we were into the Quarter Finals against Shamatuer. Another great win and we now had a semi-final match with FWD, old friends and rivals from our DG days! Unfortunately they were just too good for us and we went out of the cup after an excellent run…

Next was the Barrysworld League season 3, in which we surprised quite a few clans with some fantastic wins against Dbb+, AGO and Don. With just 2 defeats out of 8 games we finished our maiden season as runners up in Division 2!

At this time we were also competing in the European Ladder but with some poor performances in our early matches due to member issues, we struggled. It wasn’t long before we once again got ourselves sorted and made a push for the ladder crown. It came with a great victory over FWD! However it was to be a short lived reign, ended with a defeat by AGO just some two weeks later (the one and only time they had beaten us in a league).

Season 4 of the Barrysworld League came and went, and we struggled to maintain our position in Division 1. Changes at Barrysworld meant there was to be no season 5 and the European Ladder had also folded. The Q3F community desperately needed a league to keep its diminishing numbers together. As a result of this, the EQ3FL was born, and I am proud to say that I had a hand in starting it, along with Som. The league turned out to be highly successful and ran for over 4 seasons!

9m competed in both Season 1 and Season 2 as a Division 1 clan, but with ongoing member issues and our “wtf are practices for?” philosophy we struggled to recapture our old form.

One exception to this was gaining 3rd place in the German Kuh3liga, which was as much as a surprise to us as it must of been to many others

Thankfully we managed to sign some new players in 2002, but we also lost a few too. New players such as Executor, Stanley and Rhino have, through their commitment, kept us all going and without which I am sure we would have folded!