The season started in Wireplay 6v6 where we enjoyed a pretty successful run in Division 5c — no matches lost and only one drawn meant we were able to take top spot and will enjoy Division 4 competition next season. It was an enjoyable season for us — probably helped by our good performances, but we are under no illusions about next season — it’s going to be much tougher and will require a lot of hard work to perfect what we’re aiming towards.

ETF2L started not long after Wireplay 6v6 and was met with a lot of enthusiasm of optimism amongst the team with many predicting us to win promotion to Division 4 this season. SnowiE has written an excellent summary of how things went down, so rather than rehash his efforts, I suggest you head on over to that page before reading on.

Done? Good.

During ETF2L we had a mini member crisis — we lost kirkeh as our main medic and needed to field mercs or stand-ins for some of our games. Thanks to all the clans that allowed us to use a merc in our games against them. We did manage to recruit a scout / sniper to replace Shambler – who had gone inactive before the season had begun — in the form of Krian, who had settled in very nicely. Regardless, we finished the season in 5th place which, considering the Division o’ Death we were placed in, isn’t too shabby. We promise to have a proper go at it next season!

Wireplay 7v7 started towards the end of ETF2L and was, for many, the first taste of Premiership TF2. This was, without a doubt, our chance to show off our strongest side with our walking tank Ditchy and ubersneak Sh3ll as spy. The season went pretty well when all was considered — five out of the eight teams are Division 4 and above in ETF2L and we definitely held our own in a very-competitive league. In fact, the only match I can think of that we essentially rolled-over in was against logix when we were completely out-classed on pl_goldrush and koth_viaduct.

We enjoyed some very close games against GoT, box and 31 to finish the season in joint-4th place — which does not do us justice at all considering how close a lot of our matches finished. A few seconds shaved off a couple of maps and we’d have finished 3rd, which is definitely something to be proud of considering this was — for most of us — our first flurry of activity in the Premier League. Once again, thanks to the clans that allowed us to field a merc when required.

Unfortunately, now that the season has finished, we have to say goodbye to darkness who is busy cramming as much information as possible in preparation for his exams. We wish him the best of luck and look forward to him returning as soon as they are over. On a happier note, we welcome back two faces — 9men-stalwart gryzor and our medic kirkeh. Our thanks to everyone who applied to trial for us over the last couple of months.

And…that’s it. Our season wrapped up in less than 600 words. We’re now on “official” break from TF2 until January 4th when we will start preparations for the new season with our new squad. So, thanks to the entire clan for what has been a blast in 2009. Have a fantastic Christmas, y’all… and a Happy New Year.

…is swearing allowed on the 9men website? I didn’t check the rules. Ah, to hell with it.

League Update
Wireplay 6v6 Season 4 has officially finished and we have been crowned Division 5c Champions! This means automatic promotion to Division 4 next season and a chance to compete on a higher stage. We’ve played a few games in the Wireplay 7v7 league and are somewhat comfortable in mid-table at present, having narrowly lost out in our most recent game to GoT — another veteran team of the 7v7 league.

ETF2L is coming to a close and we have one more game left to play (thanks to two teams dropping from our division) against GoT4. A double-win here will secure us 5th place after we drew our game against MRX earlier this week. We would have liked to have done better this season but a mid-table finish could be far worse in what turned out to be one of the harder Div5 divisions.

We have suspended all ETF2L ladder activity until we can re-establish a stable squad. Which leads nicely onto…

Member Update
We have said goodbye to kirkeh unfortunately which leaves us without a dedicated medic. We are currently recruiting for a new one and anyone interested should contact either SnowiE or myself in IRC or on Steam. You can find us on ETF2L for our contact information. We have, however, managed to bag us a diamond — Krian becomes the newest member of 9men and will slot straight into a scout and sniper role.

I’d love to say that I’ve updated the results page with our latest matches but the truth is I haven’t. Really, go check. It’s as out-of-date as Zack Morris‘ mobile phone. I’ll endevour to get that shit sorted over the next week or so. I’ll no doubt be back soon with an end-of-season-type-review kind-of-thing. It’ll be awesome — that is for sure.

Better than SnowiE’s posts at least. *SAFETY WINK*

In the last few days we have played our first 2 ETF2L Ladder matches. Tonight we will play our third, against X-Squad. We also have another ladder game against BW on Thursday. The ladder is something we hope to take advantage of, using it for friendlies as much as possible.

The results page is up to date with all recent friendly and official results.

Our ETF2L 6v6 game against zD was extremely tough, with us losing both maps. We wish zD good luck for the rest of the season. Tonight, we play Stamina on cp_freight and cp_fastlane.

We have signed up to the ETF2L Ladder which is currently being tested out. We hope to play our first game against X-Squad soon.

The Wireplay7v7 season is almost upon us, it starts next week. Hopefully we can continue our good performance from last season, although the competition in the top division will be fierce.

Finally, we say goodbye to Ozzy, who has left us to find a new clan and Shambler has gone inactive.

This week we play our Week 1 ETF2L fixture, against ze Dummkopfs on badlands and gravelpit. The match is scheduled for 8pm on Thursday on our server, source TV is 9men.org.uk:27040

The results page is up to date with our latest friendly results.

This week also saw the arrival of Satako’s brother Kirkeh, who will be playing medic for us. Finally, all recent friendly results have been entered on the results page.

After starting WPTF2L6v6 expecting a close season with some good games, we were halfway through and losing games by big margins. This meant we have a squad re-shuffle, which helped, but ultimately we were relegated from Division 7B.

In WPTF2L7v7 we continued the success we enjoyed last season, winning every map but the final one on our final game, making us first place in Division 1. This was largely helped by our non 6v6 players, who play a lot of specialist classes that really come into their own on 7v7 attack versus defence maps (CGS, Ditchy and Sh3ll to name a few). Plus it probably helps that our public server spends 90% of its time on these kind of maps so we’re already well practiced

After having our main demo go inactive, we struggled with a temporary replacement and then had to make do with moving players around a lot in our early ETF2L games. Competing in 3 leagues at the same time made it almost impossible for us to trial a new demo man effectively, meaning we took something like 2 months to find a replacement. Thankfully, TroubleGirl from =Fingerprint= agreed to temporarilly join us until the end of the season, meaning we had a player we already knew was an excellent demo man, which allowed us to worry a lot less about games. TroubleGirl also plays a lot more than we did, which meant we ended up playing a lot more friendly games, which has clearly helped us a lot. In the second half of the season we have hopefully gathered enough points to stay in Division 5. The stuff we’ve learned recently will help us a great deal for next season, whatever division we end up in.

Finally, we did -actually- end up with a demo man after all those trials. A thousand apologies to anyone who didn’t get a response from me, but we have now recruited Satako. He will be playing in friendly games with us over the summer, and is now signed up for all of our leagues for the next seasons.

We also lost a long time regular, the impossible to ignore Swedish/Scottish/Drunk Gryzor, who has moved on to CiC. We wish him all the best in the future.

So thanks to everyone who’s played with us this season, and thanks to all the people we’ve played. This summer we’ll be playing friendlies, if anyone wants to play a custom map in a friendly specifically please get in touch as we’d love to try out some new maps as well as the old ones.