Hey folks!  I'm excited to bring you guys the first in what will be a, hopefully, recurring article recapping what's going on in the current tournaments and leagues for L4D.  The only tournaments that are happening right now are Cevo's "Double-Barrel" tournaments, which are the first tournaments that we've seen in L4D2.  A lot of new teams, along with some old returning teams,  have shown up for the tournaments so things will surely get interesting.  So far the majority of the matches in the Scavenge tournament haven't even been scheduled, so this weeks article will focus mostly on the Versus tournament, which has already completed two rounds of play, with the third round completing in a few days (Dec 21st).

Match Of The Week:

MoB Bangarang 2 > 1 Right 2 Live

_______R1   R2    R3    F
MoB   16   02    16    2
R2L     13   11    13    1

Our partners over at Pwnage.tv announced this cast just a few hours before the match was scheduled to go live, after I had already completed this article.  I decided to hold off on posting for a few hours so I could watch the cast and include it in this article, little did I know that the game would be so exciting. I was so impressed by these two teams that I decided to replace my previous MOTW with this one.  The first round was firmly decided in MoB's favor, but the two remaining rounds of the bo3 were simply chaotic.  Right 2 Live stepped their game up for the second and third rounds and showed the community that they had some bite in them.  The game came down to the last 3 gas cans with MoB being able to wipe Right 2 Live in the sugarmill for the win.  You can watch the cast over at the PTV site, here.

Because there's a lot of matches going on for the next few weeks I kind of have to cut down on the amount of matches I can list, for this article I'm going to just list the top 2 closest games from the upper brackets (lower brackets haven't been played yet) for each group until I can work out a better method.

Upper Bracket

Bracket A

Blight.dpv 2212 < 2720 It's on my face!
Blight.nao 2655 > 1355 JACKED

Bracket B

Area 51 2655 > 1601 _TheRapists_
Patient 0 1956 < 2975 All 4 Dead

Bracket C

Domination 2742 > 2028 HeX
Black Ops Squadron 2362 < 2796 Impracticable Project

Bracket D

Detox Gaming 3000 > 1849 redmaynes wrecking crew
Team Pathogen 2911 > 2716 project Mayhem

Bracket E

Team Mother Teresa 2950 > 1521 Fatally Reduced Swingers Club
The Avengers 2082 < 2473 Team Shark Week

Bracket F

Hostile Faction 2181 < 3050 Vortex
Sesame Street2 1274 < 3025 Honor Lost

Bracket G

Blight.rage 3050 > 2148 Emergency Sex Change
All others postponed

Bracket H

MWM 2431 < 2891 Negativ
Spitters Bitch 1384 < 2950 Zero Tolerance

Next weeks article should be a little more substantial (and formatted a little better, I blame Graham) with the next round of VS play finishing on the 21st and another week of Scavenge group play (which has no weekly "schedule" to speak of).  Here's hoping for some excellent matches!

During the Eximius and vVv Newegg Wanfest finals match on No Mercy, vVv decided to act rash after being behind in points going into the third stage. After Eximius easily worked their way out of the safe room, searched for items and tier twos, blew through the Burger Tank and the gas station, they decided to take the crescendo back into the Burger Tank. After the crescendo is when everything went downhill.

After the crescendo vVv decided to wait and set up for the Smoker pull back off the pipe so that the survivor will fall down, take fall damage and from there the vVv can capitalize on the situation, hopefully ending it right there. Once Eximius got to the pipe they faked out vVv which made the Smoker spawn early on top of the metal building behind them. Eximius immediately reacted back against the wall away from the pipe as a random horde comes in. After they dealt with the majority of the horde, Eximius decided to go into the stockroom one by one on the pipe as to cover each other from the Smoker pull. First to go is Jam. As soon as he touches the pipe, Jam’s internet decided that would be the perfect time to crash on him. Eximius immediately retracted back again to the wall and told vVv about the crash. They waited for a few minutes while vVv re-adjusted their 3-1 setup and Eximius could do nothing but wait for Jam to reconnect. Little did they know that Jam was not getting back on his internet due to an ISP technical error.

However, that did not stop vVv from attacking anyways.

vVv came in with shock and awe tactic catching Eximius totally off guard. However that did not stop Eximius from denying the frivolous attack. Eximius still hung back against the wall after the attack trying to plan out what to do next. But then Louis, played by Jam before the crash, decides to venture further ahead of the team which spawns the Tank. vVv goes in relentlessly by incapacitating and killing Louis. However with the Tank on fire the remaining three Eximius players kite the Tank around with ease. They then run back to grab ammo from the tier 2 table and rush the rest of the level on against 4 vVv players alive. Then, they made the ladder chokepoint right before the entrance to the hospital, which is known to destroy many teams, look like a cake-walk. Eximius finished the stage with about 630 points adding onto their already increasing lead.

Having made it to the safe room against everything against them, Eximius immediately called for a re-ready up before the next round started to try and sort things out. After about an hour of discussion between the two teams they came to the decision to reschedule the second half of No Mercy 3, 4 and the finale to July 30th, which did not happen either.

What is in such an uproar with the community is why did vVv attack even though there were clear signs of a disconnect. Even though nowhere in the CEVO rules does it say if a lag out occurs the opposing team must stop and wait for a reconnect. However if such an instance does occurs during a match the opposing team usually shows an act of kindness and fairness and wait for the player to reconnect or find a substitute that is on the roster. Obviously this was not in vVv’s playbook. Even after Eximius shut down the 3-1 attempt and had their bot killed, they keep cool and pushed forward. So it seemed that nothing could stop Eximius except if they had two of their five members with ISP problems. Sketchy? Who knows. Especially when they had the same problem but was able to reconnect on No Mercy 2 with a different player after the turbine room crescendo. Maybe vVv got fed up with it and just decided to go in anyways because CEVO states that it is legal to do so; at the cost of tarnishing their reputation. Or vVv knew they were already behind in points and in danger of Eximius pulling away with the lead. With such a prize at stake who knows what either team was thinking. No one can really judge either team for their actions, but that does not stop the community from reacting.

    After coming back from a Memorial Day “getaway” (more like a TF2 bender… I mean wat?) and then staring at this for about a week, I thought it was about time to get caught up with what’s going on in the L4D Competitive scene.  With the tournament formerly known as L4DDER coming to a halt before the finals could be played and CEVO just beginning its first rounds of group play, things are pretty slow right now.  As summer progresses, however, things will (hopefully) start to pick up and we’ll be seeing a lot more action in L4D.  But until then, we’ll have to make do with what we have and hope for an explosive summer to finally kick the community into gear.

    As many of you may have noticed, the L4DDER site went offline around mid-May during the semi-final rounds of the tournament.  Exigent had just clenched a hard-fought win over Depraved and Area 51 had just beaten newcomers Team TwoSixOne setting up a final round with Area 51 facing off against Team Exigent.  After scheduling difficulties kept the match from being played for the remaining half of May, there’s word that Area 51 and Team Exigent have finally worked out a time where both of them can play out the seemingly dead tournament.  They won’t be playing for any prizes, as those have disappeared (presumably) with L4DDER’s site, but they’ll be playing for the hell of it and to see who the better team is.  The match is sure to be one of the most exciting matches to be played in a long while, with both Area 51 and Exigent being among the top teams in competitive L4D.  Our partners over at Pwnage.TV (hopefully with a new L4D caster) will be broadcasting the match and you’ll be able to catch it live tomorrow night (June 1st) at 8:30 EST.  As far as predictions go… I predict that it’ll be a very close game, but Exigent will pull out the win.  Both sides have comparable Infected offenses, but I believe that Exigent’s Survivor defense will be the factor that decides the match in their favor.

    As far as CEVO goes, the first three rounds of group play have been officially completed – with the deadline for round four matches also falling on June 1st (Schedule your matches!!).    It’s hard to tell which teams will make it to the bracket rounds after the group rounds are over looking at the ladders right now.  Given that there are still four rounds of play left (including round 4), teams that got forfeit wins for their first matches are much lower in the standings than teams that haven’t had any forfeits at all.  It is, most likely, going to take a few more rounds of play until the ladders even themselves out.  Until then, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that we’ll be seeing the same few teams that we usually do in the top 24 (Area 51, Exigent, vVv, Reason, A4D, psC, dpv, etc) with a few newer teams to help mix things up a bit.  I’m hoping that the newer teams will use the CEVO Tournament to help make names for themselves, similarly to how Team TwoSixOne used L4DDER for that same purpose, so we can get some more good teams out there to help expand the community.

   In continuation with our L4DDER coverage, it’s time to take a look at the exigent vs. Depraved match that took place on Wednesday (May 13th).  Both teams overcame four rounds of competition, with exigent upsetting Dynamix in the first round and Depraved defeating Slaughter House Legends in the latest round, proving that they both deserved to be competing for a spot in the final round.   With a place in the final match (and the $400 first place prize) up for grabs, both teams had good reason to fight hard for the win.

   The game was evenly matched, with both teams keeping pace with each other.  Exigent, known for the extremely strong Survivor game, proved to be a tough obstacle for Depraved during the game.  Often, Depraved would spend a lot of time during their Infected rounds trying to decide what to do against exigent, making their attacks sparse and somewhat sloppy.  Exigent, however, wasted no time during their Infected round, attacking hard and often.  Because of these differences in Infected play, Depraved would always finish with a noticeably lower health bonus than exigent, making the game more one-sided than the score would lead you to believe.