Eclipse

Someone asked for me to explain Highlander to another person, so I wrote this thingy below. Please read it to understand Highlander more. (And don't forget the practice this evening.)
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Highlander is a type of competitive play in TF2. It consists of a 9v9 battle, one of each class. Most commonly, on King of the Hill maps, but will sometimes branch off onto Payload and Control Points. Usually, these maps are custom-made.

There are multiple leagues one may enter; the most notable difference being in professionalism, and item whitelist: UGC and ETF2L to name a few. Item whitelists can restrict certain overpowered and gamebreaking weapons, may disable taunts, and can remove the use of certain cosmetics that alter one's perspective, or generates sound.

To join a team, the process really differs depending on who it is. To join a season, you must sign up your team, with the maximum of 21 people in your team that'll be allowed to participate, by a certain deadline. Those 21 people may not change after the deadline. When you sign up to enter a season in your desired league, you may also have to choose a divison.

Divisions exist to separate skill levels of teams, to keep the games fair. These divisions include Iron, Steel, Silver, Gold, and Platinum; that's from worst to best, respectively.

Now that you understand the basics of Highlander, there's a few things to note about gameplay.

1) Most commonly, your team will require the usage of a microphone.

2) Often, you will have to have 9 players for the match, but some leagues will allow 8 players if a ninth can't be found. However, most teams will wait until the opponent has the ninth. If they can't find the required players, then they must forfeit.

3) Random crits are disabled.

4) Damage spread is disabled.

5) Fixed weapon spread is enabled.

6) Stopwatch is enabled on A&D and Payload maps. That means that if both teams capture the same number of points, the team that did so faster wins.

7) In KOTH, there's two matches. Both matches play for 4 rounds, and the first match ends when one team gets 3 wins, or both teams get 2 wins. The first team to four wins is the victor.

8) Payload matches work in a 2 out of 3. Whoever captures all the points fastest gets 1 point.

9) CTF may be played rarely, with a time limit. Whoever gets the most points wins. There may be multiple halves to the match. Sometimes, a mercy rule is enacted when one team has an insane lead over the other, the game may end early.

10) Teamtalk, if needed, is to be enabled. This allows dead players to talk to their team still. During dead spectate, third-person and free-roam spectating is disabled.

11) Customization is disabled to TF2 defaults with sv_pure 2. The wait command may or may not be disabled, but all other scrips are allowed if not exploitable. Custom HUDs are always allowed.