...to the winner of our little tournament, which is

Swipey's Walkerfades

Semifinals and Finals had been tough, yesterday. Each match lasted for the full five rounds and no team gave in easily. Each round was a hard struggle.

Eventually Swipey's won the fifth round against their group-peers NAllStars in the finals.

Time to give out a huge "Thank You" to all participants.We thought, when we started this, that 4, maybe 6, teams would be cool. But you guys topped that easily with 12 teams! Also you provided us with very entertaining and good-quality games.

More thanks go to our army of casters and referees, which provided us with stream and recordings of every single round. Further we thank all the helpers behind the curtains. They formed teams, built rules and spread the information before and during the tournament :)


I hope many of the seen teams feel motivated to join us in the upcoming Season 6. Five of the new teams[www.ensl.org] already joined us for the next season, so you will be in good company ;)

The registration for Season 6 works the very same as for the tournament and is already open.

But that's not all you can do. Another tournament aiming specifically at Division 4 teams (that's the Division new teams usually start in) is upcoming. The Divisional[gghaven.com] is organised by Schwa and will happen at NA/EU-friendly times. To make that one extra-spicey: There is a small (less than a dollar per team-member) entry-fee and the pot is shared between top three teams.

The registration for the Divisional is open until the 15th of February. The tournament itself is starting on 21st of February and spans one weekend.


In the groupstage we produced over 20 hours of gameplay. Yesterday we ramped that to more than a day (24 hours, for the people wondering)! You can find all the links to that games here[www.ensl.org].

When you watch those games, we have a little request to you:

Narkoweed could make a highlight-video for us, but he has no time to go through all the material himself.

This is how you can help: Note down the timestamps to the games, whenever you see something, which you think is worthy to be shown in the highlight video. This might be

• an amazing lifeform-kill,
  
• a great dodging and escape of a lifeform,
  
• a perfect crush on a PG,
  
• crazy strats,
  
• other unexpected twists and moves.
  
• Hives or CCs going down,
  
• commentators losing it,
  
• ...

Further the following information comes very handy:

• timestamps of a round starting
  
• timestamps of a round ending

When you have noted those timestamps, just post them as comment down here or send them directly to me. I will collect all of these and relay them to Narkoweed.

Thanks in advance.

I hope to see many of you on the field again - but that time... as opponents >:)

We implemented the following ruling into the Help-Document[docs.google.com]. It is the "Standard-Procedure" for NSL-Finals, with a the little difference that each team can veto one map - giving them a bit more control over the maps, which might be played.

Here is the complete ruling for how to choose sides and teams in the semifinals and finals:

The semifinals and finals are played in a best of five (5) format, meaning the first team winning three (3) rounds wins a match.

In the following we name the better seeded team “Team A” and its opponent “Team B”.

The map-pool of Day 2 is:

• Summit
  
• Tram
  
• Biodome
  
• Veil
  
• Descent
  
• Jambi

Team B vetoes one map of that pool. That map will not be played in the match between Team A and Team B. Afterwards Team A vetoes another map, reducing the map-pool to a total of 4 maps.

Team A then picks either: The side they want to play on (Marines or Aliens) or the first map (which must come from the above reduced map-pool).

Team B afterwards specifies sides or map, depending on Team A’s choice.

From now on the sides switches each round.

The choice of map switches from team to team every map, regardless of who picked the first map. Each map of the map-pool can only be picked once.

Team A is better seeded versus Team B. Team B vetoes Summit and then Team A vetoes Veil, leaving the map-pool with: Tram, Biodome, Descent and Jambi. Team A picks Aliens as side for the first round, leaving the choice for the first map to Team B, who picks Jambi. So, denoting the Marine-team first, the first two rounds are:
Team B vs. Team A on Jambi
Team A vs. Team B on Jambi

Afterwards the choice of map switches to Team A. They can pick any of Tram, Biodome and Descent. They decide for Tram. So the third round is:
Team B vs. Team A on Tram

If no team has won 3 rounds yet, the fourth round is:
Team A vs. Team B on Tram

If still no winner is determined, a tie-breaker needs to be played, the choice of map switches again to Team B. They can pick either Biodome or Descent. Team B will also play Marines on this last map.

The better seeded teams in the two semifinals are PreAlpha and Swipey's Walkerfades. For finals the seedings are from top to bottom:

PreAlpha/Swipey's Walkerfades (both have the same amount of points and wins)
Insert Team Here
NAllStars

If both PreAlpha and Swipey's Walkerfades reach the finals the team, which lost less rounds in the Semifinals is seeded better. If there is still a tie the seeding will be decided by lottery.

Vetoeing and picking sides/teams will happen at match time and is moderated by the Casters/Refs.

In case of a match between an EU and NA team, the team, which picks map first also decides, if the first map will be played on an EU or NA server. Afterwards - as in the group stage - the server will be changed, as maps are changed.

After hours of games these four teams bit and shot their way into the semi-finals and you will see them again on 8th of February.

Congratulations to these team-winners:

Group A: Pre Alpha
Group B: Insert Team Here
Group C: Swipey's Walkerfades

Also the best positioned 2nd place lies in Group C and is: NAllStars

This gives the following pairings for the Semi-Finals:

Semi 1: Pre Alpha - NAllStars, 17 CET (Streamed by: Robby and Jason[www.hitbox.tv])
Semi 2: Swipey's Walkerfades - Insert Team Here, 17 CET (Streamed by Vindaloo[www.twitch.tv])

And the winners will play in the Finals thereafter. So stay tuned for second Sunday, when we crown the best Newcomer Team 2015.

This was amazing! An NS2-Festival!

18 games had been played and all of them got casted.

There is enough NS2 material out there to watch 20 hours straight!!!

A big thanks to all the casters, who marathoned through this, to the refs to have a watchful eye on the games.

And also to all the players for making this happening and also for keeping up with that amazingly tight schedule. You actually managed somehow to finish each single game in time. That's impressive!


We had tons of funs over here and I hope you did as well.

We have seen some weird and crazy stuff. Also some nice strats and solid, strong gameplay. You as the New Kids on the Blocks have very much proven yourself. Each. Single. Team.

I hope to see as many as possible of you again in the Season 6[www.ensl.org] and/or in Schwa's divisional tournament[gghaven.com]. The sign-ups are open.

Four teams made it into the Semis starting on next Sunday. We are very excited to see the best 4 teams to fight for the crown of "Best Newcomer Team 2015".

In a live-cast Hefty helped me presenting the teams and putting them into groups, you can watch the whole show here.

The schedule is on the front page of the NSL[www.ensl.org] and you can find the fully detailed schedule for groups A[www.ensl.org], B[www.ensl.org] and C[www.ensl.org].

Keep an eye on it for any changes, which might happen.

For all team-leaders: Make sure to agree with your opponents on which server you are playing beforehand!

See you at the tourney!