Valve employees and internet celebrities join forces to battle the evil forces of Brink, but only one team can emerge victorious

The first stage of the Free2Play Invitational went off fairly smoothly just over a week ago, despite Valve's best attempts to throw a spanner in the works with a timely Team Fortress 2 update requiring clients and servers to be updated smack bang in the middle of proceedings.

It wasn't the first time an update has disrupted the quick-to-anger competitive community, but changelog notes of this particular update produce an epidemic of raised eyebrows that would have given Dramatic Chipmunk a run for his money.

I'd like to present Exhibit A to the court and advise them to pay particular attention to the last line; foul play is afoot...

Updates to Team Fortress 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Team Fortress 2

• Added From Dust promotional content.
  
• Fixed a problem with the application of team-colored paints.
  
• Fixed Mac-only replay editor crash.
  
• “Meet the Medic” startup music added.
  
• Definitely did not add cheats for upcoming Free-2-Play Invitational Cup.
  

This was of course the continuation of the trolling from the original announcement of the Free2Play Invitational on the official homepage at TeamFortress.com which concluded with...

Since a couple of us at Valve will soon be playing the winners of the Free-2-Play Invitational Cup, we've also started ramping up the amount of time we spend thinking about ways to cheat win creatively. In completely unrelated news, if you see any TF2 updates in the future that have no changelist, don't worry, there's absolutely nothing going on.

So an intriguing stage has been set for the Grand Final of the Free2Play Invitational with Valve sure to make the experience a memorable one for players and spectators alike. VanillaTF2 and their subsidiary VanillaTV have been instrumental in putting the whole thing together and broadcasting it to the masses.

Last Thursday action saw the four teams representing the competative Counter-Strike: Source, Call of Duty 4, Left 4 Dead 2 and Brink scenes whittled down to just two contenders. The high hopes of the Danish CKRAS CSS side were dashed by Xotic L4D2 who displayed a lot of resilience to bounce back from an early defeat against Epsilon Brink.

The fate of the Epsilon Call of Duty side was more of a tale of woe as they had trouble fielding a full six players due to connection issues, although they seemed ill-prepared for the hectic gameplay of Team Fortress 2; were they waiting for that helicopter gunship support?

As it turned out, Epsilon Brink, mentored by yours truly, were just too strong for their fellow finalists, Xotic L4D2, with VanillaTV commentators and scene legends Ahmad 'Byte' Fansa and Brad 'PYYYOUR' Ross singling one player in particular out for praise again and again.

Epsilon Brink's ferocious Finn, Jesper 'Rulah' Sundell, proving to be an indomitable force as scout, schooling all and sundry on which end was the business end of his scattergun. He will surely be a big target for the team known only as “TF2's Finest” who await he and his comrades in the Grand Final show match.

Team Line-ups
TF2's Finest	vs.	Epsilon Brink
TheSucker Macisum Robin Walker Jon Lippincott Gonzo TotalBiscuit	(medic) (demoman) (soldier) (soldier) (scout) (scout)	Admirable 2Easy Morte pliXs Rulah VokUS

The aforementioned team of Valve employees and internet celebrities may not even need their hardcoded hacks as they have two of Europe's finest playing the crucial medic and demoman roles. The two seasoned vets will be bringing a Nordic flavour to the team with Team YoYoTech's Swedish healer Fredrik 'TheSucker' Dahlberg and former Team redCode viking Norwegian demoman Magnus 'Macisum' Fiskum joining force to bring the game to the boys from Brink.

Of course, the real stars of the evening will be the other four members of TF2's Finest...

The father of Team Fortress, Robin Walker, co-wrote the original QuakeWorld Team Fortress that started it all back in 1996; not bad for an Australian. Seemingly too scared to enter battle without one of his colleagues to use as a meat shield (he is Australian after all), Robin will be joined on soldier duties by the creator of the awesome new TF2 Replay System, Jon Lippincott, who hails from the land of the free.

As those Valve guys are actual normal people with a profession they don't have silly pseudonames, but two people that do are John 'TotalBiscuit' Bain and Richard 'Gonzo' Lewis. These two Brits will be vaguely representing the gaming press, with the silky smooth tones of TotalBiscuit gaining him notoriety over at CynicalBrit.com and amongst the fanatical StarCraft 2 community.

Mr. Bain is in fact over in Helsinki right now covering the Assembly Summer 2011 LAN event which is also under the spotlight right here on Cadred. Hopefully, that Cadred plug will seamlessly segue in to a glowing introduction of my boss and hero, Richard Lewis, the Commander and Chief of this very website. He may be the secret weapon of the team having previously experienced the early days of competitive Team Fortress 2 shortly after launch. Can the angry Welshman form an alliance with his English scout partner? Time will tell...

Yes! That video is awesome. Again, much love to Freeflow. Show it to your friends and spread the word across the interwebs. As a zealot of our cause you will of course need to be equipped with finer details of proceedings.

So it’s a date! Bring flowers. If you need a competitive Team Fortress 2 fix before then check out the coverage from Assembly Summer right here.

Free2Play Invitational Preview
VanillaTF2.org
Epsilon eSports