The first ever KOTH opened after some initial server discussions, with Switzerland gtv`steph having to up the server to 35 slots just to fit in all the players, ettv and admins a like. That's one hell of a lot! The first map to be played was of helix's chosing, and it was:

Goldrush [img|right]http://idle.msn.ee/mapicons/et/sw_goldrush.jpg[/img]





Round One

Helix set out their stall to attack first, and right away four players pushed all the way to the back, putting strong pressure on the elite respawn. This resulted in riddla as engineer managing to put pliars to tank, and repairing in under a minute. It seemed most people's predictions of elite getting raped might just be true. Just as the tank began to move, an elite airstrike came out of nowhere, and again the tank stood motionless with 13.56 left on the clock. Yet elite were rattled, and some 30 seconds later we the heard the engines rev. Clown heard the call and set up his mortar on the MG near the Allies first spawn, sending mortar shells raining down onto the tank barrier construction boxes. This proved a menace, hitting several elite engineers, and allowing the tank to be guided freely down onto the bridge, where it was finally damaged.
Helix sensed blitzkrieg, and pushed right down to the bank courtyard, but a strong respawn push by elite ensured that reload was able to retake his balcony position, whilst Bruz constructed the Axis command post with 12.39m remaining. However thanks to some deft driving skills by Clown and Rmn, the tank crawled its last few inches, annoucing its arrival by shattering the Axis bank bastion, which was immediately charged by helix raiders. Elite knew a possible disaster was on the cards, and they surged from the respawn to meet helix in a bank showdown, one which saw reload take down all three Allies of snoop, murda and rmn involving 2 pistol kills. Impressive though this was, helix knew elite couldn't copy the English football team and rely on just one player to make or break their match, and at 9.50 the gold was snatched for the first time. Elite had control of the courtyard however, causing the goldcarrier to remain in the bank, and with no other possible locations to search, day promptly paid the bank a visit to return his precious cargo. Only thirty seconds later and a complete mirror image: this time riddla was the guilty helix party, sniffed out by a combination of angry Axis raptus and bruz.
"Game on", I thought with glee, as the clock ticked down and down, eating out of the fast start helix had made on the first two stages. With 8.40m left, it was the turn of snoop to grab the gold, but he too was overly tentative around the MG area, and the elite crossfire combined to great effect to send that gold back home. Perhaps they had been too agressive, too trigger happy with this recapture, as out of nowhere elite were on a fullspawn, with rmn able to grab the gold and take the short route under the bridge, escorted by riddla. matias wasn't that slow - he'd played goldrush before, and cries of "landmine!" went up from stewie as both rmn & riddla hit the same mine right at the truck, with the objective dropping tantalisingly close. Every single spectator on the entire server span round as fast as their sensitivity allowed to see if elite could respond. But alas, there only came the onrushing figure of snoop, who was able to finish the job once and for all. This brought about the arrival of 8 minutes left on the clock, which was further added to by a dynamite defuse on the truck barrier by day, buying precious seconds, despite the whole of elite being killed within around 10 seconds of respawn. With this helix had learnt their lesson, and the replant was swarmed ensuring that this time it went off. However, elite have a knack of strong spawn pushes, and promptly held the truck under the bridge, with strong medic work by the combination of raptus & calisto. Another 15 or so seconds passed, but by then the Allied respawn was on, and the truck ran up the hill, as murda provided the irritating bridge smg fire. Sensing the end of the round, rmn ghosted to the 2nd Axis spawn arch, and went for the backraping pistol kill having seen only calisto respawn and come his way. Two headshots were landed, but calisto was ever alert, sinking 3 headshots of his own into his enemy, to much amusement on ETTV. Round time stopped exactly on 9.00minutes.

Round Two

Like helix, elite went straight onto the attack, finding snoop alone at the tank barrier, who promptly realised his dire situation and self killed to save some dignity. The command post was made by day after 29 seconds, and he joined forces with matias & calisto, but all three were slaughtered by the helix combo of snoop's smg and riddla's rifle. Meanwhile, rapus pushed alone to the front gate, where his efforts were rewarded by the pleasure of a landmine death, and ending up just about as far from the tank is its possible to get. matias and company tried a repeat of their last attack, but the same helix duo put pay to sloppy reviving, and with 7 minutes left, the odds were looking poor for elite.
The breakthrough came suddenly at 6.31, some 30 seconds later, with bruz pushing all the way from the old command post to the tank, and repairing it with a defiant twist of the pliars. rapt6rr had learnt a trick or two from the first round though, and not to be outdone, his air strike also demolished the tank before it was able to move anywhere, taking out the last elite engineer at the same time. You sensed with 5.51 left elite were becoming desperate, and this showed when raptus & day both died, pliars outstretched at the tank, at the hands of rmn, who thought the job had been done. But elite were by now using three engineers, and with the tank bar nearly complete, bruz took advantage of the helix spawn self kills to finally move the tank beyond its limit. The clock read 5.30.
Knowing elite would be pushing hard, rmn ran his sweaty little legs up the tank hill to meet raptus as the last elite engineer , and gun him down to neutralise the Allied threat on the tank barrier. reload did make it a few seconds later, but he was powerless to do anything about the barrier which had just been constructed, due to the nature of being a lone medic. Raptus ignored the smoke of the recently called airstrike on the tank hill, and managed to plant a dynamite at 4.19, and matias dealt with helix's engineer, riddla as he tried to defuse by shooting him from the old command post. A stray nade then blew the body to oblivion and back, and helix had to come to terms with the loss of their barrier. The barrier was no more at 3.40, but as elite went to repair the tank, the oldest bug in ET reared its ugly head in the form of an unfixable tank, and elite lost probably 30-40 seconds before helix naded the tank and all could be repaired. Clown meanwhile was up at the command post, but he didn't spot his little red lightning charge, and his support fire fizzled into nothing, allowing the tank to be guided all the way to its final resting point.
The three helix defenders of rapt6rr, murda & riddla camped the bank, hoping that they would have little to do in the remaining 2 minutes and 30 seconds. But matias had other ideas, and his mobile MG42 took out Clown & rmn on long spawns. Bruz pushed into the bank having come from the truck slope, and by killing murda in the bank entrance he unlocked the gold, which he duly stole and thought he'd got away with. Perhaps if he had escaped at this point the finale would have been a very close affair, but he lost it, and raptus had to track back to steal it again. murda's artillary on the bridge steps slowed the gold's trip to the truck as it took out three elite players in a row, and with 30 seconds left, the truck was only just past the barrier. Elite knew there was too little time left to win, and so it was helix who ended goldrush with a 2:0 advantage. Had the tank bug not occured, well, who knows.
Nevertheless, the game had to go on, and this time it was elite's choice of map:




Adlernest [img|right]http://idle.msn.ee/mapicons/et/aldernest.jpg[/img]





Round One

Here it was the turn of elite to attack first. Upon the respawn, all 6 players made their way to the main "entrance", and through an effective crossfire, five helix players were cut down quickly, leaving raptus to finish the job by killing the last man, murda, in front of the controls. The dynamite was down instantly, and matias as panzer quietly held back, waiting for a sniff of Axis engineer. It came in the form of riddla, who was obliterated by the anti-tank weapon's splash damage. The helix spawn push simply crumbled, and elite pushed through the Axis spawn and command post while the doors opened on 13.52. Matias by now clearly fancied his chances, but his spawn camp with the panzer failed as he was snuffed out and removed from the area.
Calisto must like adlernest quite a lot, because it was him who both took out rapt6rr & murda who were defending the command post, and the teamed up with day to push towards and then overpower the helix objective room defense. Helix had been caught red-handed, and calisto was able to literally walk the objective home via the command post without seeing an entire helix player on the way. The clock stopped, much to the general delight of ETTV, on the 2.29 mark.

Round Two

Elite set out a strong first defense, with the four players of reload, matias, day & bruz all within close proximity of each other. Unpeterbed by the panzer threat, bruz then went on to have a 3 man take-down. raptus did want to miss out on the fun, and he too came out with a double grenade kill, finishing emphatically with a rebounding rifle kill on riddla at the controls before self killing.
Eager to jump in on the fun, reload created a double grenade kill of his own, taking out this time snoop & clown, and preferring to stick to the safety of bullets, matias made his own 2-man kill. Helix didn't like this new form of embarassment, and immediately the left hand side of the console was filled with elite names. Only then did the see-saw change balance again, and elite regained the initiative. With 40 seconds left, elite made a cheeky pause, but the result was beyond doubt, and a frustrated Clown slammed home a triple smg frag to mark the end of the round.

So now the decider, with the scores at 2:2

After a map elimination, it was to be braundorf to seperate the teams




Braundorf [img|right]http://idle.msn.ee/mapicons/et/braundorf.jpg[/img]





Round One

The teams swapped around, and helix lined up to defend. A wave of seemingly uncoordinated elite attacks phased out, and it was after a full minute that the helix flag was first threatened. Raptus & day went for the flag, with day taking out Clown on his was but managing to get gunned down by murda, and falling only to learn his teammate had suffered a similar fate.
Meanwhile matias was having less luck at spawnkilling with his panzer, and a combination of helix nades severely weakened him leaving him unable to fire his weapon. On the other end of the map, four player of both clans converged upon the tunnels, and the resulting firefights left only two surviving players: hx^riddla & e^reload. It was helix rifle on elite luger, and the defender won through, eliminating the threat for at least another spawn.
At 12.59, drama as calisto ghosted through and captured the flag, but with 3 secs left until Axis respawn, riddla[/b[ tracked back, killing calisto and recapturing a split second before respawn. Elite's torrid day continuted, when the same respawn rushed out fo spawn and immediately defused the main gate's freshly planted dynamite courtesy of Clown, which saw elite all dead and unable to do anything about the situation. Finally on the next elite respawn matias was able to take out two helix players on their respawn, but the revives were swiftly in, and again elite were pushed back by some agressive defensive work on the part of murda, snoop and rmn. But my 9.59 the defense finally caved in, allowing the flag to be captured, and the elite player of reload, matias & bruz to head to the side gate and plant there.
Helix were escorted past the 9 minute left stage thanks to rapt6rr and snoop's main entrance crossfire; one which added another minute to the clock. By now the command post was in Allied hands, and elite swarmed all over the side entrance, making it to the bunker where they collected much of the ammo packs left lying around by an overly keen rapt6rr. Helix were pushed right back and forced to dig deep, but they made it to the respawn with controls intact. Matias attempted to spam the Axis spawn with grenades, but he soon ran out and rmn accepted the easy kill at side.
With 7.08 left, the entire elite team respawn, with matias changing tack, and using the panzer instead. This time he was able to kill both rapt6rr & riddla on fullspawn, helping elite to gain an easy control over the bunker, where they planted and successfully defended to stop the clock after 9.42mins.

Round Two

Again, elite looked to defend agressively, and were unphased when riddla's panzerfaust only connected with one of them. However, the tunnel defense let them down, and elite's matias & raptus were killed, gifting the flag to helix with 8.52 left. The plant was quickly made, and elite were unable to get back in position and so there was no main entrance crossfire in place when the dynamite exploded, relying on bruz's two man grenade to slow the attack down at 8.12.
Helix pushed high at main, and last-man-left reload was only able to take out riddla & rmn, before rapt6rr finished off the job and avenge their deaths. He realised he was all alone now, and killed to allow helix a split attack of three main, three side. Riddla as engineer pushed forward too quickly, and he was killed and gibbed before any of his accompanying medics could revive him, delaying helix yet another spawn. By now helix changed attack to 5 at side, leaving snoop alone to attack main. He manged to kill the lone bruz at high right, and pushed forward to the bunker, to find a recently respawned bruz to whom he said a friendly "hi" to by killing him once more. The helix side push overpowered elite, who found themselves out of position again, and the plant went down at 5.10. Elite's engineers were raptus & day, but they both suffered an early death by chosing to go for the defuse, rather than shoot at the Allied raiders surrounding the bunker. Some thirty seconds later, the controls were all but demolished, and Helix become the first ever Crossfire Kings of the Hill, in what was a simply magnificent match, one which surpassed anything that anyone had predicted.