Tonight the match we'll see the match we've all been waiting for, not once but twice, as the dominant Dignitas side meet with the might of the latest challengers to their throne and spiritual successor to last season's champions Fintastic Five, in the winners bracket finals of both ClanBase EuroCup and ESL Major Series playoffs.

Dignitas

Anderson
drago
JaKaZc
kARnAJ
Squall

Fintastic 5

ENSAM
Sample
olBaa
Matias
Lepari


Coverage from shoutcaster Owzo is guaranteed for at least the first match, and live streaming will as always be provided by Gamestv.org. ESL and ClanBase have both written excellent coverage pieces about their halves of this matchup, including the histories of the teams, quotes from players and commentators, information about their leagues and much more, so be sure to check them out:

• ClanBase Match Coverage Article

• ESL Match Coverage Article

With less than three weeks to go until the start of Crossfire Intel Challenge 7, the CIC7 admin team are pleased to to announce the tournament structure for both Enemy Territory and Call of Duty 4.

The Call of Duty 4 tournament will consist of an initial group stage of eight groups of six teams. Each team will play each other team in their group once, with each groupstage match consisting of a single search & destroy game on a map chosen from the mappool by the veto system, MR12.

The top two teams from each CoD4 group progress to a single-elimination playoff stage. Each playoff match will be played in a best of three format, MR12. This tournament structure guarantees a minimum of five matches for each Call of Duty team.

The Enemy Territory tournament will consist of an initial group stage of eight groups of four teams (some groups may have five teams, if more than 32 teams attend). Each team will play each other team in their group once. The top two teams in each group will progress to a double elimination playoff bracket. Additionally, there will be a consolation tournament (format either single or double elimination to be confirmed) for the remaining teams.

All matches in ET will be played in the standard best of three maps format. Maps in groupstage will be preselected. This tournament structure guarantees a minimum of four matches for each Enemy Territory team (five matches if a double elimination consolation bracket is confirmed).

Matches will be have start times between 09:00 - 01:00 Friday, 09:00 - 23:00 Saturday, and 10:00 - 15:00 Sunday. If your team requires a late start on the Friday, please contact Adacore as soon as possible. Late start places are limited and it may not always be possible to grant requests. If your team has requested a late start already, we should be able to accommodate it.

A full schedule with all teams, matches and start times will be published on Crossfire.nu in the run-up to the event, once groups are confirmed.

If you have any additional schedule or tournament queries please contact Adacore or leave a comment on this news item and we'll attempt to answer them to the best of our ability.

Following the successful completion of the seeding tournament, I can announce the groups for the main tournaments at Crossfire Challenge 5. For ET, the groups have been constructed by taking one team from either the 1st or 2nd poule, one team from the 3rd poule, one from the 4th poule and, where a team remains, one from the 5th poule, all selected at random.

Groups B, E and F are those with the 1st poule teams and, thus, the winners from these groups will not meet each other in the 1st round of the playoffs.

Group A
Impact
Muse
Copyright
Randoms
09:00Group B
VAE
TAG
dESIRE
Charism
10:00Group C
Friends in Force
Fast2Kill
aToon
True Destination
14:45
Group D
Epsilon
Overload
Epic Fail
AoW
20:30Group E
ButtonBashers
Replay
Anticlimax
Kruger
18:30Group F
mamut.si
ZeroE
Decibel
21:00

More info on ETNote: Times given are for start of 1st game in group, to give an indication of approximate start times. For certain groups (in particular, B) teams have a wide range of start times as matches are played over an extended period. Teams in groups A, C and D will start at the times given, teams in other groups may start at that time or later, depending on the schedule and any late start requested.

In the Enemy territory tournament, the top team from each group will proceed directly to playoffs, the 2nd place team from each group will progress to a second group stage, consisting of two groups of three teams. The winners of each of these groups will also play in the main double elimination playoffs. In addition, 3rd and 4th place teams in the first group stage will play in a single elimination losers bracket over Saturday and Sunday.

Call of Duty groups were created similarly, randomly placing teams from each stage of the seeding tournament in alternate groups to create the following four groups of three teams:

Group A
Dignitas
AndThenSome
CubeSports
09:30Group B
ButtonBashers
komaCrew
H2k
SatGroup C
Reason
Tempus Moriendi
AMPOL
09:30GroupD
Vicious & Evil
FatGames
Team e3
14:45

Due to changes in the group structure, start times in CoD are still under review.

The seeding tournament for Enemy Territory will run in a similar fashion to the CoD tournament played on Sunday. This will involve a maximum of three games per team, starting at 18:00 CET on Sunday 7th December. Any teams that are not able to play will forfeit their matches and receive a last place seed at CC5.

The tournament will be composed of three double elimination brackets of eight teams each, with each bracket played to the WB final and LB semifinal. Each of these brackets is equal in terms of seeding, so there will be three #1 seeds, three #2 seeds, etc.

Teams should join #cc5.seeding prior to the start time. ETTV will be required for the WB final of each bracket, but is not a requirement for all earlier games (although we would like to see some games from each round on ETTV).

Fresh from an emphatic victory over the Pro5 team in the ClanBase EuroCup XV grand final on Monday, Evolve Gaming is proud to announce a renewed lineup for the final stages of the Cadre QCup, ET-Cup #26 and ESL Summer Season.

Two new faces join the roster seen playing this past EuroCup:

Azatej joins the team officially as a full member. He has already played in the EuroCup winners bracket final game against TLR where Evolve took the victory over three maps, but aside from this is relatively unknown in highskill 6v6. His supreme aiming skills, great game sense and medic work combine to make him a more than suitable replacement for the outgoing wunderkind Perfo.

The second addition to the team is newcomer Butchji. Having played for the past 9 months with the p5/zP side the german star is no stranger to high level ET, and brings a depth of experience as well as his awesome aim to the team. Butchji replaces the awesome medic sqzz, who was unable to stay as active as necessary over the summer period.

In addition to these changes, rifle-wonder Xylos is also inactive over the summer period and will be replaced in the active lineup by Evolve backup and ET co-captain Adacore for the duration of his inactivity.

This leaves the current lineup of Evolve Gaming ET as:

toxic
snoop
razz
Azatej
Butchji
Adacore

Xylos (Inactive)

With these changes the summer lineup of Evolve Gaming hope to continue their dominance of the ET scene over the summer and look forward to the games to come. See you in the game!

Shortly after the spectacular end to the Pro5 vs Dignitas ClanBase EuroCup round 3 game tonight bans for Keran and Shy were filed on ClanBase. These players were banned for cheating on a public server and, hence, these players will receive a suspension from all games in ClanBase competitions.

There has been much speculation as to what this will mean for the Pro5 team after their recent victory over defending champions Dignitas. After discussion of the rules and the situation at hand, the decision has been made that the result of this match and all previous matches in which Keran and Shy played for Pro5 will stand. This is due to the fact that the cheating offences were on a public server and there is no indication that these players cheated in these or any other official ClanBase matches, and is in accordance with the ClanBase cheating and abuse policy.

Thanks as always must go to Bulld0g for his relentless hard work in tracking down the evidence to stop the cheaters in the ET community.

The ClanBase EuroCup qualifiers are well underway, with Insignia Cadre demonstrating yesterday their dominance over Octense, while AuxiliA were held to a surprisingly close two map victory over infrag.

Due to scheduling difficulties a small change has been made to the qualifiers, with some teams switched and a replacement team added to enable all qualifier matches to be played. snd multigaming have decided to withdraw from competition in this season's EuroCup, with ESVKA taking their place in a match against Fear Factory tonight! The qualifiers changed are:

Tonight - 22:00 CET
:: Fear Factory X-Fi vs. ESVKA

Monday 9th - 20:30 CET
:: ultimate Conspiracy vs. el Vigorz (old vib)

Good luck to these four teams against their new opponents!

In addition to these rescheduled games, we also have another qualifier tonight - the multinational vae team-nv side, perhaps somewhat overshadowed by the other vae squad 4i and their recent problems take on the resilient force of the finnish Incomplete.

Tonight - 20:30 CET
:: Vicious & Evil team-nv vs. Incomplete

After the submission of six maps demonstrating the full breadth of the possibilities offered by ET and showing that the competitive mapping community is most definitely alive and kicking, the results of the CPC2 LAN ET Mapping Contest are in!

Votes from all sixteen competing teams were collected, and the clear winner was Dersaidin's bremen_b1. Full results of the contest were as follows:

bremen_b1 - 9
field_hq_b2 - 3
odenthal_b2 - 2
wolken1_cpc - 2
sub_base - 0
vio_grail_b3 - 0

This vote means that Bremen_b1 will complete the maplist for the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge 2 Enemy Territory tournament, to give the final maplist for the competition as:

:: Bremen (latest version)
:: Frostbite
:: Frost_Comp (latest version is b4)
:: Radar
:: Supply
:: sw_Goldrush_te

With only three weeks until the LAN, teams are advised to start preparing on those maps they may not yet know!

Update Frost Final version b4 is available for download and replaces b3 in the map pool, download it here

With 6 maps in competition for the final spot on the maplist for the Crossfire Prizefight Challenge 2 LAN event, running from the 13th to 15th of April in Enschede and sponsored by WZZRD.nl, it's time we got to see the maps in contention before Wednesday's clanleader vote. A series of showmatches running on Monday and Tuesday will serve to enlighten us as to the wonders that have been skilfully created by the mapping community for our fragging needs. For the contest winner a prize consisting of over €100 in steelseries products, awaits, while for the teams playing they know the choice of map could be crucial to how the LAN event plays out.

21:00 CET: polar eSports vs The Last Resort
played on Vio_grail_b3 & Bremen_b1

22:00 CET: Kno i Horn vs Fear Factory X-Fi
played on Wolken1_cpc & Sub_base

Tuesday 20th:
21:00 CET: Pingwins vs Violence is Bad
played on Odenthal_b2 & Field_hq_b2

All 6 maps are currently on the Crossfire.nu public server: 82.192.84.231:27930

With the temporary absence of key player Evil extended, Team - Helix have made the decision to withdraw from competition in the current ClanBase EuroCup season. Helix would like to make clear that they are not quitting ET, although they will be looking to make a change to their roster in the near future, citing motivation problems and internal conflict as reasons.

Helix player Biqq had this to say:

Quote

Helix will drop from EuroCup, [there is] no point in playing without Evil. [This] does not mean that Helix is closed - there will be a lineup change [and] we're looking forward to attending shgOpen with a new player.

[img|left]http://games.ols.es/cb-images/eurocup14.png[/img]
This unfortunate turn of events means that aMenti will progress to the second round of the losers bracket where they face a tough matchup against cdap - Team pi, who will be looking to put in a strong performance after their narrow defeat to zeroPoint! Gaming on Thursday.