The Round Robin: North American division soared through Season 7 with enthusiasm, finishing successfully with record participation.
The Mentoring Tournament was in many ways the most exciting. Expecting a lackluster amount of participation, we advertised it on several pub community forums, as well as on /r/truetf2. Instead of the piddling interest we expected, we had a record number of signups, breaking 100 within days of signups opening. After an extensive interview process, mentees were matched into 5 teams - Mechanical Lions, Iron Giants, The Hazy Crew, We 3^2 Kings (later renamed to MINH damage) and Attack of the Retreating Invisible Cows. Teams had a month to practice with their mentors before their round robin tournament on the 7th. The tournament was exciting, with tournament favorites The Hazy Crew suffering surprising defeats during their first two rounds, tying for second in the round robin portion of the second with Mechanical Lions, before beating them in a lightning round to win the spot opposing Iron Giants in finals.
Finals took place as a best of 3 on pl_upward, with Iron Giants coming out victorious. Not to go unmentioned, Attack of the Retreating Invisible Cows put in a solid performance, being one of only two teams to beat Mechanical Lions during the round robin portion (the tournament winners, Iron Giants, being the other team). MINH Damage, formerly We 3^2 Kings, win the spirit award hands down, overcoming issues with mentor availability and sticking together to form a UGC team despite only winning one round during the tournament itself.
Important to mention is that every round was live cast, through the combined casting powers of Kip, Hildreth and the Entire State of New Jersey. VODs may still be up on their respective streams. Logs are up and can be found here, with stv's still being compiled into a common repository.
The Team Tournament happened the following week, on April 14th. Altogether, we had twelve teams participate, forming two groups of 6 teams. Matches began at 2 PM EST and went throughout the day. The first group wrapped up with Tyro Raid going undefeated, sPIro (with help from Misfit Mercenaries and Why So Serious) going 4-1, Refugee Campers pulling a surprising 3 wins, Bind S to Explode earning a well-fought 2 wins, Re'Defined scraping one out and Kablammy forfeiting early and going home empty :(. The second group had a similar ranking, with Team Willy going undefeated, It Burns When I PvP pulling out 4 wins, ChillZone coming in third with 3 well fought wins, Egyptian-Zodiac pulling off 2 quite nice wins, Ass 2 Mouth pulling off a surprising (and incredible) one win, and Totally Rainbow also forfeiting early to go home with 0 wins.
Tournament favorites Tyro Raid looked like they might have met their match in Team Willy when they lost the first map of finals, koth_ashville_rc1. However, they still managed to pull out the win when they beat Willy on both cp_foundry and pl_retawdab in an extensive 3-map final match.
Ass 2 Mouth yet again take home the spirit award, providing highly entertaining games for all of their opponents and keeping everyone upbeat and cheerful with their drunken shenanigans (we can only hope they did eventually find their friend).
No matches were able to be livecast, due to scheduling difficulties with casters, stvs and logs are being actively compiled from hosting teams and will be made available to casters in the hope of giving some of these teams the attention they deserve for their spirited participation.
