Yesterday we exceeded all previous participant numbers from previous events making epic20 our biggest event to date. 

That has placed some pressure on the seating plan and therefore the restrictions on sitting in either the Portland or Bamburgh rooms have now been lifted so you may now select these areas for any games. 

Note that there will still be 'defrags' taking place over the coming weeks to get teams and groups sat together where possible, but as tickets are sold on a first-come-first-served basis, we cannot promise that late bookings can be accomodated at this stage. 

Please keep an eye on the Fair Isle Defrag forum post for more information. If you are playing as part of a team in one of our tournaments, make sure you have signed up to the tournament site and all set the same clan tag on your main account as it will help us with the seating process. 

It's time to dust off the New Year cobwebs and put your pulse bomb where your mouth is! Following the positive feedback recieved with epicLAN @ EGX last year, successfully running the Overwatch experience - We are keen to keep working with the Overwatch community!

epicLAN & ASTRO have teamed up to provide this Overwatch challenge to see who is coming in hot ahead of epicLAN's first Overwatch tournament at epic20 and of course, to win prizes!

This tournament will see up to 32 teams in a single elimination 1 day tournament, with pride and prizes up for grabs, secure your position today in the epicLAN Winter Overwatch Challenge.

When: Sunday 15th January from 15:00 UK Time
What: Max 32 teams, single Elim Overwatch tournament with prizes
Signup & More Info here

Make sure you check out Qwazar this weekend at www.qwazar.co.uk. These guys are setting out to deliver high quality, high reliability and feature rich mechanical keyboards at an affordable price and are already seeing some great reviews on Amazon for their Red Shift model.

Thanks to Qwazar for supporting epic.NINETEEN this weekend! 

Following on from a number of recent well-documented issues in the UK CSGO scene, including one at our last event, the following players are now subject to bans from all epic.LAN events:

• Ben 'krby' Kirby - 1 Year (Cheating)
• Joseph 'Joee' Leigh - 2 Years (Cheating - VAC Banned)
• Charlie 'K1NDEADLY' Weber - 2 years (Drug Use)

These bans will be for a minimum of the periods identified above and will be reviewed at that time. 

While the cheating incidents did not occur at our events, we are working closely with other UK eSports operators to apply consistent bans in order to encourage fair play at UK tournaments. In the case of "K1NDEADLY", there is a clear admission of breaking our event terms at epic.EIGHTEEN and we must show a zero tolerance approach. 

Jon Winkle, epic.LAN Managing Director, issued the following statement:

"We must be absolutely clear in our stance when it comes to use of illegal substances at our event, we will not accept it and anyone involved will be removed and banned from future events. If we find that others were involved in this particular incident or any other in the future of a similar nature, the same punishments will apply. In terms of cheating, whether this takes place at our events or at other UK events, cheaters are simply not welcome at epic.LAN and we're going to follow the good examples set by ESL and Multiplay by applying these bans to our event too."

Furthermore, we will be taking this opportunity to review our code of conduct for our event participants to improve the quality of the event and tournament. This will include, but not be limited to, areas such as cheating, substance misuse, timekeeping and abuse towards other participants and event staff.

Todays schedule for the tournaments as our finals get underway is as follows:

CS:GO

Is at 12:00 and will be on our Twitch channel

DOTA

Is underway now on our Twitch channel

Starcraft II 

Is at 12:00pm and will be over on our Twitch channel

CS:GO

• Team uFrag Vs Perilous Fury 11am
• Semi-Finals Upper Bracket (1pm)
• Upper Bracket Final (4pm)
• Lower Bracket Final (7pm)
• Consolation Final (10pm)

CS:GO is available to watch on our twitch channel.

Starcraft II

• Gamerrichy Vs ThurJD (11am)
• Quarter Finals Upper Bracket (1pm)
• Semi-Finals Upper Bracket (3pm)
• Upper Bracket Final (5pm)
• Lower Bracket Semi-Final (7pm)
• Lower Final (9pm)
• Consolation Final (11pm)

Starcraft II is available on our twitch channel

Hearthstone

Hearthstone Schedule will be updated as soon as the tournament gets underway at 1pm this afternoon. 

Dota 2

Due to some minor tech issues we're still struggling to stream any of the Dota2 tournament we're hoping to give this another go today and hopefully get some of the matches out to you. Further updates on this will be announced as and when we can. Thanks

Here are the times for our first day's CS:GO tournament streams. Catch them here https://www.twitch.tv/epiclan1 

• Round 1 - 11:30 - uFrag vs ODB
• Round 2 - 1pm - Jacky's Danes vs Perilous Fury
• Round 3 - 3pm - Infused vs Devine
• Round 4 - 5pm - MnM vs Odin
• Round 5 - 7pm - VATIC vs uFrag

Here are the first rounds for Day One of our Dota2 tournament at epic.EIGHTEEN catch them on our stream https://www.twitch.tv/epiclan2 

• Round 1 - Choke vs Digital Warfare
• Round 2 - Senses vs Garlic Bread Esports
• Round 3 - Ionic vs Gazza and Moaty
• Round 4 - Dreadstack vs -5/C4 
  
  

The Central Stream is going to look pretty elegant at epic.EIGHTEEN thanks to the kind support of noblechairs who will be sending along a selection of their new EPIC Gaming Chair series (sounds like a perfect match for something to display at epic.LAN right?) for use on the central stream and for all of you to check out as you pass through the Gallery at LAN. 

The Central Stream broadcasts a range of gaming activities from the event, including casual gaming, interviews, members of the #epicstreamteam, the pub quiz, Joeshow's "Breakfast & Chill" and much more. You can find the stream externally on twitch.tv/epiclan throughout the LAN or locally through the event intranet, so make sure you tune in from this Thursday. 

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Our regular friends over at ASTRO Gaming will be supporting a number of fun tournaments this weekend with ASTRO A40 TR headsets up for the winners and ASTRO t-shirts for the runners up. The following tournament winners get to take away the awesome headsets:

• Super Smash Bros (Wii U)
• Nidhogg
• Ark: Survival of the Fittest
• Don't Starve Together

Make sure you check out the epic.EIGHTEEN timetable for all the casual gaming activities taking place over the weekend. And if you still wish to attend, we do still have some cancellation tickets available, so get in touch to find out more.