The first draft of the rules, maplist and format for the epic.FIVE £1000 Team Fortress 2 LAN Tournament are now available.

Working with our expert game admins, Tapley & Mole, we've come up with a slightly different set of rules which are essentially vanilla TF2 with medic unlocks, as well as an unusual twist on the usual Turbine gameplay, just for a bit of a change to other TF2 tournaments.

As this is the first draft, we would welcome any feedback from the community and prospective teams, you can do so via the epic.FIVE forums or over at ETF2L.

To take part in the tournament, you need to have a confirmed space at the event, so go and book your space now to be in with a chance of winning!

We're very pleased to confirm that UK LAN favourites, Kustom will be bringing along their LAN stall for your enjoyment and convenience at the epic.FIVE LAN Party in February 2011.

Graeme will be making his own epic journey down from Scotland to join us for a few days with some LAN party essentials as well as demonstration items for you to try before you buy, and as always you will be able to pre-order from the Kustom website before the event for free collection on site.

Not only will you get to have a look at the Kustom shop, but you'll also be entertained with a range of random games, and we're fairly certain to see another Armagetron marathon with plenty of wacky and wonderful game modes.

If you haven't grabbed your epic.FIVE seat, then book now to make sure you don't miss out on some of the great activities planned for the event!

UPDATE - These cancellation space have now both been filled.

Due to a couple of incidents of general fail, TWO spaces have become available for epic.lite 3 in a couple of weeks time.

So if you were one of the many people who missed out on the tickets when they sold out in record time, and you are able to join us from Friday 19th - Sunday 21st November then go and book a ticket for our final lan of 2011 now!

About epic.lite events

epic.lite is a relaxed, social event where even the epic.LAN staff team are there to enjoy themselves. There is no formal advanced programming, no heavily organised activities, and technically no "staff area". It's just a chilled weekend of gaming, some drinks and a load of fun! We promise that you wont see any tournaments at this event, so if that's what you're looking for, sorry!

Ho Ho Ho!

There are just 53 days left until Christmas but only 18 days until epic.lite 3 where we'll be having our mini Christmas with your very own set of presents and Santa won't mind if you open them early!

Our Secret Santa will be taking place during elite3 and the deadline for signing up to take part is this Thursday (4th November) at 12noon. To sign up simply go to your Event Booking and add the Secret Santa service.

You will then receive an automated secret mail over the following few days telling you who to buy for. The limit is £5 and remember to wrap your present and label who it is for before you get to the event. We'll let you know when you arrive where you can put your presents ready for our Christmas morning!

Happy Shopping!

We shall be making Halloween that bit more entertaining with a game of TF2 from 8pm tonight as well our usual spot on Tuesday. Bring your papermasks and pumpkin heads and be prepared to kill the Horseless Headless Horsemann in Scream Fortress 2.

The second Halloween update features a new map in an eerie haunted house, new mini-boss and hunts for elusive gifts as well as everyone's favourite from last year - Exploding pumpkins! The update lasts until 8th November so be sure to enjoy it. Come join us if you dare!

As a great Cat once said, "Hey!  You can't have my shiny thing!  I found it, it's my shiny thing."

But it's ok because we are sharing our new shiny things with you. Yes more achievements!!

The beavers (and Squirrels) have been busy working away to bring you a sleek set of achievements all ready for you to earn at the next event.

Keep an eye our for the next achievement update coming your way soon.

If you haven't seen any achievements yet, then check out your profile to see which ones you, and your follow gamers, currently have.

Here's mine as an example, and you can click on names in the attendance list from epic.FIVE to see more profiles from the people who will be attending.

After some great hunting action at epic.lite 2, on Thursday, we'll be stepping back into the 1920s for some murder mystery action, taking place on board a luxury cruise liner.

A mysterious man named Mr. X has handed out free tickets for his luxury cruise. Little did the passengers know, they were falling into his devious trap. All the passengers are required to track down and murder another passenger. If a passenger chooses not to do so, Mr. X will kill both the passengers and his or her family.

During the game, each player is assigned a quarry, and the object of the game is to murder them with nobody watching, at the same time as looking out for your own hunter. The game also has dynamic priced weapons, so you gain more money for each kill depending on the rarity of the weapon you choose. (Hint - don't go for the fire axe! But bonus points if we see anybody get a sauna kill!)

If you don't already own The Ship, you can buy it on the Steam Store, alternatively if you already have it and you have any guest passes available on your account, let people know on the forums so other people can try it free for the epic.Thursday game!

The game will be up at server1.epiclan.co.uk:27115 on Thursday. See you there!

Tonight the epic.TF2 community play their second match in ETF2L's Highlander Tournament against UKCS at 7:30pm.

The line-up for this week has altered slightly with individuals' availability and now stands as:

• Scout: Hg
• Pyro: Inferno
• Medic: KamiKaze
• Sniper: Badgerr
• Spy: Zorg
• Engineer: Idy
• Soldier: Omnituens
• Heavy: Saboo
• Demoman: Riot

As before there shall be Source TV running;  fakkelbrigade.eu:2710. You can also join the Mumble banter and cheer us on from there.

Wish us luck as this is the final match in the Group stage and only a win will do!

We worry about you all getting bored during the cold, dark, winter weekends. So because we're a caring bunch of people, we will be running an online version of our popular puzzle hunt this December, to keep you busy inbetween epic.lite 3 and epic.FIVE.

Our online hunt will involve a series of cryptic clues taking you on a journey through the digital world to lead to the final minimum prize of two free epic.LAN tickets to be used in 2011, with the possibility of increasing the prize depending on the numbers playing.

You can work on your own, or in teams, to solve the clues. Last year around 100 players took part with the final clue being solved quickest by CantFitMyN. 

The main hunt will start on Saturday 18th December at 12noon with a series of teaser questions on the Friday Evening. Signups will open at the beginning of December.

Good Luck!

We had a promising start in the first map but unfortunately we were hit by some disconnect and ping issues which resulted in us setting disapporing times on both maps which the opposition were easily able to beat. Out next match is yet to be scheduled but we are all hoping we will be able to better our performance or at least keep 9 people on the server at once!

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