Hey, Conductor and London here with a sneak peek at season 14's open. This season features the biggest open division yet, and it should be make for a competitive season at every level.
Angry autists
Written by Conductor
This is a team that I, admittedly, don't know much about. Their individual histories are nothing particularly impressive, but they seem to be pretty talented in the DM department. Wrech carried Treason aka J the T last season, and with a better supporting cast this time around they should definitely be able to make their way into playoffs at least. Their flank also features some veteran players with ictus and scobra. Scobra has a season of IM under his belt, and ictus has experience playing with the old Disposable Heroes roster. I'm expecting them and wrech to do well, but I don't know how well Epoch and Dr Gilburt will stack up when matched against other high-Open players. By anyone's standards this team should break the top 16 at the very least, but may end up being one of the better teams as they start to learn their roles better.
Fried Green Tomatoes
Written by London
The team formerly known as Very Good Bad Boys are one of the few teams who chose not to move up to IM after all playoff teams got to make the jump. What it has left is a team who managed to stay positive through a rough patch towards the end of season and are returning with most of the roster intact. Presently, the roster changes involve Bape and north^star as the team's new Scout combo and their old Scout Jay making the move to pocket. Their combo was actually really impressive during their playoff games, and north^star in particular did a ton of work on pocket during every match of theirs I watched. Jay has some big shoes to fill here, and hopefully he can do it. While I think this team will look stronger towards the end of the season, at the moment they have an edge over a lot of the new teams in Open and can still hang with some of the high-Open teams; however, their potential is far from realized as of yet.
get wrecked
Written by Conductor
Polishing off our list of reemerging TF2 veterans brings us to get wrecked, or as I like to call them, the vpolice incarnate. The roster is comprised entirely of old school players, but the most notable names among them are easily romeo love and FastFire. FastFire formerly played pocket on Muscle Milk and Moolians, and romeo love played Demoman on Jammin' with Jammar which eventually became the first team sponsored by AG. While romeo may be playing Scout rather than his old main, his DM seems to be good enough to compete with many of the other DM heavy Scouts at the top of Open. I don't see this team being a title contender right now, but they should be one of the top teams in the division nonetheless.
Graveyard of im dreams
Written by London
conductor and June formed this roster after cond's departure from trans-autistic railroad at the end of the season. conductor will be playing Demo with Dart on Medic while June settles into the role of pocket. The flank consists of the two veterans bigwill (aka saltybigwang from my noodle is so moist) and Let It Riot on Scout, who seems to be doing fine even after taking several seasons off. Hellbent, their roamer, is the only question mark on the roster right now. They have a lot of smart players and one guy catching up quickly, and I think their Scouts are going to surprise some people. I expect to see this team come out of its shell by mid-season and hopefully pull off some upset wins against some of the "final boss" teams in Open.
heretics
Written by London
Reimu should change the team name to Medic Mains, because there's a hell of a lot of them on this roster. Think, Thrill, and Miwo are all great Medics with a ton of experience in all three divisions. Think and Thrill will both be playing Soldier, with Think presumably pocketing. Reimu and SH0CK seem to be doing well as the Scout combo, and I believe the team is looking at fredwardo to play Demo. Last season was a little heartbreaking for young Reimu, with a tough losing streak at the end of the season that knocked his team out of the running for playoffs. I imagine this team's strong point to be the knowledge Think and Thrill will bring to the Mumble environment. Expect to see strong play right out the gate from these guys, and hopefully they'll stay ahead of the curve for the rest of the season.
M42 and the running men
Written by Conductor
If this team would stop cutting half their players every week it would be a hell of a lot easier for me to write about them. Either way, I'm going to talk about the people who are likely going to stay on the roster which appear to be SharplessSix, warped, blue, and noko. Sharpless and warped should bring a lot of direction to this team with previous IM and Invite experience respectively. Blue has been on a number of Open teams before, but has never really gotten his pocket play up to a top Open level. Sharpless should bring some direction to their ubers, so hopefully blue's play will step up a level over the course of this season. Noko is a bit of a wild card for me: she performed well on gettin cozy last season, but whoever ends up being her Scout partner should determine how this team's flank stacks up against the rest of the high-Open teams.
Pizza Boy Gangbang
Written by Conductor
This team's roster still seems to be pretty shaky at the moment, with many familiar faces having joined and left within the past day or two. As of now, the roster looks like it's shaping up to be SteveC and wilka on Scout, mgib and ibby on Soldier, ctrl f muffin on Demo, and seanbsly on Medic. Who knows if this lineup will stick around, but regardless of whatever menagerie of sandbaggers ends up actually playing they should be able to outclass just about every team in Open. The deciding factor of whether or not they actually take the title will likely be how seriously they actually take the season.
SS Edmund Fitzgerald
Written by Conductor
Here's a roster that has been overlooked by seemingly everybody else in the division. Continuing the recent trend of oldschool TF2 players returning to the game, most of this team consists of players from an old High-Open team called Lore's Merry Men which used to feature such names as Killing and ghos7ayama. I'm told that they're playing for fun, but if they decide to take the season seriously they very well may surprise some people. I honestly have no clue how they're going to place due to the fact that they don't seem to have been scrimming lately, but I feel they're worth a mention.
the best team in open
Written by London
While this team has been creating some controversy even before the end of season 13, right now they look to be at the top of the pile. They're the only team that has been consistently scrimming since the beginning of playoffs last season, and it definitely shows in their recent scrims. They are the only team in Open consistently beating IM teams or at least coming very close, which I can't really say for a lot of the other Open teams in the top 10 right now. Following in the tradition of strong teams like Community Clown College and Indust We Trust, these guys will undoubtedly look extremely dominant at the beginning of the season right till the very end. The true test for these guys will be much later during the post season, as both of the teams I mentioned earlier fizzled out in the middle of playoffs before coming too close to the Grand Final. Pot is a solid Demo, arctic joe is an insane Scout, and the rest of them seem to play together really well. Ikpure had some questionable decision making in some of the matches from previous seasons, but now seems to be doing a great job in terms of positioning and survivability. As of right now, every high-Open team should have their sights set on these guys as the team to beat.
The Yarg Memoirs
Written by London
The team formerly known as Not Bad for Offclassing is returning to Open with a lot of roster changes, hopefully for the better. Team captain Monkey Suit will be one of the only returning members to this season's roster on Scout, with the only other person being Zambler who is returning to play Demo. In terms of roster upgrades, drdonutman will be playing Medic and Vortex will be monkey's Scout partner. Wowzers has had some impressive performance already in the few scrims I've seen with them, and should prove to fill yarg's shoes from last season. These guys have really tried to lock down a solid roster to avoid a team explosion repeat, both in terms of play style and personality. Rumor has it that they might be picking up starry to pocket, but nothing has been confirmed as of yet. I do think these guys will be a top 10 team by the end of the season, but it will all ride on how focused they are to improving their synergy and if they can keep up with some of the other top Open teams.
While the top of Open may look a little scary, the division is looking to carry one of the largest mid-Open bubbles in recent seasons, which should make for a vicious feeding frenzy towards the end of the season. At the top of the bubble, Team Echelon is looking about as strong as they did at the beginning of season 13 before they died mid-season. Ex-SYOPs Medic Cheeris and pocket Maxhax are new additions to this roster and seem to be doing well. If the team stays alive and focuses on improving they could find themselves in the top 10 at the end of the regular season. Other teams to of note would be the Fashion Police and ddddddddddddddd (mostly members of zaboomacrew). The Fashion Police have a lot of players with solid experience, namely Benk and Ques who came down from IM to explore some different roles in Open. Sunny is a great Scout, and JJ should do well on Medic just from seeing some recent scrims. Shlaner and crew on their rather obnoxiously-named team zaboomacrew looked good at the end of season 13, and it looks like the core of the team is still doing well. Shlaner has made the move to the Medic class, while spamfest and misskay remain solid Scouts.
The middle of the bubble starts to get messy. Just the Tip has had a couple of seasons of Open in the middle of the pack; perhaps this season will be a better one for them. Other teams like Chillin in North Korea and Work in Progress (the roster formerly known as Wu Tang Financial) are right at their level as well, albeit with some roster changes and room for improvement. And they aren't the only ones waiting to bloom and hopefully claw out of the mid-Open bubble; teams like Donde, nut up or shut up, the Mad Boys, Black by Association, and the Friendship Quilting Club all have the potential to do well. There are a lot of other teams to name here as well, but I would have to write an entire article just to cover the 30 or so teams in the mid-Open bubble and unfortunately I just don't have time for that.
There are a few teams also worth mentioning, more for random trivia than anything else. eXtine's new team, the Portland Burnsiders, was formed around the concept of most of the players being from Portland. Part of me secretly hopes for a new reality series featuring the lives of a TF2 Open team, but mostly I just think its cool that eXtine is taking an approach to competitive TF2 in a way nobody else does. A Song of Ice and Fire looks also to be a bit of an unknown, but embryo and dashner are both solid enough to hold their own. What I really want to see is this team roleplay their characters during matches and change all their aliases to Game of Thrones characters, which would be the most epic thing ever. Maybe The Planeteers will also take the hint and change their aliases and start roleplaying as well, and then if they play each other it'll be like a big gay costume party. Speaking of which, I will say that this season has been lacking in the funny name category, but a couple good ones stuck out to me: Crucifix Recovery Team, Pizza Boy Gangbang, and Mapulsitory to name a few. The funniest name in Open gets a free month of premium for its starting players, so come up with something funny! Humorous team photos will also be considered.
In closing, this season of Open will have about 70 teams with many new players. Making it to the top 16 is going to be enough to make it to the move-up to IM, which means the last 3 weeks of the season should be hectic and crazy as teams try to secure their playoff spot. But who will be the Cinderella story of Open, the team that comes out of nowhere and blows everyone away to become a playoff contender? So much remains to be seen, and it should make for a great season.
Be sure to keep an eye out for an IM preview in the upcoming week.