ozfortress Ultiduo 19: May Madness '25

We typically never award medals for cups, but that might be changing. For May Madness '25 (Ultiduo and BBall), players who participate in both events will receive a unique and "new" ozfortress medal. We can't provide a new medal model due to Valve's limitations on that, but we can certainly provide interesting recolours of our existing medals! To be clear, we will be doing this sort of thing sparingly, but for recurring cups like May Madness, we feel it is a unique and interesting way of rewarding those who play both events.

Here's a look at the medal we'll be handing out:

Medals FAQ

We expect you might have some questions, so we'll try to answer a few now!

• Q: Do I need to play with the same person/people to obtain a medal?
• A: Nope! Medals will be awarded to individuals who play both events.
• Q: Participation/Placement?
• A: Only a participation medal will be awarded for participating in both cups. We may change this for future events, but for now (and considering this is a trial run), just participation medals!
• Q: Won't this just encourage people to play the cup they like, and throw/cause problems in the one they don't?
• A: Potentially, and it's something we are hyper-aware of. We'll be detailing further how we plan to combat this before Saturday (the day of), but for now, rest assured our normal rules of disbands making teams ineligible for medals will be enforced, and any outlier cases will be reviewed case-by-case by the administration team post-event. This will allow us to look at any/all cases equally and provide consistent rulings.
• Q: When will they be distributed?
• A: Well, after May Madness '25. We will need to wait for Valve to add the medals to the game, so that could be quick, or it could be Valve time.

Ultiduo 19 will see the same shake-up in meta that Ultiduo 18 did - The Solemn Vow and The Disciplinary Action will both be returning. This will be their absolute last shot at becoming mainstays, and we have already written up the post-cup survey for Ultiduo, so pending no needed changes or suggestions from you guys, we'll drop it so you can voice your disgruntled-ness with these weapons being whitelisted, or if you happen to like them, let us know!

Yes. As we are adding medals, we will be making some small but healthy changes. In previous Ultiduo events, we have set the maximum roster size at 3, but for Ultiduo 19, we will be lowering this to 2. This is an attempt to limit roster riding, but we don't want this to be too harmful, so we'll be allowing player swaps/substitutions, and admin approval-only mercenaries.

Player Substitution

If prior to the event (the deadline will be 3 PM Saturday the 3rd of May), you need to replace a member of your duo, please ping the @May Madness Staff role within the Captains Discord and we'll work with you to get that done, but please note it may affect the seeding of your duo!

Mercenaries?

Mercenaries will not be allowed for Ultiduo 19, unless it is absolutely necessary. To request a mercenary, you will need to ping the @May Madness Staff role within the Captains Discord and await approval from an administrator. Mercenaries will not be eligible for in-game medals.

ozfortress' Ultiduo competitions have always been using our own Ultiduo map that has seen updates over the years (now `ultiduo_ozf_r`), but with Ultiduo 19, Ultiduo in ozfortress will see the return of:

• ultiduo_swine_b06
• ultiduo_baloo_v2

This will bring our total maps to three, but we have four rounds before playoffs, what gives!? Well, we wanted to try out a new Ultiduo map. Say hello to Boss Baby's very own arena:

• ultiduo_babty

See the schedule page for what maps are being played when!

The Ultiduo ruleset was introduced in last year's Ultiduo 18 to make it a little clearer to players, new and old, what rules from our regular rulesets applied to Ultiduo, and we think it helped, so we'll be keeping it, with some minor updates. See our Ultiduo ruleset here.