Sperkle

Just like "One Last Breath" by Creed, this season is meant to be enjoyed with an ice-cold beer after a hard day at the office. With the season just a few days away, here are the Preliminary Seedings for Highlander Spring '25. You can also find all the precursory class restrictions via the link below. If you have any concerns, please reach out to the Highlander Administrators via our support channel in Discord.

Player Restrictions.

Premier

pena's trinkets
ATOMIC
crylander
emo is the mind killer
The Ozfortress Incelosphere
The Beatles

Intermediate

Outer Heaven
Adam's and the big Mac's
Unhinged
The Soup Store

Open

IDK (idontknow)
9 Reasons Not To Play TF2
Rat Gaming Reborn
Lake Fairy Crew

3 Divisions

This season we'll be utilising 3 divisions; these being Premier, Intermediate and Open. We feel that this split of 6-4-4 works best given the number of teams that signed up and the disparity in skill. The Premier division does have a noticeable separation in skill between the top 3 and bottom 3 teams. However, this is preferable to a division of 4 teams, where the bottom team would have to face the same top 3 teams week after week, with no closer competition available. From this the Intermediate and Open divisions have been constructed and balanced, with all teams being within the same skill set as those adjacent to them.

Season Progression

For Premier, there will be a 5-week regular season where each team will face all other teams once. As for Intermediate and Open, each team will play the other teams in their division twice for a 6 week long season. After the regular season, the top 4 teams from each division will move into Page Playoffs. For Premier, teams ranking 5th and 6th at the end of the regular season will not progress into Playoffs. While all the teams of the Intermediate and Open divisions will advance into playoffs regardless of final standing.

Bronze Final Forfeits.

Previously, any team which forfeited a finals match would be disbanded and deemed ineligible to receive in-game medals. Moving forward, teams will be permitted to forfeit Bronze Final matches without being disbanded. However, there are some stipulations around forfeiting this final.

The team that forfeits the bronze final effectively loses that match, meaning they will finish the season in 4th place.
If both teams mutually agree to forfeit the match, the higher ranking team (Home Team) will remain as the 3rd place team.

We feel this will still ensure the Bronze Final have meaning and a place come end of the season but doesn't force the weaker team to play the match if they are ready to finish up for the season.

Mercenary Limit removed

To continue to align with the sixes crowd we will be dropping our previous mercing limitations and allowing teams to merc a player an unlimited number of times per season (only when the player has been approved to merc, of course). We are doing this to aid teams on both sides of the skill bell curve to find players with more ease when needing a mercenary in a pinch.

Note: These rule changes may take time to be reflected in our site's docs.

Thread: Highlander Spring '25 (S11) - Map Pool, Whitelist & Staff

Sperkle Highlander Head Admin & Media Coordinator

Spring25 Banner

Coming Spring 2025!

Hello again! After running the numbers, running them again, and a third time to be sure, we are ready to share with you all the changes coming to Highlander Spring '25.

Map Pool

The following maps will be included in the Spring '25 Highlander Season;

koth_product_final
koth_ashville_final1
koth_proot_b6c-alt2
koth_warmtic_f10
pl_upward_f12
pl_vigil_rc10
pl_swiftwater_final1
pl_eruption_b15
cp_steel_f12

Borneo Eruption

Ha! You thought. Eruption will be returning for its third consecutive season. While it is still the highest requested map to be removed from our map pool, it has slowly become better received after its new found play time with in our league. During the post season poll we found that Eruption and Swiftwater were only a few votes apart when asking players which payload map should be removed. Thus, we decided that Eruption will stick around for another season. The map has also received an update which will be played throughout the season.

Warmtic

Warmtic will be returning for the first time in over a year to replace Proside this season! It was extremely clear from post season feedback that players were not impressed with Proside and thus it will be retired effective immediately. Warmtic was the elected replacement for this season over Lakeside, Valor and Cascade.

Whitelist

Loch 'n' Load

The Loch 'n' Load will be banned for Spring '25 Highlander and the foreseeable future. It was made abundantly clear to us that the Loch 'n' Load's near 100% equip rate during Experimental Cup 4 was indicative of the weapons power within Highlander (and competitive TF2 in general). It is far too strong to be included in regular season competition so you're all safe... for now.

Darwin's Danger Shield

We received mixed feedback on the Darwin's in our post Experimental Cup survey. With only some players opting to equip it throughout the Experimental Cup, we decided to poll the item's inclusion in the upcoming season via a discord poll. The poll posted in our discord ended with 66% of votes being in favor of the item remaining banned. From this result, we will respect the majorities wishes and keep the item banned for Spring '25 Highlander.

Welcome Sylvie to the Team!

Please welcome Sylvie to our Highlander team! Sylvie is a passionate member of the community who is looking to make her mark on the admin scene. We're very excited to have her and you'll be in good hands going into the season.

Thread: Highlander Spring '25 (S11) - Signups Open & Changes to come!

Sperkle Highlander Head Admin & Media Coordinator

Spring25 Banner

Hay fever be gone!

Stop sneezing and start gaming. Spring '25 Highlander is here and what better way to round out 2025 than with some action packed Highlander. While we are not quite ready to reveal the changes coming to the season, we are ready for you to sign up your rosters! So get excited, and buy some tissues.

Signups

You can sign up for Highlander Spring '25 from today (Wednesday the 24th of September) up until Friday the 10th of October at 11:59pm AEDT. With this in mind we'll aim to have seedings out by Sunday the 12th or Monday the 13th of October at the latest with the Season starting on Wednesday the 15th of October.

SIGNUP NOW · SEASON PAGE

Changes on the way

Our boys in the lab have a lot of data to go over, so we'll be making a separate post in the coming days once we have all our facts sorted. This post will contain any Whitelist and Map Pool alterations coming for Spring '25, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime... I don't know, scrim Product, its not like that thing is going anywhere.

Staff Changes

After being with us for 5 seasons redja will be departing from our Highlander Admin team. Redja's impact was nothing short of substantial during his time as an admin. He has allowed us to have some of the best seeded and ran competitions in recent Highlander history thanks to his rigorous and meticulous planning ahead of time and his tireless work behind the scenes crafting tiebreaking metrics that combat our websites current limitations. Don't worry, he'll still be behind the scenes bossing around our current staff but his time in the spot light has come to an end. Thanks brew (bro)! You helped us run a skux league, we wish you all the best and we hope you enjoy all the fush (fish) and chups (chips) life has to offer you aye!

Cryo will also be stepping down as a league admin moving into Spring '25. With life catching up to him we'd like to also thank him for his contributions to our staff team. While he wasn't around for the longest time, Cryo provided a multitude of level headed takes behind the scenes and even took time out of his busy schedule to assist us in running the recent Experimental Highlander Cup. Truly a great guy and nothing but an incredible asset to our team and the entire community. Thank you Mr. Cryotech, we hope you thrive in 2026 and the years to come!

Despite being down 2 we're still up 4 with Pulse, woozy and myself (Sperkle) sticking around. Furthermore, our very own indy and her jones will be staying on with us now, having graduated from Trial Admin status to a fully fledged Highlander Admin!

We'll be letting you all know of all the changes as soon as we can, so keep your eyes peeled!

Thread: Highlander Experimental Cup 4 Winners, Award Recipients, Prizes & Surveys

Sperkle Highlander Head Admin & Media Coordinator

Cup Banner

Two weekends of action are done and dusted, kitchen is closed folks. Thankyou to all who competed in Experimental Cup 4 and congratulations to all the Division Champions Leap of Faith, Household and 9 Reasons Not To Play TF2.

Below are the Final Rankings, Awards and Prizes for Experimental Cup 4. Individual awards as well as Prizes for the Clip contests have been decided by Highlander Administrators and Advisors. We have also included two surveys. The first survey focuses on the maps featured in the cup and whether or not you (the players) would like to see them included in the upcoming Spring '25 Season as well as any fixes or changes that could be made to the maps to make them preform better within a competitive setting. The second, provides a space for players to share their thoughts and opinions on the other aspects of the cup such as the inclusion of ABBA for every match, the whitelist changes, etc.

Congratulations Division 1 winners Leap of Faith!

Placements

- Leap of Faith
- projected rank silver 2
- 9 men 1 child policy
- Demon Slayer Corps (DSC)

Grand Final Map Scores

Match

Keylog: 3 - 0
Divulgence: 2 - 0

Bronze Final Map Scores

Match

Valor: 3 - 1
Keylog: 3 - 0

Awards

Best Scout: krollic
Best Soldier: nurf
Best Pyro: brodie escobar
Best Demoman: Striker & turris
Best Heavy: Trash
Best Engineer: redja
Best Medic: remorse
Best Sniper: maz
Best Spy: Andyroo