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PRELIMINARY SEEDINGS

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Season 10 is bringing us back to the days of 2-division Highlander, so get excited folks! With this in mind, keep your eyes peeled for the 7-week regular season that we will be embarking on. Below you can find our initial seedings for Autumn '25. If you have any issues with these or with any of the accompanying player restrictions, please reach out to any of our Highlander Administrators or via our help and feedback channel/support ticket system in the ozfortress Discord.

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PREMIER

Leap of Faith Deluxe
crylander
Significant Otter
BRIANLANDER
Seal Grease Syndicate
Chi.co.au
all-divs-announcements-2
Demon Slayer Corps (DSC)

MAIN

Five Nights At Silent's
IHOP
The Menagerie
rat gaming
FELLOWSHIP OF THE SANDVICH
Fatpoggers Highlander
9 Reasons Not To Play TF2
Lake Fairy Crew

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Why 2 Divisions?

If you were a fan of the 3 divisions we crafted last season you may be unhappy to see that we've moved back to a 2 division system. However, we do believe this was the best option due to the number of teams that signed up and their respective skills and prospects. We did initially look at a 3 division system that isolated the teams seeded 4 through to 8 of the Main division but this would have resulted in a few problems that were not possible to overcome. Firstly, the 5 teams would have formed a division that would have resulted in each team playing only 4 matches over the course of the regular season leading to an overall shorter competition and likely a lacklustre experience. Secondly, to even out the division that was to house the aforementioned teams, an even number would have been required. This would have meant we would have had to push up one of the 5 teams into a division that was far above their skill set or bring another team down into the division and apply harsh restrictions that would have ultimately harmed the integrity of their roster to a point that wouldn't have been feasible or enjoyable to play with, whilst likely still being too strong for the division.

In a similar vein, the teams seeded 6 to 8 of the Premier division would have been far too strong to place in an 'Intermediate' division alongside the teams seeded 1 to 3 of Main without applying extremely harsh and limiting restrictions. Hence, we decided to separate the teams leading us back to the split listed above with 8 teams in Premier and 8 teams in Main. It should also be said while we acknowledged the gap in skill between the top 4 and bottom 4 teams seeded in Premier we feel that there will still be strong and healthy competition within the division leading to an overall positive season and experience for all involved.

Restricted Player Limit Change

Due to a lack of restrictions this season alongside the change to roster sizes we have decided to change our restricted player limit from 5 down to 4. This means teams can have no more than 4 players on their roster with player restrictions at one time.

As for the player restrictions for this season, there were minimal player restrictions needed, with only players who were deemed absolutely essential to restrict being affected. However, if you feel we have been too lenient with restrictions please reach out by the methods listed above.

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(Photographer DubThink)

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Doing Australia Proud

If you missed it, where the hell were you! Over the course of the last weekend Witness Gaming AU competed against the very best from around the world and showed everyone just what Aussies are capable of at Fireside's Denver LAN. While our boys didn't win the event they definitely won over the hearts of both the local and international crowds with their stellar 3rd place performance, breaking the 4th place curse that had become the standard for Australian teams at LANs past.

While certain A m e r i c a n s slept on the squad, Witness Gaming put on a show and took down some of the greats. While they said they were "elated" after their wins they should be nothing but proud. Proud of their individual performances, proud of their performance as a team and proud that they did such a great job representing us on the international stage!

Witness Gaming AU: 3rd Place at Fireside's Denver LAN

Combo Scout: cooki
Flank Scout: silvo
Pocket Soldier: conor
Roamer Soldier: down
Demoman: enrith
Medic: lau

Highlight Matches from Denver 2025 LAN

Witness Gaming AU vs froyotech | Day 2 Lower Bracket Quarter Final
Witness Gaming AU vs Balls Lan Team | Day 2 Lower Bracket Semi Final
Witness Gaming AU vs Witness Gaming EU | Day 3 Lower Bracket Final
Witness Gaming AU Interview

(credit to Fireside Casts for hosting the event!)

(Photo from DubThink)

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Alternate Account Ban

pasteurised STEAM_0:1:104808335
xns STEAM_0:0:16964609

The player above (pasteurised) has been found using an alternate account (xns) to play within ozfortress. This player has been banned from ozfortress.com, the community's competitions, and all other ozfortress properties for 2 years, after which they will serve a 12-month probation, in which any reoffence will double the severity of the penalty. Their ban duration will be extended if they are found ban-evading during their ban.

Should any individuals or groups within ozfortress be found housing the listed player/s in our competitions, or aiding in ban evasion, those responsible will face severe penalties and hefty league bans.

(art by foodeater)

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The Competition Remains the Same!

Highlander Winter '25 is here and for our 10th season, we have a few things we'd like to tell you about! While we need to address some whitelist changes, Map Pool additions and staff rotations we still have the goal of bringing you more Highlander competition that you love and we love bringing to you!

Signups

You can sign up for Highlander Autumn '25 from today (Thursday the 22nd of May) until Friday the 6th of June at 11:59pm AEST. With that said, we'll aim to have seedings out by Sunday the 8th or Monday the 9th of June at the latest with the Season starting on Wednesday the 11th of June.

SIGNUP NOW · SEASON PAGE

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Winter '25 Changes to come!

Rule Changes, Penalties & Roster Shrinkage

As discussed in our previous News Post we have made numerous changes to our Rules and Penalty System which will all be taking effect as we planned. However, arguably the biggest change that will be taking place is the Roster Shrinkage.

Upon reflecting on our idea to reduce Highlander roster's down to 12 players from the original 15, we feel that this change would be to harsh to implement from the get go. Especially with a wider variety of classes being needed as subs on an active Highlander roster 3 subs didn't seem like quite enough. Ultimately, we have decided that Highlander rosters this season will consist of 13 players. We will monitor this smaller roster size throughout the season and reflect upon it internally post season.

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Map Pool

Proside

For the second time in a row a Highlander Map vote has ended in a tie - this time between Proside and Cascade, both receiving 22.7% of votes each. To settle this tie, we have once again left the decision to our advisor team. Ultimately Proside (pro version of Lakeside) was decided to be the one rounding off the pool of 9 maps for this season.

Proot

In light of players warming up to Proot more over the past 2 seasons, we have decided to not rotate it out and instead keep it around for the foreseeable future. While this did go against our initial philosophy of 'aggressive map rotations', we would be remiss if we didn't give players the opportunity to play maps that they both like and wish to see more of. This also means that the map pool now has an equal amount of King of the Hill and Payload maps. However, we still intend to alternate swapping out maps of different game types at the end of each season to continue bringing players some variation and the opportunity to find new favorites.

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Whitelist Changes

Airstrike

The Airstrike will be unbanned after nearly a decade of absence from Highlander. Though it's crazy to consider a weapon being unbanned after so long, the community has made it very clear that this weapon deserves a chance in the upcoming season. Exactly 50% of voters believed that the weapon should be unbanned, with a sizable 22.7% being indifferent on the weapon's inclusion or exclusion in Winter '25 Highlander's whitelist. We will moderate it's usage throughout Winter and check in on it again at the end of the season.

Loch n Load

In a much closer vote the Loch n Load will remain banned with 42.4% supporting this decision and 39.4% being opposed. With votes consistently being this close we will continue to keep an eye on this discussion and carry out additional polls for the items inclusion in future competitions as we see fit.

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Goodbye General Feedback Forms

Simply put, the General Feedback Forms weren't as effective as we'd thought they'd be and moving forward we won't be using them any longer. We intend to modify post season surveys in a way that makes them easier to digest similar to what we did with the Pre-Winter'25 Survey prior to the start of this season. However, we know it's important for teams and players to submit verbal, written information so we will be sure to have an outlet for those looking to provide feedback that way.

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Staff Changes

indy and her jones and Cryo

We're happy to announce that both indy and her jones and Cryo will be joining our staff team this season as the newest Trial Highlander Administrators. They'll be joining redja, woozy, Sperkle and of course Pulse who has now moved past his trial status and become a fully fledged League Administrator. Both indy and Cryo have proven themselves to be fantastic advisors in the past who made it clear to our us that they care about this scene and bettering it in anyway they can. We're excited for them to join the ozfortress staff family and wish them the best going into Winter '25.

Kai

Typically when a member of staff steps down we will make note of it, thank them in a post and personally for giving up their time to assist us in running competitions and seasonal leagues. Kai deserves that and then some. Kai has given up so much of her time and energy making ozfortress a better place and has decided that she is ready to step down from her position. Since she joined the staff team back in Season 5/Spring '23, Kai has acted as an admin for 5 highlander seasons as well as provided consistent admin support for numerous off season cups and events. She has always gone out of her way from tracking Highlander teams and players before signups have closed in order to make seedings easier to actively reaching out to users with useful resources, on top of always being on call when she can be for league related issues. Truly the GOAT of league admins and we can't thank her enough for all she has done. You've left a profound impact on staff, players, and ozfortress as a whole Kai. All of us wish you nothing but the best for your future. May you have many more holidays (God knows you've earned them) and a life full of lovely cats and kittens. Thank you for all you've done boss!

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Pre-Winter '25 Survey Results

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Changes are coming prior to the start of the Winter '25 Season of competition. Let's talk about it!

Roster Shrinkage

Going into our Winter '25 seasons, we intend to shrink roster sizes. We know this seems scary, but don't worry, we are here to walk you through it. After lengthy internal discussion, we aim to change roster sizes by the following amounts:

Sixes: From 10 Players to 8 Players
Highlander: From 15 Players to 12 Players

We believe that shrinking rosters to the sizes listed above will encourage improved competition and potentially allow for the creation of more teams to compete within our seasonal leagues. We believe this is more than reasonable considering the current 'Mercenary Culture' that we find ourselves in, where a majority of teams playing in seasonal competitions opt to use a mercenary closer in skill level to the absent core player, as opposed to a substitute who may not be up to the same standards.

For these reasons, amongst others, we feel we have a strong case for reducing roster sizes. However, we welcome the community to send us feedback, we even encourage it. This is a huge change and directly conflicts with our past initiatives to improve roster and scene health. We get that. So, we want to hear from you, via a support ticket from our Discord or via our General Feedback Forms if you have feedback, an issue that needs to be brought to our attention regarding this approach, anything!

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Global Ruleset Changes & Doc Updates

Rule changes have not been added to the ozfortress docs at the time of the post being released, but will be soon.

• Combining 1.3.2. Upper Division Playoffs Stopwatch & 1.3.3. Lower Division Playoffs Stopwatch to now be 1.3.2 Playoffs Stopwatch, which reflects the same set of rules for all divisions of Highlander during Playoffs.
• Expanded the wording around 2.4.1. BO3 Playoff Matches (Sixes) & 2.4.2. BO5 Playoff Matches (Sixes) to elaborate on pick deferring and its use in Sixes Playoffs.
• Players who are transferred out as an 5.4. Emergency Transfers can not be transferred back into the roster for the remainder of the season.
• 6.2. Mercenary Approval will now specify that teams are not to engage in 'Mercenary Bargaining' of any kind. Additionally, if teams have already approved a Mercenary, they are not permitted to unapprove that same Merc. Only Administrators have the ability to revoke an approval on a Mercenary.
  
• Roles have been modified in the 7.2. Team Captain Discord, which now prevents unnecessary spamming of GIFS and unrelated media within the Discord. Consistently posting unrelated materials and messages in this Discord can result in removal and further league-related repercussions.
• The 8.5.1. Live Coaching rule now describes and reflects that all forms of coaching during an active match are prohibited, including messages received over chat services such as Steam, Discord or Twitch. Cases of coaching are to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Coaching is permitted during scrims, before/after matches and between maps.
• The 8.8.1 Pause Limits rule has been changed to '1 pause per team, per map that is played'. This means in regular season matches that play 2 maps, 2 pauses will be available to be used at any time. Whereas in playoffs, 3 to 5 pauses may be used across the match per team.
• The following game modifications will be listed as allowed under 12.1.1. Game Modification:
  • Medic Radar and any scripts related to it are permitted.
• The following game modifications or exploits are prohibited under 12.1.2. Game Mechanic Exploits:
  • Rocket Trail scripts that modify rocket trails.
  • Engineer stored multiple melee critical hit.
  • Heavy lunch box items health exploits
• A small guide that will provide players instructions on what to do when an active match's server dies with a Match Restart/ Continuation Procedure.
• Round Bans won't be moved around upon the players request. Round bans are now applied immediately once decided upon. If a player is given a round ban and they are set to play in a scheduled match within 48 hours, they will be permitted to play, and the ban will begin at the start of the subsequent round.

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Penalty System Overhaul

Since introducing the Penalty System last year, we've noticed both benefits and hindrances. Firstly, having concrete procedures in place to guide teams on how to conduct themselves and punish those who neglect their responsibilities has helped see a reduction in banned players and overall infractions. However, with the current system in place, some teams still don't take the penalties applied seriously.

After internal deliberation and discussion amongst staff, the following changes have been made to the Penalty System:

Team Penalties:

• Teams will no longer receive warnings; all breaches will now result in a minor, moderate or major penalty.
• 2 Minor penalties are equivalent to 1 Moderate Penalty.
• 2 Moderate penalties are equivalent to 1 Major Penalty.
• 2 Major penalties will now result in a team's disbandment.
• Major penalties will no longer deduct points from teams who incur them.

Player Penalties

• Warnings will be kept for some Player Penalties.

In addition to the general changes listed above, all penalties have been looked at and modified. As well as this, new penalties have also been added for rules that previously didn't have any direct ruling associated with them. You can view the new Penalty System as well as individual penalties and rules in a Google spreadsheet linked here until they have been applied to the online ozfortress docs.

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We'll be making a follow-up post before the beginning of the Winter '25 seasons, outlining where we stand on Roster Shrinkage after getting additional feedback from the community, as well as other changes, such as Staff Changes, so stay tuned!

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Transfer History

Transfer Window #1

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Transfer Window #2

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Transfer Window #3

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Transfer Window #4

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Transfer Window #5

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Emergency Transfers

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Mercenaries Used

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Below you can find all the Mercenaries Used for all division throughout Winter '25 Highlander.

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Merc History

Round 1

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Round 2

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Round 3

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Round 4

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Round 5

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Round 6

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Round 7

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Playoffs Round 1

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Playoffs Round 2

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Playoffs Round 3

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Key Dates & Transfer Windows

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Key Dates

Signups & Seedings Dates

Thursday 22nd of May 2025: Signups Open
Friday 6th of June 2025: Signups Close, Rosters Locked for Seedings (Extended to Saturday 7th)
Sunday 8th of June 2025: Seedings Released
Wednesday 11th of June 2025: Season starts

Regular Season Dates

Wednesday 11th June - Sunday 15th June 2025: Round 1
Wednesday 18th June - Sunday 22nd June 2025: Round 2
Wednesday 25th June - Sunday 29th June 2025: Round 3
Wednesday 2nd July - Sunday 7th July 2025: Round 4
Wednesday 9th July - Sunday 14th July 2025: Round 5
Roster Lock applied Wednesday the 16th of July
LAN Downunder 2025 Tournament - Round 6 is played over 2 week to accommodate
Wednesday 16th July - Sunday 28th July 2025: Round 6
Wednesday 30th July - Sunday 3rd August 2025: Round 7

Playoffs Dates

Wednesday 6th August - Sunday 10th August 2025: Playoffs Round 1 / Page Playoffs
Wednesday 13th August - Sunday 17th August 2025: Playoffs Round 2 / Semi-Finals
Wednesday 20th August - Sunday 24th August 2025: Playoffs Round 3 / Grand & Bronze Finals

Transfer Windows

Wednesday 11th June - Tuesday 17th June 2025: Transfer Window 1
Wednesday 18th June - Tuesday 24th June 2025: Transfer Window 2
Wednesday 25th June - Tuesday 1st July 2025: Transfer Window 3
Wednesday 2nd July 2025 - Tuesday 8th July 2025: Transfer Window 4
Wednesday 9th July 2025 - Tuesday 15th July 2025: Transfer Window 5
Wednesday 16th July 2025: Roster Lock

For applicants to be eligible to play in a particular round, the transfer application must be submitted by 11:59 PM AEST/AEDT time the Tuesday of the round before the transfer window.

Teams are permitted to a total of 6 player transfers into their roster this season. Only 2 Player Transfers are processed in each window.

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Player Restrictions

The number of restricted players allowed on one roster this season is 4

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Main:

Five Nights At Silent's

silent* Restricted off Demoman.
Exquizit Restricted off Scout & Heavy.
seiran Restricted off Scout & Sniper.

Fatpoggers Highlander

good small horce Restricted off Scout, Soldier, Demoman, Heavy & Sniper.

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Division Admins

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All communication with Division Admins must occur within the Team Captain Discord. Team Captains will be invited after the conclusion of Signups. If you are not in this Discord, please reach out immediately.

HIGHLANDER HEAD ADMINISTRATOR

• Sperkle

PREMIER DIVISION ADMINISTRATORS

• Sperkle
• indy and her jones
• Cryo

MAIN DIVISION ADMINISTRATORS

• redja
• woozy
• Pulse

To see our complete list including Discord handles, see our Staff page here.

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