The Really Big Summer Promod Tournament 2014

The Really Big Summer Promod Tournament 2014 was a North American-based tournament hosted and directed by Rails Barlow and Jacob. The tournament was a six round swiss tournament followed by an 8-team elimination bracked played on the ProMod configuration (3.7.1). 34 teams from across the world entered the tournament, representing North America, Europe, South America, and Asia. Asia's Team NV- won the Grand Finals after being the #1 seed from the swiss stages, defeating North American team Apollyon on Dark Carnival. The tournament followed directly after Another Swiss Tournament 2014, and held a prize pool of $450 split among the top 3 finishers. The tournament is generally regarded as a great success in the competitive scene due to the number of participants, the international appeal, and the record-breaking Grand Finals cast (see below).

Top 8 Finishers:

1. NV- (Hantsuki, Flyby, Makina, Kimchi, NT, Dec)

2. Apollyon (Grizz, MrDoodlebugs, Acer, Sickening (Little Mix), Speshul, Heriot (Shade))

TIE - 3. Long Shlong Dudes (Purple, Bravo, SiDEWAYSBOX, Remix, Asian)

TIE - 3. vOv Gaming (Rails Barlow, ProdigySim, EsToOpi, Lights, Biochemical, peeK)

5. Team France (Razzor, Grin, Soul, Yosh, Selina)

6. NOn-Stop (Johzi, Vego, Xnider, Lock, Jota, Miro, Antax)

7. The Wolfpack (Dyl Dough, Tool, Dusty, Dolemite)

8. PUBSTARS* (Danne, Peter Griefin, Treesixty, Shoxie (Mero), Bejeweled)

The Grand Finals were played between team NV- and team Apollyon on Dark Carnival, streamed on KissMe's stream and WatchL4D, and shoutcasted by Rails Barlow and Redux, with some assistance from Fig Newtons. Team NV- were dominant throughout, and even though Team Apollyon held the home-field advantage of an NA based server, fell behind gradually as the game continued, with NV- pulling away in the third map and solidifying their win in the 4th and 5th chapters. NV- became the first non-NA based team to place first in an NA based tournament; this served as the final match of their storied career as a team, ending their run in competitive L4D2 with an astonishing 42 win, 2 loss match record (with one of those losses coming earlier in the tournament to team Long Shlong Dudes). The Grand Finals were watched by almost 800 people live, with over 1300 unique visitors to the stream, easily setting a record for the competitive version of the game. The cast also served as a farewell from both Barlow and Redux, both of whom were looking to devote more time to their personal real life endeavors. The cast was seen as a hallmark of exactly how far the community had come in under a year's time.

Controversies

During a week 3 match between Apollyon and NV- (an unknowing preview of the eventual Grand Finals), team Apollyon seemingly were acting in a disrespectful manner, blatantly not trying after map 2 and seemingly attacking and moving almost at random. Later, Apollyon requested that NV's demos from all 4 of their players in the game be reviewed due to Apollyon's suspicion of foul play being involved with their opponents - namely, hackusations. Jacob and Barlow both reviewed the demos in question, and a rather infamous spreadsheet was created of points in the demos where members of Apollyon thought NV- were suspicious (the link to the spreadsheet was later posted on NV- member and diplomat Dec's profile.) The demos were found to be clean after both administrative and independent review (by Fig Newtons), but members of Apollyon maintained their belief in NV's assumed guilt. Many saw both the accusations and Apollyon's conduct during the match as embarrassing to the community in general.

During a week 4 match between vOv gaming and NOn-Stop, NOn-Stop intentionally glitched out a witch on Parish map 3 at the bus at around the 30% completion mark of the map, which directly violated a section of the RBT rules which stated that intentionally glitching a witch was illegal; due to his involvement in the match, Rails had no part of the decision rendered, which was a zero score for NOn-Stop's map 3 survivor round - a loss of 920 points from their total. This cut their lead on vOv down from 700 points to only 300 going into map 4, and vOv ended up staging a comeback and winning the game. Many saw Jacob's decision as too harsh, but Jacob stuck by the ruling and the win by vOv was upheld after a lengthy discussion on L4Dnation. During the same match, NOn-Stop's member Vego was banned from the original server the 2 teams attempted to use for the match due to his previous hacking which occurred during the duration of the WatchL4D tournament, so the server had to be switched from STK NY to the Hyper-V NY server; Vego was later cleared to play in the tournament after his demos were found to be clean by the tournament administration.

During a week 6 match between Asian team NTX and European team Bed Time, NTX left the server due to the fact the match was being played in Dallas instead of Los Angeles; precedent dictated Dallas as being the best pick for AS vs EU games, and due to the fact NTX left the server during the first chapter, Bed Time were awarded the forfeit win.

A few teams triggered the witch before the elevator on Dead Center map 4 during the week 3 slate of games, and zero scores were delivered accordingly.

The tournament is regarded highly due to the fact it had less controversy than Another Swiss Tournament and that the admins handled any and all disputes and controversies with consistency.