Insomnia Trivia

some interesting tidbits about the event

tsc

A couple of days ago I tweeted a few interesting facts about the history of TF2’s annual intercontinental tournament, which garnered some interest. Since it’s the eve of Insomnia55, I figured I’d make a more expansive list. In no particular order, here are some things of interest:

  • Insomnia32 was the first edition of Insomnia to feature TF2, just a month after its release, making it one of the first LAN tournaments in the history of the game.
  • With a prize pot of £10,000, Insomnia55 is the biggest tournament in the International Community era, beating out the prize pot of ESEA seasonal finals. However, it falls short of the biggest known prize pot in Team Fortress 2 history of £15,000 at the PC Gamer Showdown in 2008.
  • Ever since the introduction of the invite group, group placements have followed a curious pattern: Epsilon eSports finishing first, Team Immunity finishing second, the top American team (High Rollers Gaming/froyotech) finishing third, and the second-highest European team (TCM-Gaming/Awsomniac) finishing fourth. With Epsilon and Immunity not attending this year’s event, the trend will be broken.
  • Also since the introduction of the invite group, the lowest-seeded invite team has always been upset by the non-invite team they faced in the first match of the double-elimination bracket.
  • Eight players are looking to claim their second intercontinental title: b4nny, clockwork, shade, duwatna, and blaze of froyotech (won with froyotech at i52); Mike and KnOxXx of Reason Gaming (won with Epsilon eSports at i49); and enigma of Ascent (won with Classic Mixup at i46).
  • No player has played in every grand final of the intercontinental tournament. b4nny, shade, and KnOxXx come close, having placed top three in every edition. In addition, these players and clockwork are tied for most grand final appearances at two apiece.
  • Since its formation in ESEA Season 16, froyotech has never lost a best-of-three series across the six LAN tournaments they have played, including Insomnia52. They have also only dropped four maps on LAN during this time period, all to the other top four finishers at i52: one each to Epsilon eSports and Team Immunity in the i55 group stage, and two to Classic Mixup at the ESEA Season 16 LAN with one in the upper bracket finals and one in the grand finals.
  • b4nny will be attending Insomnia as his third different class - he played demo at i46 and i49, scout at i52, and will play (pocket) soldier at i55.
  • Epsilon eSports is the only organization that has attended every intercontinental tournament in the invite group, but their streak will be broken at i55. Team Colonslash, if they have a team at LAN, will then be the only organization that has had a team at every intercontinental tournament.
  • The Last Resort is the first intercontinental team, with alfa of Canada (formerly of eLevate, the predecessor of Ascent) playing roaming soldier with the rest of the team being European.
  • The winners of the intercontinental tournaments have only dropped four maps in total across all of their runs: Classic Mixup dropped one map in the grand finals to Leviathan Gaming at i46, Epsilon eSports dropped one map in the grand finals to TCM-Gaming at i49, and froyotech dropped one map to Epsilon eSports and one map to Team Immunity in the group stages at i52.
  • froyotech has the most players returning to defend their championship of any team: Classic Mixup did not go from i46 to i49; basH, Mike, and KnOxXx returned from i49 to i52; and everyone but ash is returning from i52 to i55.