The folks running the Finnish Crystal Fair 2014 brony convention are organizing a Team Fortress 2 tournament named Crystal Gaming (unrelated to the Crystal Games Challenge we covered a few days ago), aimed at players of all skill levels. The tournament, designed as a promotion for the convention, is taking signups through the end of the month. They've got some TF2-related prizes for the top teams, and are also accepting item donations to add to the prize pool, if you've grown bored of hat collect-a-thons and want to offload your inventory or something like that. Read past the break for their press release, with more info and some useful links. (Or you could just read it on their site, if you'd rather.)

Announcing Crystal Gaming, a Fandom-wide Team Fortress 2 Tournament

Most of you have probably heard about Team Fortress 2, the free FPS-game originally launched in 2007, which is still one of the most popular multiplayer games out there. There have been a large number of TF2 tournaments, so we thought: why not make one aimed for the whole brony fandom? That’s how Crystal Gaming was born.

Crystal Gaming isn’t aimed for professional TF2 players and teams, but for everyone out there who enjoy playing the game. Taking part in the event doesn’t even require you to have an already-established team, as long as you manage to get a team together before signing up ends.

Signing up for the tournament is simple: all you need is 6 people (+ optional spare players, just in case), and a small amount of time to take on your opponents. All the games will take place during the weekends of March and April, and your team will be able to choose the best available times to play against your opponents.

If you happen to be missing a couple of players from your team, or if you’re looking to create a team from scratch, we have a couple of places for all of you to find the perfect teammates. More information concerning finding teammates below!

Signing up for the tournament has begun today, on the 5th of February, and will end on the 2nd of March, at 24:00 GMT. Thus you still have loads of time to find yourself some teammates to play with!

The Finale will be played during April or May, and will be live-commentated by some of the most known bronies out there. Stay tuned for more info about who those people will be!

Now you might be asking, are there any prizes? The answer to that: yes. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placed teams will receive a bundle of TF2-related items. The value of these bundles will range from 5-30€. Also, to make things even more interesting, we’ve set up a Steam Donation Bot, which will accept all donated Team Fortress 2 items, which will be added to the bundle for the 1st place winner! So if you have useless stuff clumping up your inventory, now there’s a place where you can give that stuff away!

We’ve also opened a public community server for you to play on before the actual tournament starts! You can find it on our website as well!

Crystal Gaming is made by the same people as the Finnish pony-convention, Crystal Fair. Make sure to check out the site for the convention itself from the links below!

Site: http://gaming.crystalfair.fi

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CFStreaming

Twitch (Stream): http://www.twitch.tv/crystalfairgaming

Community Server #1 IP: 91.121.111.154:27080

Tournament server IP: 91.121.111.154:27090

Stats: http://tf2stats.crystalfair.fi/

Donation Bot details: http://steamcommunity.com/id/trading_tf2b0t/

Places for you to find teammates:

Our Steam group :http://steamcommunity.com/groups/crystalgamingtournament

The Eurobronies forum, which will be opened in the near future!

Crystal Fair: www.crystalfair.fi