A big LAN event seems like second nature to most Counter-Strike and WarCraft 3 teams. Managers take care of all the arrangements, sponsors pay for the trip and t-shirts are standard equipment anyway. No big deal, one might say.

When it comes to Enemy Territory, everything is different. Most managers hardly manage to plan online cup matches, sponsors only pay for servers and web space (if they do at all) and t-shirts are something you have to pay for yourself. With the upcoming Crossfire Prizefight Challenge, we have seen how difficult it can be for teams to attend these events, even with €3000 of prize money to be won.

Let's take the example of the vicious and evil team. When they won the qualifier, they started to count their money and had a look at the costs that they'd have to bear. With 30 Euros of entrance fee, 30 Euros for a hotel room, about 100 Euros to get there and a still uncertain amount to be spent on drugs and prostitutes in Rotterdam, this is a lot of money for a standard high school student. When an offer to cover some of these costs comes your way, who would say no?



So what happened? Team Helix, one of the oldest names in Enemy Territory, stepped to the players and offered their support. I asked team leader biqq for the reasons to accept this offer:

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We had hoped to get a sponsor for the Crossfire LAN with vae, but in the end we didn't succeed, so we had to cover all costs ourselves. I do not want to blame the management of vae, they did their best till the end. Four days ago, duke came to us and made an interesting offer: He would cover a part of the costs, support us in future LAN tournaments and provide proper clothing for the event. Despite some concerns regarding the history of Team-Helix, we accepted and are looking forward to working together. Nevertheless, the time we had in vae was a very good one and we do not regret any minute of it.

So while vicious and evil are now playing under the flag of Helix, there must have been a reason for duke to offer his support all of a sudden. He had this to say:

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We wanted to have a team which is going to be present at LANs in the future. Since the current team had several problems with its lineup and did not qualifiy for the ESL IPS, we were quite disappointed. The best European teams will be at Rotterdam, so Helix, having been around in Enemy Territory for a long time, wanted to send a team as well. The good thing about this particular squad is that they know how to work autonomously and take care of many things on their own. We are confident that they will give their best to represent Helix.

So once again Team-Helix is on the road - to success? One should always remember that they were one of the few teams that were able to beat u96d in EuroCup XI. Will history repeat itself? We'll see very soon in Rotterdam.

Team-Helix
#hx @ Quakenet