As TMFAST found its footing following the TM Games hype, there was very high motivation to create an event that would maintain the community motivation and foster a greater general interest in Esports within the APAC regional community.

How The Southern Cross Cup Was Born

I had the idea for a solo player, multi week, Australia/NZ only competitive event in the back of my mind for over a year at this point. Roughly 3 months before the completion of the TM Games event I had already started drafting possible formats and event designs, going over potential systems to gain points over a season, the potential to promote and relegate between divisions and the ultimate goal of essentially making an Australian national championships for Trackmania. After 9 total months of work, help from countless different members of the community and a fire of motivation lit by the initial success of TMFAST. The Southern Cross Cup (SCC) was born.

We managed to secure a partnership with the Eurus mapping team who agreed to provide us with 10 unique maps for the event. All of these maps were considered to be themed mixed maps, this means they included a variety of styles but each map had a focus on a different specific style that became the maps unique theme.

SCC Structure

The final structure of the SCC was determined to be as follows:

Seeding 1 full mixed map would be used for this stage of the competition. Each player would have 1 week to practice this map after its release. After that week each participant would play in the seeding event. Everyone played 10 live rounds on the map, An average time was calculated for each player based upon their 10 rounds. This average time was then used to rank all participants and then separate them into groups of 10 based upon their performance.

Regular season Each division would have 4 matches within the regular season where the players had the opportunity to earn points towards the seasonal leader board. During these four matches, 7 rounds would be played on 3 separate maps, the winner of each round would be awarded 50points and the following players would earn less points based upon the following point distribution. 50,44,39,35,32,29,27,25,23,21,(19) , The total of all points earned from all rounds would be added to the seasonal leader board for each player. The top 8 players for each division would then qualify for playoffs at the end of the season.

Playoffs 1v1v1v1 Cup mode matches with finalist being reached at 120 points in the semi-finals and 140 points in the finals would be played. Each divisions would have a single elimination bracket with 2 semis and 1 final.

SCC Results Recap

Seeding

After the seedings was completed we had 51 players who would end up playing in the event. These players were split over 5 divisions of 10 players with division 3 having the exception of including an 11th player who was moved up from division 5 after having technical difficulties in the seeding rounds.

Regular Season Performances

Over the four weeks of Regular Season matches there were many stand out events and close battles between players. Every week had a different set of maps who's themes may suit some specific players in one week and then suit different players in another week. This created close season long battles in all divisions. Some standout performances and moments include:

• Tekno_ in Divisions 3, Tekno_ placed a disappointing 8th in week 1 followed by two good performances in weeks 2 and 3 getting 2nd and 3rd respectively, but in week 4 Tekno_ had an amazing performance completely dominating the competition and earning the 2nd highest point total out of all divisions with 977 points!
• Division 4, Every single match in division 4 was incredibly close, the players DeadlyTM, Gui.tar, Itsz,TOG_ , Shweebag1 and Awesome dinosaur provided some of the most entertaining rounds of the entire event with very close finish times and point battles with many players within the tightest of margins. Everyone in Div 4 stood out at some point of this event.
• nOvATM_, You can't really talk about the SCC without mentioning the absolute dominance that nOvATM_ displayed. This player managed to score over 900 points in every single regular season match he participated in. The times that he was able to do on any of the maps were basically untouchable! a truly Dominant display of Trackmania excellence.

Here are the 10 players with the best stats from the regular season

The Playoffs

The playoffs were absolutely Cinema. Creating a scheduling nightmare, we managed to organise each divisions playoff to be hosted at a different time so that all matches we able to be live streamed, this created some amazing moments and really highlighted all of the best players in each division:

• In division 5, The four players who performed the best during the regular season continued their strong performances as all 4 of them made it into the Grand Final. The following GF match was possible the most entertaining piece of Trackmania I'd ever seen, very high tension rounds with big crashes at vital moments and amazing times being driven. In the end BTH was victorious with an amazing performance.
• Division 4 Included some upsets and surprises that made the matches so interesting to watch. DeadlyTM, who I had predicted to win the whole thing, unfortunately got knocked out in the semi-final stage. This opened up the door for the West-Australian driver Shweebag to have a breakout performance, He ended up placing second in the finals falling only to Gui.tar who drove the match of his life. Gui.tar managed to close out his finalist before the other players managed to reach finalist mode, securing a dominant win over an incredible field.
• Division 3, Following up his strong showing in the later stages of the regular season, Tekno_ put on an absolute clinic in the Div 3 playoffs. Although Maitoo managed to fend Tekno, staying in the lead during almost all rounds of their semi-final match. Tekno managed to hold his nerve in the highest pressure rounds, catching up enough to gain finalist in the same round as maitoo before closing it out in first place. Following this Tekno_ dominated the Grand final, he was in first place from the very first round and maintained his lead all the way to closing out the match before his competitors were able to reach Finalist Mode.
• The Division 2 playoffs included total domination from a particular player. In both his semi-final and Grand Final matches Dmliel was totally untouchable. In both matches Dmliel managed to create a 40 point buffer to 2nd place! this absolute destruction was such a treat to watch. Dmliel won 13/18 round that he played in during the grand final before second place eventually managed to close out their finalist in round 29!!!! What an outstanding achievement.
• Finally, In divisions 1 the story of nOvATM's outstanding performances only continued, he managed to comfortably secure the win in both his Semi-Final and Grand Final matches, showing unmatched pace and consistency throughout the entirety of the competition. After this story had concluded the battle for Second place was truly a battle for the ages. Cambo had managed to maintain the closest gap to nOvA throughout the beginning of the Grand-Final but JS launched a monumental comeback attempt, staying consistent and drawning ever closer to that finalist mark, In the last round of the match with Cambo having reached finalist, due to mistakes from his opponents JS was in first position with a sizeable margin, all set to join Cambo in finalist mode and challenge him for second place in the match but disaster struck! In the very last turn of the map JS had an unfortunate slide out causing him to have very low speed driving towards the finish, at the very last instance Cambo managed to Snipe the round out of JS's hands, securing second place in the event after fending off the ferocious comeback attempt.

A graphic representation of Dmliel's domination And here are the 10 statistically best players from the Playoffs

Summary

At then end of all of this I am so proud of how well this amazing event turned out. This was the first gaming event I had ever hosted in any capacity and the community support was incredible. From the initial contribution of $150 generously donated by Team SPLIT turning into a grand total of $1000 dollars as a result of very generous donations front the community. To the hundreds of subs and viewers in the Twitch broadcasts. And finally to the creation of TMFAST INC on the back of the success of the communities event. I am so thankful for everyone's contribution to this amazing cause.

I love this community so much. You all have greatly contributed to my happiness and fulfilment I'm some way and I will forever appreciate you all.

Thankyou!!!!