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Revision as of 13:02, 24 February 2017
b4nny
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Grant "b4nny" Vincent is an American player currently playing Solider for froyotech as Pocket. He is well known for playing Demoman for the ESEA-I teams eMazing Gaming, Leviathan Gaming, and High Rollers Gaming as well as Scout for iT. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest Demoman players ever, and is also a top Scout and Soldier main. His ability to play all classes in 6v6 at an ESEA-Invite level has led to him often being regarded as the best player in the world.
b4nny is most known for his dominance of the competitive scene through his entire history, being an ESEA LAN champion for nine out of his 13 seasons. In addition, his team froyotech is known as the previously undisputed TF2 world champions after their consecutive victories at i52 and i55.
Biography
b4nny grew up in Bellevue, Washington. Before he played TF2, he played competitive Call of Duty 1, 2, and 4 in his middle school years. He was also interested in Unreal Tournament, which brought him closer to the arena-style FPS games, like Quake, that TF2 is based on. He has been playing TF2 since it was first released on the Orange Box, having pre-ordered the set in 2007.[1]
TF2
Slaughterhouse Gaming (BHS)
b4nny started his TF2 career by playing with Slaughterhouse Gaming, a pub community's Open team. He played with them for 2 seasons, Season 3 and Season 4. However, the team did not have a very consistent roster, and he did not play in all the matches. In Season 3, the team barely made Open playoffs (at the time, only 8 teams made the cut) and lost to first-seed Harmonic. In Season 4, the team fared better, ending up at 3rd place in Open playoffs, but it was not enough. The team disbanded shortly after. Check out the community's website here.
Don't Trip
After Slaughterhouse Gaming, b4nny was picked up by his friend tyrone to form the first iteration of what would become one of the longest-living teams in ESEA-TF2 history, Don't Trip. The Season 5 roster was integral in establishing the core of b4nny, tyrone, and mackey that would make up a large part of Don't Trip throughout its 9-season history. Playing alongside now-long-time-friends such as blaze and the aforementioned tyrone and mackey, the team won Open in Season 5.
Afterwards, the team made the jump to Invite, and had to restructure the roster. Blaze and jnkx, the scout pair, left, and the young talent yz50 was brought in alongside raf. The medic, karenbear, left as well, and Shade was brought in, to help create the core of players that b4nny would play with for many seasons to come. The team got a sponsor and came into Invite under the banner of eMazing Gaming.
eMazing Gaming
b4nny's first foray into invite ended up with him making LAN, starting a longtime tradition of LAN appearances. The team barely skirted into the 3rd seed with a 10-6 record in Season 6 and ended up placing 4th at LAN, losing out to fourth-seeded blight.own, beginning a long-time rivalry with fellow LAN veteran Platinum. Despite placing fourth, he was invited to play with the ESEA-East TF2 All-Stars team that season. The team defeated the west team 5-0 with b4nny top-fragging for the team.
After Season 6, eMg made one more roster change. They cut scout raf for the next generation of Open champions in the form of Ggglygy from Nexzil Gaming. Still under the eMg banner, the team marched on into Season 7 and finished third in the regular season, with a 12-4 record. b4nny's second-consecutive third seed at LAN gave him a chance to redeem himself and eMg won Season 7 LAN, defeating ComplexityTF2 5-1 on Granary and Coldfront.
The team made no changes for Season 8 but did not anticipate the perfect season of CheckSix Gaming, again getting the third seed in the regular season, this time with a 9-7 record. b4nny's third consecutive LAN appearance ended in a 2-1 defeat in the finals at the hands of CheckSix.
Prophets ft. Dashner
In the offseason, the team made some changes, cutting ggglygy for cyzer, yz50 for clockwork, and replacing Shade with CB (on good terms; shade decided to take some seasons off). Just before LAN, the sponsorship was re-branded under a personal sponsorship from Dashner: Prophets ft. Dashner. Since CB could not make LAN that season, reptile stepped in as medic. Prophets once again won LAN, defeating the first iteration of Classic Mixup and starting what would become a long-standing rivalry between the two teams.
Quantic Gaming
Quantic Gaming sponsored the team for Season 10. CB returned to the team as medic after an absence at the previous season's LAN. Quantic finally broke the third seed tradition and captured the first seed for LAN off a 15-1 record, but lost at LAN to Classic Mixup. Shortly afterward, Shade returned, allowing b4nny to reform the original core of the team that had won S7 LAN, and combine it with new players that helped foster the S9 win to create an incredibly strong team. Mackey had to leave for a season, however, so they brought in Dave__AC from the former CheckSix team to complete the roster. The team united under a new sponsor, Leviathan Gaming.
Leviathan Gaming
Season 11 repeated what had become a trope of b4nny's invite career at this point: finish third place regular season and go undefeated at LAN. Mihaly's Flow, the regular season leaders, were favorites at this LAN. But, their dropping two games to LG and Spacewhales gave LG the chance to take the trophy away, and that they did. The Leviathan Gaming team are noteworthy in that they were the first team (alongside Classic Mixup) to be sent to Europe as part of the i46 TF2 LAN. Because Dave__AC was not available to travel to Europe, mackey stepped back in and re-completed the LAN-proven lineup. Both American teams shattered expectations and defeated the Europeans, leading to an all-American finals. However, LG ended up losing to Classic Mixup in the grand finals and finished second at i46.
Going back to America for Season 12, the roster saw one change in the leaving of clockwork, prompting the team to bring in hero to replace him, and the return of Dave__AC. This roster once again made LAN, finishing second place. Shortly afterwards, b4nny, shade, and cyzer all left LG to form a new super team: bp.
bp
bp formed out of the core that had kept Don't Trip at LAN for seven straight seasons: b4nny, shade, and relatively new blood cyzer. They cherry-picked the best talent they could find, getting Taggerung from The Chess Club, Shrugger from Pinball Wizards, as well as lansky from GOIN HEAVY. The team went 16-0 in the regular season before being noticed by High Rollers Gaming and getting their sponsorship for LAN.
High Rollers Gaming
Re-branded under the HRG tag, b4nny and crew took Season 13 LAN without much competition as well as Season 14, with HRG earning another perfect season and another LAN win with the exact same roster. The team, after winning Season 14, was given the American spot at i49, and ended up finishing third after not being able to defeat the made-for-LAN Epsilon eSports and the TCM crew. Once again HRG re-branded under another TF2 organization - the iT servers, run by klanana.
iT
iT, still undefeated in ESEA, went under numerous roster changes in the off-season. Shade, unable to commit, left, and was replaced by up and coming talent indust from AG. Tagg and Cyzer left as well, prompting b4nny to switch from Demoman to Scout and pick up xalox from the dead Solace eSports as Demo and rr from The Mad Men on roamer. The new roster once again went undefeated in the regular season, but in one of the greatest ESEA finals of all time, Classic Mixup managed to break their winning streak and recapture the trophy.
froyotech
Season 16-18
With klanana leaving TF2, the iT sponsorship was lost. b4nny and shade (now returning) decided to rebrand under the team name froyotech, creating something of their own esports organization with a website and all. The team reunited several players b4nny had played with in the past, getting blaze from his Slaughterhouse days on roamer and clockwork from Prophets ft. Dashner, Quantic, and Leviathan on scout. They also pulled in dummy and ruwin on Demo and Pocket, respectively to begin the season. However, after Ruwin quit TF2, the scramble was on for a new pocket, and b4nny brought in old teammate lansky to replace him. Now looking like a reunion of bp/HRG/iT, the team went perfect in the regular season, but after a disappointing loss to Mixup in the TFTV Invitational, b4nny swapped with dummy and went back to his old main, Demoman. froyotech won Season 16, and with that win came another trip to Europe for i52. Dummy, finally getting a LAN championship and unable to commit to a European trip, left the team and was replaced by breakout Demoman duwatna from Street Hoops eSports. The team started out Season 17 looking strong, but surprisingly b4nny lost his first regular season match in over two years to Exertus eSports. The team made the voyage to Coventry, England to compete in i52 against the Europeans and Australians and did not drop a single map in the elimination bracket, becoming the best TF2 team in the world. froyotech finished 14-2 in Season 17 before going on to win GXL and CEVO Season 5 LAN. Furthermore, they would win ESEA-I Season 17 in December of 2014, and ESEA-I Season 18 in April of 2015 with a perfect 16-0 record.
Season 19
The team continued into ESEA-I Season 19, but not without heavy roster changes. Lansky, unable to commit to i55, was moved to backup, and several players were considered to take his spot. First, the team brought in serv0 of Rent-a-Homies, but after losing to Ascent on Sunshine, the team felt that serv0 did not quite fit its playstyle. froyotech then picked up ash from Street Hoops eSports on Pocket, resulting in ash making his pocket debut after previously playing Roamer for Street Hoops. After losing to Ascent 2-0 in the upper bracket finals, yet another drastic roster change was made, this time moving b4nny to Pocket and ash to Scout. This proved to be the winning combination, as froyotech came from the lower bracket and beat Ascent in 2 Best-of-3s to win ESEA-I Season 19.
Season 20
The main members of the team disbanded in November 24, 2015 after losing to Team SoloUber and getting 3rd place in ESEA-I Season 20.
Season 21
b4nny remade froyotech following these events for Season 21 of ESEA Invite with the majority of teammates being pulled from the Invite team Strawberry Mangoes. Freestate, a scout from Strawberry Mangos, became Medic, with Decimate filling his place as the new Scout alongside b4nny. The rest of Strawberry Mangoes stayed in their previous positions: paddie played Pocket, corsa played Roamer, and muma played Demoman.
At the start of Season 21, Decimate left the team to focus on school, and the Scout slot opened up. b4nny brought in old teammate clockwork on Scout to once again complete the powerful Scout duo of him and clockwork. Midway through Season 21, froyotech underwent further roster changes. The team replaced corsa with Paddie on Roamer. b4nny moved to Pocket once more, and Freestate switched back to his previous main, Scout. The team then brought in Ninjanick, a seasoned Invite veteran from Street Hoops eSports (then Team SoloUber), on Medic.
Season 22
Season 22 Started out very well for froyotech. With clockwork leaving for Overwatch, Blaze returned to the team on roamer and Paddie transitioned to scout. Only two weeks into the season the team's medic Ninjanick decided to leave for OverWatch, the team then picked up Phorophor who had recently been cut from RONIN. Along with this change, b4nny decided to play scout with Paddie on pocket. With i58 just a few months away, Blaze became unable to attend the lan. The team decided to pick up TLR on pocket pushing Paddie back over to his original position on the team, roamer. The team pushed through the season doing very well and coming in as first seed for the season. With the playoffs kicking off, their first match was against EVL gaming, an easy roll for froyotech. Then came the Upper Bracket Finals, Ronin had beaten Froyo black in the lower bracket finals so they needed to win two best of three's straight in order to dethrone froyotech. froyotech came out on a rough start, losing the first Best Of Three 2-0 in maps, they looked to make changes in the second. It started off rough, losing on snakewater to Ronin in the first map they were on a three map loss streak with low morale. The team then made a quick return to take the next two maps, granting them the season 22 invite champions title.
i58
At i58 the team performed extraordinarily well but not as dominant as the previous froyotech rosters in the i-Series. The team came in third place during the group stages, not dropping any games but instead tying two games, one against Jasmine Tea the Australian wonders and the other against Full Tilt. With day two starting the team was prepared to give the people some games to watch. In the morning they beat Xenex in two quick maps, advancing to fight Jasmine Tea. froyotech then took two close maps from Jasmine Tea in succession. They continued on to be matched against Crowns Esports in the Upper Bracket Finals, froyotech just narrowly lost 2-1 in maps against Crowns to be forced into the Consolation finals. They met Full Tilt there, who they had previously tied against in round one of group stages. Full tilt then proceeded to win one map, with froyotech striking back to take the second. The third map was a nail biter, each team taking one round after the other had done so. With only a minute left Full tilt was up a round and on their own last defending for their spot in the grand finals. froyotech made the push but failed to accomplish what they were looking for, with the game ending directly after the push had ended, froyotech was granted third place and the players returned home.
Interviews
2015
- 2015-12-30 | On The Point - with b4nny (by
Sideshow)
2014
- 2014-02-24 | b4nny Interview (by
Tagg at ESEA-I Season 15)
Trivia
- During his long stint as a Demoman main, b4nny was often called "Pipe Jesus", as a result of his impeccable grenade launcher aim and his long curly hair at the time.
- b4nny uses "C" for his crouch key, a carryover from his time playing Call of Duty.
- clockwork worked at a frozen yogurt shop, and suggested the name "froyotech" for the new Season 16 Invite team. The name stuck.
- b4nny has placed in the Top 3 at five consecutive Insomnia LAN events. A feat accomplished by no other player in the history of TF2.
Gallery
b4nny competing at i52.
References
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea62tL7TSYg b4nny Interview by Tagg
