b4nny

b4nny
b4nny competing at Rewind 2018 with froyotech
Player Information
Name	Grant Vincent
Born	July 28, 1993 ( 1993 -07-28)
Nationality	United States
Status	Active (since 2009)
Team	froyotech
Class	Scout
Other Mains	Pocket, Demoman
Career Winnings	$24,000
Achievements[see all]
2nd i46 3rd i49 1st i52 1st i55 3rd i58 1st Rewind 2017 2nd i61 1st SweLAN 1st Rewind 2018 1st i63
Team History
2010 - 2011 eMazing Gaming 2011 - 2012 Quantic Gaming 2012 - 2012 Leviathan Gaming 2012 - 2013 High Rollers Gaming 2013 - 2014 iT 2014 - froyotech 2017 SVIFT
Links

Grant "b4nny" Vincent is an American competitive Team Fortress 2 player who currently plays Scout for froyotech.

b4nny is most well known for his captaincy and achievements with froyotech, with which he has won a record six global LAN events: i52, i55, Rewind 2017, SweLAN, Rewind 2018 and i63. He has also dominated the North American scene, accumulating a record 20 ESEA-Invite titles including five undefeated seasons and eleven consecutive titles from ESEA-I Season 21 to ESEA-I Season 31 as well as 4 RGL invite titles, with teams such as eMazing Gaming, Leviathan Gaming, High Rollers Gaming and froyotech.

One of the oldest currently active players, starting his career in 2009, he made his way to the top of the North American scene due to his success playing Demoman. However, since joining froyotech, he has primarily mained Scout and Pocket Soldier. A heals-heavy player, b4nny often relies on his game-sense, leadership and experience rather than pure DM ability against his opponents.

Perhaps the most famous figure in the worldwide competitive Team Fortress 2 scene, b4nny has one of the largest social media presences due to his Twitch Stream and Youtube Channel.

Because of his record-breaking achievements, versatility across three classes, success with many different rosters and longevity in the competitive scene, b4nny is widely regarded as the greatest player of all time.

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.

Career

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.

Season 23

After froyo's lacklustre performance on the biggest stage of TF2 b4nny sought to make changes within the team, TLR and phorofor were replaced with former players Blaze and Shade and so for the first time since Season 19 the core 3 of the dominant pre-breakup squad were reunited. hassassin also replaced the outgoing Muma who was starting to make waves in Overwatch. With b4nny still on the Scout role he and the team came out in force racking up 14 straight regular season victories until the streak was ended against EVL Gaming in a tight 4-5 game on Snakewater. They would finish the season 15-1 acquired the 1st seed in the playoffs. After comfortable victories against bird noises and EVL in the brackets froyo would eventually meet EVL again in the Grand Finals. froyo took out EVL in two straight maps 5-4 and 5-3 to earn b4nny's 12th ESEA-Invite title.

Esports Arena Rewind LAN 2017

Following froyo's 3rd straight ESEA-Invite title b4nny was forced to make another change to the squad in preparation for the first ever intercontinental LAN on American soil. Shade was replaced by rising star Nursey for the Medic slot (despite Nursey being banned during s23 for account sharing). B4nny and froyo went undefeated in the group stages and didn't lose a single map on the way to meeting European team Se7en in the Grand Finals. Froyo won the bo5 series 3-2 and b4nny and the team became International champions once again, nearly two years after winning i55.

Season 24

Before the start of the Season b4nny made his return to Pocket Soldier following Paddie's sudden exit and brought in arekk from the recently disbanded bird noises to replace him on the Scout role. B4nny and froyotech would go on to win this season as well.

The next 7 seasons until the end of ESEA TF2 in Season 31 would all be won by froyotech led by b4nny, including 4 undefeated seasons, Season 26, Season 27, Season 28, and Season 30. They would also go on to win 4 seasons of RGL invite traditional sixes as well as the Rewind 2 LAN.

Tournament history

Global LANs

Year	Team	CL	Tournament	Place	Prize
2012	Leviathan Gaming		i46	2nd	$300
2013	High Rollers Gaming		i49	3rd	$200
2014	froyotech		i52	1st	$700
2015			i55	1st	$1,200
2016			i58	3rd	$300
2017			Rewind 2017	1st	$700
	SVIFT		i61	2nd	$400
	froyotech		SweLAN	1st	$300
2018			Rewind 2018	1st	$1,300
			i63	1st	$400

Results

Main article: b4nny/Results

Trivia

• During his long stint as a Demoman main, b4nny was often called "Pipe Jesus", as a result of his outstanding grenade launcher aim and long curly hair at the time.
• b4nny uses "C" for his crouch key, a carryover from his time playing Call of Duty.

External media

Interviews/Documentary

• 2012-06-30 | B4nny pre LAN interview at ESEA S11 lan (by shade at ESEA-I Season 11)
• 2013-04-20 | HRG b4nny Interview at ESEA S13 LAN (by shade at ESEA-I Season 13)
• 2013-08-16 | The b4nny REVEAL! at ESEA S14 LAN (by shade at ESEA-I Season 14)
• 2013-08-20 | Interview b4nny - i46 Day 1 (by EXtv at Insomnia46)
• 2014-01-18 | b4nny and Lauren interview at ESEA S15 LAN (by shade at ESEA-I Season 15)
• 2014-02-24 | b4nny Interview (by Tagg at ESEA-I Season 15)
• 2014-06-28 | 4G.b4nny interview at ESEA S16 LAN (by shade at ESEA-I Season 16)
• 2014-10-06 | Pre-GXL Interview: b4nny (by EXtv)
• 2015-12-30 | On The Point - with b4nny (by Sideshow)
• 2016-09-22 | i58 - Friday - b4nny Interview (by eXtine at Insomnia58)
• 2017-02-08 | B4nny Interview - Rewind (by eXtine at Esports Arena Rewind 2017)
• 2017-03-22 | b4nny - An ESA Media Documentary (by Esports Arena)

Fragvideos/TFTV Highlights

• 2014-06-09 | B4nny Legacy (by Beater)
• 2016-02-07 | b4nny & corsa vs. Hands Off: ESEA S21 W2 (by truktruk)

Demo Review/Analysis

• 2014-12-25 | b4nny self demo review part 1 (by b4nny)
• 2014-12-25 | b4nny self demo review part 2 (by b4nny)
• 2015-10-19 | b4nny pocket demo review (by Seagull)

Gallery

• 

  b4nny competing at i52.

• 

  b4nny competing at i55.

• 

  b4nny at i58.