About

Introduction

Team Sabre is a UK based gaming clan formed in the summer of 2007, we compete in a variety of games spread across PC and console. Throughout the years our clans attitude has always been geared towards achieving No1. However we try not to let this compromise our core principles of winning fairly, and approaching our opponent in a respectable manner. Over the years we’ve managed to rack-up the odd award and achievement, sites like Clanbase and ESL provided us with a stable playground for our online scuffles, whilst large LAN events such as the i-series helped push our team to the next level.

Our primary objective with Team Sabre is to develop an active “community clan”, we’ll begin by predominantly targeting the joyous Battlefield3 scene but expect to expand into other games in the near future. Team Sabre’s secondary objective will be to accommodate its own competitive squad(s), which in-turn will take part in tournaments, ladders and LAN events.

Fancy sponsoring us? Want your company logo sprayed across our clan hoodies and website? Get in touch!

Timeline

Biography

The clan was officially founded on June 2007 by Alex “AudioSlave” Dixon and Frank “IR0NMAN” Jones (known today as amarok and Xample). During this time we were called “Immortal Alliance” and participated in Clanbase’s Counterstrike: Source ladders. Unsurprisingly we’d entered the CSS scene pretty late on and since many of our clan members had little or no clan experience, winning was a challenge (though we did dominate the No.1 spot on the UK ladder!). The core members comprised of Dex, Jeden, Mari, MacDaddy, T3N, Philx, MHz and a welsh freak called Cure.

So after about six months of noobing about in Counterstrike, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare peaked its head over the horizon (What’s this? A game developed for PC?). I think it’s fair to say Modern Warfare made a massive impact on the competitive gaming scene. The introduction of PAM4 and then its predecessor Promod made COD4 flourish, creating considerable activity in online cups and ladders. In our early days commitment and enthusiasm were at their peak, at times we hit up to 10 official matches a day. The goal was simple, reach the No.1 spot on Clanbase, sadly this didn’t happen, although we did manage to reach 20th place whilst remaining a solid top 40 to 60 team in our prime (which was no easy feat with over 3,000 clans in the ladder).

The Immortal Alliance Counterstike team had already given us good foundations to shape a cod team, this said, fresh blood was needed! Welcome Interpol, a regular social gamer with the clan whom until now he hadn’t played a competitive role, mainly due to work commitments (“you don’t have to be a pilot to fly in the RAF”). Following on, our next core recruits consisted of tekk, madsen, philax and noxious.

Role on March 2008 and Multiplay i33. Earlier this year we’d decided to participate in our first competitive LAN event and where better to start than the UK’s biggest, the i-series. Unfortunately we were one player short, so recruited toadeh, a renowned local village hardman, who had a pc (only joking, he actually lives in a town). At this point we were still deep within the cod4 learning curve with no idea what we’d be put up against during the tournament ahead (being online shitters). It’s also probably worth mentioning that we didn’t have our “heavy-duty” team, but more of a mascot squad… made up of elite… noobs. These fine gentlemen consisted of DX, ironman, tekk, inter and ofcourse the gem in our crown, toadeh (the destroyer of men). Skip forward 2 days and we’d somehow made the winners bracket. Alas our celebrations where short lived as we got knocked out at the first round, we then proceeded to cry into our Tesco value pot noodles. The highlight of Multiplay i33 was undoubtedly toadeh handing out a slam sandwich to the No.1 seed by cutting them all down during the knifing round. Highlight number two went to the abuse of tekk’s pc, achieved by using that customary LAN tool, green insulation tape.

Boom, August 2008 was on us like a bulldog chasing a sausage. Why was this important? i34, that’s why! Keen for redemption we signed up for i34 straight after i33. In the course of this time Immortal Alliance was rebranded with a new title, Signature Gaming (to make us sound a little more hip and fresh). With a little more LAN experience in-hand we were hopeful for a top 12 finish and unlike our previous event we now faced the issue of our team being too large due to some foreign Norwegian imports. 

The first fixtures of the group stages went swimmingly well, that was until we found out the No.1 seed also resided in our group. Aside from that, our sniper “Interpol” was AWOL until midway through Friday afternoon. The big match finally came around, so far we’d slammed all of our matches but remained unconvinced about a good result from “Sample This”. MacDaddy seemed to have the most practice with the old sniper rifle, therefore it was only logical for him to take-up the job. Basically long story short, we slammed their backdoors in, mainly because it was on our home-map crossfire. They did whine about noise from the main stage, although personally I think it was more to-do with giving tekk a Redbull before the match. 

Tek9 match report ( Source – www.tek9.org )

“The first major upset of the day comes from Sample This. With i34 being the first real offline challenge for the renewed Sample This line-up, the Dutch team started off strong with clear and easy wins over their opponents in the first three rounds. Things however took a turn for the worse in the final match round of the day, when they faced off against Signature Gaming. The local UK team, whose line-up consists of DX, Xample, interpol, apples:0, knast, Mr.Todd, noXious & sQz, managed to take a surprising win over Sample This, defeating the Dutch 14 to 10 on mp_crossfire.

According to ImpreZ, Sample's seats where close to the main-stage, which didnt work out all too well. The Dutch team were apparently unable to hear bomb plants and cannot communicate with each other in a normal way.”

Sample This (10:14) Signature.Gaming

Unexpectedly we finished top of our group, winning all of our matches and even succeeding in winning our first upper division fixture. Disappointingly it was a uphill struggle from here as we plunged into the losers bracket and fizzed out at the 12th to 16th ranking cluster. Still this was a promising and encouraged us to attendant future LAN events. Today we still attend many of the Multiplay events along with our homebrewed FATLANs.

January 2010, Signature Gaming’s call of duty partaking was on a rapid decline. Members were getting bored of the same old maps and tactics, a new map-pack did hold some promise for a while, but was only met with sheer disapointment and abuse. In-turn this made motivation to play wars a bitter struggle. Many of the team turned to alternative games for a while to fill the void, these distractions mainly included HON, Battlefield2 and even the horrific World of Warcraft. 

Eventually most of us turned to Battlefield Bad Company 2, the latest meatballs to join the team included toadeh and oilymackerel. Although we didn’t play BFBC2 competitively, we made sure the public nubs got a good beating down… and then abused on chat... until they left the server. Anyway, none of us made it to level fifty before Battlefield 3 was released, which brings us to date. As you may have noticed, we've now evolved into a 3rd stage pokemon (Machamp?), rebranding once again to Team Sabre. With our members combined experience we look forward to creating a ma-hu-sive community clan and continuing to attend large & small LAN events. In the past 2 years we’ve also been host to our own LAN events, most predominantly the FATLAN series which we hope to keep active well into 2012 and beyond.

For the moment our efforts are concentrated towards creating a Battlefield 3 squad to enter competitions, perhaps our focus will change with the release of Counterstrike Global Offensive in early 2012. Thanks for reading <3