Battle For Europe (BFE) is a non-clan based international Day of Defeat multiplayer-tournament. Like in the popular tabletop game Axis and Allies, both sides, the Axis and the Allies try to conquer an WWII-era-Europe, which is splitted into several territories represented by Day of Defeat-maps. On the battle days, usually twice a week, the players from both sides fight 12 hour long battles over one (later two) territories. Each territory is worth a certain ammount of points. Battle For Europe is organized in campaigns, usually 6-8 week long periods with 12-18 battles. BFE has featured the classic version of Day of Defeat for over 4 years and 22 campaigns up to now and will be moving to Day of Defeat:Source in the upcoming 23rd campaign.
What's most interesting about BFE is that it features a military-like chain of command. Each player starts as low level private and can, due to good teamwork and dedication, be promoted by officers and someday reach an officer-rank himself. The number of available ranks greatly increased since the first campaigns, with today almost every real military rank being available. The chain of command in BFE also leads to a good teamplay in the battles, almost (or better) than what is known in clan-play.
Though being a US-based tournament, BFE is famous for having members from around the world, primarily from the USA, Canada, the UK, Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany. Because of that, the BFE-community is very open minded and international.

= History =
BFE was founded by MFOTS and started in November 2001. In January 2002 it was first mentioned in an article
on the official Day of Defeat-Site at www.dayofdefeatmod.com [1065]. This led to thousands of DoD-players signing up
for the tournament, and by the end of January 2002, an estimated 1000 players were enlisted. The number grew even higher after the first campaign, and the second campaign, refered to as BFE#2 had almost 2000 registered players, though lots of them did not actually play in any battles.

BFE saw a lot of changes during the first campaigns, such as varying battle days and server numbers, but more importantly an improving organizational structure within the armies. Also, after the two first campaigns were free of charge despite the tournament administration had to pay for several servers and a huge webspace, a fee was introduced in BFE#3. Yet several later campaigns have also been free of charge, including the most recent one, BFE#22.

BFE#1

Allies:

Commanders in Chief: Goldsmith, Vfog

Divisions:

*Allies (later Allies3)

**Generals: Incessant, Sniper 101, Gomer Piles, Horsehead Mary, Crowbar, Band of Sisters

**Record: 10 wins - 15 defeats

*Allies8

**General: Atilla

**Record: 1 - 7

Axis

Commanders in Chief: Mr. Serious, Oderus Urungus

Divisions:

*Axis (later AxisGE)

**Generals: Ambassador, Maul, TrailorTrog

**Record: 15 - 10

*AxisGW

**General: Chubbs

**Record: 7 - 1

BFE#1 was not only the first but also the longest campaign in BFE-history. It started on November the 28th, 2001. With only a few dozens of players in the first place, BFE#1 was rather some sort of small beta-stage-tournament at first. The Allies dominated the early phase of BFE#1. BFE's development was greatly boosted when it's existence was first made public on www.dayofdefeatmod.com. This event, also known as first dodmod.com post in the community, led to hundreds of interested DoD-players joining the tournament. Due to the large number of new players, the existing two armies, the [Allies] and the [Axis], we're each split half, with the old units being renamed as [Allies3]] (Allied 3rd Army) and [AxisGE] (Axis Army Group East) and two new units being formed on each side, the [Allies8] (Allied 8th Army) and [AxisGW] (Axis Army Group West). The flow of new players also turned the tide of the campaign, leading to an Axis winning-streak. Shortly after the first battle of with the new divisions on February the 2nd 2002, Day of Defeat version BETA 2.0 was released, leading to a break in the campaign. All servers were updated to DoD BETA 2.0. With the introduction of Machine-Guns in the new game version, tactics among both sides also began to change. For example, MG-based defense squads were formed.

Rules

Players are not allowed to change teams throughout the campaign, meaning that once a player has enlisted for the Axis side for example, he must not ever join the Allied team on the battle-servers.
Switching teams is only allowed inbetween campaigns, doing it during the campaign is severely punished. Unlike some other FPS-tournaments, BFE allows spawn-camping.
Cheating is always punished with a permanent ban from BFE.
In BFE battles, the number of available classes is restricted. The restrictions, known as loadout, have varied from campaign to campaign, though snipers and machinge-gunners were always limited to only one per team.
All rules are finally enforced by the so called Executive Council (EC), which decides upon all sorts of rule-violations.

Community

BFE has a very active and lively community. Most interaction apart from the battlefield takes place in the forums [1066], were even players that do not play in the current campaign drop by from time to time to talk with old friends and see what's going on. A common saying in the forums is that whoever leaves BFE will come back at some time, which has proven to be true in most cases. Though clans do not play a role in the BFE-system, a number of clans play in BFE with all members (often divided on both sides) and do also form a vital part of the BFE community. Several players have stayed in BFE for years now, being called "vets", while new players have also joined in every campaign. The mixture of "vets" and (newbies) has ensured that the discussions in the forums have never become boring. BFE has actually helped to establish some real-life friendships.

Sources

The official Battle For Europe Website at [1067]

The offical Battle For Europe forums at [1068]

Note: BFE belongs to My Internet Services., Copyright 2001 - 2006 All rights reserved.