Participants aged 15 & under are reminded that they are required to bring a signed and completed parental consent form to the epic.LAN events in order to participate.

The current form has been updated and is now available to download:

• Word Format
• PDF Format

Participants are also reminded that they will be required to bring proof of age to the event when they check-in to ensure that they are issued with the correct wristband, particularly for those aged 18 & over who wish to purchase alcohol from the bar.

Most of you had probably heard whispers anyway after a lot of interest on Cadred, however we can now confirm that we will be adding a £1000 Counter-Strike: Source Tournament to the Hall 2 event activities at epic.FIVE.

The team members are no strangers to running CSS tournaments, with experience in running a number of previous competitive events, and we look forward to giving the CSS community a professionally operated gaming tournament.

Tournament signups are now open for both the CSS and TF2 tournaments. As soon as you have confirmed your place for epic.FIVE you can either create a team, join a team or sign up as a merc. Note that you can only participate in one of the main tournaments, though there will be plenty of other activities taking place throughout the weekend for you to enjoy.

If you haven't already, then go and grab your place now for epic.FIVE, and make the most of all the money from your Christmas cards!

We're looking to add to the number of live DJ sets at epic.FIVE in Hall 1. DJs Haden & Superchief have entertained the crowds at our last few events, and following their success, we'd like to give more members of the opportunity a chance to spin the virtual decks at our next event.

So if you're interested in giving it a try, then contact us with some information about your style, and perhaps some links to your previous work and we'll consider you for the event timetable.

Signups for the epic.FIVE Team Fortress 2 Tournament are now open on our tournament system.

When you have confirmed your space for epic.FIVE, you will be able to join in with the Team Fortress 2 tournament in one of the following ways:

• Create a New Team
• Join an Existing Team
• Sign Up as a Merc

So if you have a pre-arranged team, create the team, hand out the passwords to your team members and get yourselves signed up.

If you don't have an organised team, but you want to take part anyway, then sign up as a merc, put a comment in the box about your skill/preferred class and we'll help you to get involved in an existing team or mix team to be in with a chance of winning the prize.

Your team must be registered for the tournament by 8pm Thursday 24th February.

Woohoo!

epic.FIVE has just had a mention on the Official Team Fortress 2 Blog! Great timing too, as the first few teams begin signing up for their place at the LAN in February!

Watch this space too, as we have some more exciting news about the tournament to announce over the coming weeks.

Thanks to the TF2 guys for posting the details! We're looking forward to a great event with our first Team Fortress 2 tournament.

The first draft of the rules, maplist and format for the epic.FIVE £1000 Team Fortress 2 LAN Tournament are now available.

Working with our expert game admins, Tapley & Mole, we've come up with a slightly different set of rules which are essentially vanilla TF2 with medic unlocks, as well as an unusual twist on the usual Turbine gameplay, just for a bit of a change to other TF2 tournaments.

As this is the first draft, we would welcome any feedback from the community and prospective teams, you can do so via the epic.FIVE forums or over at ETF2L.

To take part in the tournament, you need to have a confirmed space at the event, so go and book your space now to be in with a chance of winning!

We're very pleased to confirm that UK LAN favourites, Kustom will be bringing along their LAN stall for your enjoyment and convenience at the epic.FIVE LAN Party in February 2011.

Graeme will be making his own epic journey down from Scotland to join us for a few days with some LAN party essentials as well as demonstration items for you to try before you buy, and as always you will be able to pre-order from the Kustom website before the event for free collection on site.

Not only will you get to have a look at the Kustom shop, but you'll also be entertained with a range of random games, and we're fairly certain to see another Armagetron marathon with plenty of wacky and wonderful game modes.

If you haven't grabbed your epic.FIVE seat, then book now to make sure you don't miss out on some of the great activities planned for the event!

We are very pleased to announce the details of our first prize winning tournament at epic.LAN with our £1,000 Team Fortress 2 event taking place at the epic.FIVE LAN party in February 2011 at Uttoxeter Racecourse.

After taking a couple of years off from running competitive tournaments, we've decided now is the right time for epic.LAN to reintroduce some high-quality tournaments to our events and with TF2 already very popular both at our LANs and with our online games nights, it seemed to be the ideal choice of game.

We're also very excited to announce that the well known team of Tapley & Mole will be taking the admin role for the tournament.

For more details about the tournament, including prize details and FAQ, visit our TF2 Tournament pages.

Since opening the seating plan, some of you have been asking for us to put some pictures up of the two gaming halls and bar at epic.FIVE. So we've updated the epic.FIVE Venue page so that you can see which hall is which.

For those who know the Uttoxeter Layout, you will now enter the event under the covered walkway in the middle of the grandstand between the two main rooms. Hall 1 on the seating plan is on the left and called the Premier Bar, Hall 2 is on the right and is the Exhibition Hall (where we held epic.THREE and FOUR).

The main helpdesk and shop will be in Hall 2 right by the main entrance, and there will also be a smaller staff area in Hall 1.

The bar, and quite large social area which runs for the entire length of the room, will also be located in Hall 1.

You can also see the site layout on our handy Google Map.

For those of you who have been keen enough to grab your epic.FIVE ticket during the early bird discount so far, you will be please to know that you can take advantage of your early payment by grabbing your event seat on the seating picker now!

If you have been to one of our events at Uttoxeter Racecourse before, you will notice some layout changes in preparation for the addition of tournament gaming to the event.

We've decided to keep the elements of the event separate so those who enjoy the current epic.LAN atmosphere will still get just that at epic.FIVE and those new to the events in the competitive side will get an atmosphere more suited to the tournament play.

So when you pick your epic.FIVE seat, please bear the following in mind:

A new seating layout is in operation to accommodate the new capacity and two different event 'styles', so you can select your seat according to your LAN gaming preferences. Regardless of where you sit, the event network will be linked and you'll be able to enter either of the halls with your event pass.

Hall 1 - Aimed at the 'casual' LAN gamer. Features the traditional epic.LAN atmosphere that many of you will be used to from our first four events, including atmospheric lighting and background music. There will be regular announcements in this room for fun/social gaming such as our big game programme.

Hall 2 - Aimed at the 'competitive' LAN gamer. This hall will be quieter as it is geared to those playing in the more competitive tournaments being introduced to the events. There won't be any background music and during tournaments, PA announcements will be limited to essential information only. If you are playing in our tournament series we strongly recommend that you select a seat in this room.