By the Hearth with Mr. F2L

By MartyB

For the latest edition of THL’s 30 for 30, I wanted to take a seat with one of THL’s most iconic figures: Rebobson, Mr. F2L himself. Rebob has been a staple of the THL community for over 20 seasons and has fostered an entire sub-community of his own within THL. F2L is now a conglomerate that has a hand in nearly every series across THL, with tight connections to notable players, captains, content creators, and admins within the league. Everyone knows of him, but not everyone knows much about him. We sat down together so I could learn about his beginnings with THL, F2L’s inception, community culture, and more. 
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​​Rebob’s start in THL goes a bit farther back than most might expect. Much of his time in THL was well before F2L was ever in the picture.

​​“I joined THL back in the days of the Facebook group, I think just after Knights of The Frozen Throne came out? I was doing a Hearthstone podcast at the time (Around The Hearth, shout out to the four people who still remember it) and my co-host mentioned they'd found this league to join and play, and did I wanna sign up? I joined the main server and responded to all the posters looking for a team, and Sage signed us both up for a Hero (back when it was Sylvanas League) team, [Zona Peligrosa].
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​The Hero team didn't get very far that season, but Rebob was motivated to make his own team afterwards. Rebob's 65,340,285 Boars followed, becoming a staple during a time when THL was on the verge of a transitionary phase. Before F2L, it was Rebob’s longest-lasting team and one of the most prominent in all of THL. Rebob quickly made a name for himself there, finishing with a positive record in his first two seasons of play.  It’s also where Rebob met one of THL’s oldest members and closest friends within the league—Chrxnic, then NecroticHS.​
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​“I wound up getting on Chrxnic’s (then NecroticHS) Ragnaros team for the following season and now here we are!”
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Chrxnic and Rebobson would play together in more than half of Rebob’s first 5 seasons, both in Legacy (then Ragnaros) and Hero. This would last until “The Incident” would come during season 12 of THL. 
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The early seasons of THL were filled with controversial decisions, petty animosity, and flawed leadership. “Toxicity, feuds, shit-talking, arguments and pettiness were pretty much par for the course [in THL at the time],” Rebob explained. The Incident was a culmination of this toxicity festering in the league, marking itself as one of the biggest turning points in THL’s history. A group of players had resorted to harassing a fellow THL member for their play, leading to suspensions, bans, and sweeping structural changes across the league. The event signaled that THL desperately needed a cultural shift if it was going to overcome the adversity its own atmosphere created.
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​Several players at the time went as far as to boycott the league for what had happened and how it was initially handled, Rebob included. “[It was a] protest at the fairly rampant toxicity through THL at that point.” Several players resorted to their own private team server, TBH JOOD, to watch from the sidelines as the controversies within THL unfolded. Its name was a riff on the way THL had been handled up until that point—“The Board Has Jurisdiction Over Our DMs. Classic,” he chuckled. Joining Rebob were iCon, Itachi, FollowDurden, markshire, JetLaw, and others.
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“We’d collectively had some disagreements before the whole shit show with The Board of the time, so [we] had some kind of Discord already that I was in, and I believe the idea [of F2L] started when I said I'd help some Hero team prepare for the THL finals, as I was still playing Hearthstone just not in THL.” 
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At this point, the goals of the server were two-fold: bring awareness to the lack of consequences to certain involved parties during The Incident, and point out the hypocrisy of The Board’s decisions surrounding it. ”It was very much our sentiment that the toxicity was allowed to let slide, while The Board was more interested in dealing with us arguing back as we were just easier to deal with,” he recalled. “It always felt like if someone was toxic and one of us told them to get fucked, it would be us The Board of the time would actually say something to [instead of the original perpetrator].”
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While the justification of some of the actions taken could be debated, the sentiment towards The Board at the time and the general culture within THL was clear. F2L, then FTL, was “quite a middle finger to [those involved in the incident] and to the Board. The rebel flag was raised, and Rebob and Co. drew the line and dug their heels in. “It was a group of fairly aligned individuals in the sense we were all fairly sick of [the toxic culture ingrained in THL.]”
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FTL’s early success is well documented. The team won both its first and second seasons in the Pro Series, quickly showing that they meant business. The team would later change its name to F2L, but its legacy was already cemented. Rebob would later expand into other series, with F2L: White and F2L: Black, the club’s Legacy and Hero teams. Both have been staples in their respective series since their inception. F2L’s Wild team would come later on, and although Rebob wasn’t directly involved, he made sure to have a hand in the team’s formation and atmosphere every step of the way. And then there are some of the lesser known F2L teams—Azure, the THL Octathlon team; Silver, the BGs Series team run by Itachi; Scarlet, Obsidian, and Celadon, the secondary Pro, Legacy, and Wild teams; and Violet, the Pro EU team—Rebob ensured that every team was built to the F2L standard.

The official F2L community logo. Each stripe represents a different team that played in THL.

What’s the trick to F2L’s longevity? “I've always valued having a team of people I vibed with on a personal level over necessarily the outright best players,” said Rebob. “The teams that have won that I've been a part of have always had a few things that run through them. The main ones [have] just vibe[d with each other]. The success tends to come because people just chat the rest of the time, and the preparation just kinda slots into that.” F2L’s teams have historically been some of the most active across THL. Players come together to play games and have fun first and foremost. “If you chat a bunch, and it's a bunch of people who are enjoying playing Hearthstone, chances are you'll do reasonably well.”
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The culture seen amongst teams represents the standard set throughout F2L’s community. Members exist to have fun and talk Hearthstone. THL is simply the medium they use to do it. Rebob’s efforts have gone to create one of the most welcoming spaces in the THL, inviting players from all parts of society and culture around the world. F2L’s current culture may seem ironic given its rebellious beginnings, but Rebob assures that F2L is the same as it ever was. The goal was always to have an inclusive community in THL.
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​“Fair play to [RidiculousHat] and Co. for actually turning [THL’s culture] around. I was pretty unsure about coming back [after the boycott] but got some assurances there had been some wholesale changes and there really had been [positive improvements].”
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Nowadays, Rebob isn’t as active as he used to be, but Mr. F2L’s reputation still precedes him. “I frankly find it quite bizarre the number of new people who join and quickly know who I am, especially as these days I'm just not remotely active in the main THL server.” The jokes still come just as hard and fast, even as Rebob takes a step back from participating in certain corners of THL that he once thrived in. Just this past season, Rebobson won Player of the Week in every series for the final week of the regular season. The award was a way to acknowledge the POTW committees’ purposeful ignorance of ever giving Rebob Player of the Week because he used to ask if he would ever receive the award. “I enjoy it, it's all in good fun. There was a period in my life where I took THL way more seriously, but now it's all good fun and I enjoy all the jokes.”

The F2L legacy has become an ingrained part of THL. THL’s own current culture arguably came up alongside F2L’s. “I’d like to think the actions had some kind of knock-on effect to get that ball rolling,” Rebob remarked. Regardless of the chicken vs egg debate, Rebobson’s influence on the community is undeniable. He joined THL with one goal: to talk and play Hearthstone with like-minded people. All these years, later, he’s still thriving doing just that.