The Crone’s Dome VS the Point and Shoot!

The magic users of TF2 have long been plagued by this dilemma. Which wizard hat is the ultimate in spell-caster fashion, the charmed headwear to bewitch the eyes of others? Well, let’s look at two of them and then declare a winner with as much authority as a kindergarten kid has on international politics.

First up, the Crone’s Dome. A community-created hat added during the Spectral Halloween Special, it’s a black witch hat with patches and a large, wide and floppy brim, plus a glowing face in front. If you’re not a fan of black you can paint the hat into whatever colour you like.

Personally I quite like the grin on the hat. I find it somewhat goofy-looking and silly, but it embodies light-hearted fun like the game it’s in. The glowing face turns it into a sort of sentient, Sorting-Hat-like being. I swear, if Valve ever decided to add voicelines to this hat like the Eyelander or some of the Halloween miscs like the Second Opinion I will drop a thousand dollars to get an Unusual version in a heartbeat. And please rig it so that the hat’s face can mirror the player’s facial expressions like the Beep Boy, Valve. It’ll be fantastic.

The Point and Shoot is a promotional hat for Trine 2, based on the hat of the wizard Amadeus. It’s a rather simple and plain team-coloured wizard hat with a leather belt around it. However, if you’re not a fan of team colours and want to be Scout the Magnificent, Lime Green Mage of Eye Cancer, unfortunately for you and only you the P&S is not paintable.

Of course, this hat is far more popular than its shabby cousin thanks to the YouTuber Muselk. And thus, some P&S lovers have been getting stink eyes for being “Muselk impersonators”, “Muselk fanbois” or “underachieving Market Gardening Muselk wannabes who can’t hit a stationary Heavy even with the B. A. S. E. Jumper”. All of these just for wearing a hat.

While the last one can definitely be justified if said person is both trying and failing really hard to MG someone, I still don’t get why people give others grief for wearing a hat that a popular TF2 YouTuber likes. Hey! Jerkbags! You know why they wear the P&S? Same reason Muselk does. And you know why’s that? Because it’s a damn fine hat! It’s simple, it looks nice, and it doesn’t cost a bomb!

Okay, after dispensing some bile, I suppose I should declare which one is the ultimate wizard hat. And the best wizard hat is…..

I don’t know.

Now now, it’s not that I can’t say which one between the two that I like better. For the record, I prefer the Crone’s Dome just for that awesome glowing Jack’o’Lantern face. But I can’t say it is the best wizard hat in TF2. I have a feeling that I am missing something…

Well, let’s just move on to cosmetic loadout suggestions. The Merc’s Muffler is a really good cosmetic to go with the wizard hats since it resembles the striped scarves Harry and gang wore in the Harry Potter movies. Aside from that, beards are also pretty popular choices to go with these two hats. The All-Father and the Ruffled Ruprecht are nice, long white beards like what Dumbledore and Gandalf had. As for other cosmetics, the Bonedolier and Professor’s Pineapple works quite well as grenade replacements for Demoman, Soldier, and Pyro. Medic gets a few robe cosmetics like the Angel of Death and Medical Monarch. Also, the Fancy Spellbook works quite well as a unofficial fourth cosmetic. Just remember to replace it with the Power Up Canteen before going into an MvM game.

To be honest, this whole versus thing is just a setup for me to talk about two visually distinct but otherwise fairly similar cosmetics. It all comes down to personal tastes. Really, how am I actually going to compare the two? Have the TF2 community vote on which hat is better? Lock the creators of both hats in a cage and see who’s the last man standing? Have the Heavy and the Scout in the first picture fight it out?