Medic’s Second Ever 4v4 Match – The struggles of coordination

So, I just finished my second ever 4v4 match and, unlike last time, it was horrible. Confusion unfortunately disappeared 10 minutes before the game, leaving me to arrange anything. Yes, get the person who’s never played competitive to organise everything. At the same time, the serveme.tf server we had was glitching out and refusing to load configs and constantly disconnecting.

But the actual story starts earlier in the week. You see, we planned to do some scrims, practice matches. But every match we scheduled was cancelled. We were supposed to scrim before the match, but the other team cancelled. Morale was already down.

This is when I see the horrible, complicated side of Competitive TF2. Because you have to have your own server, you need to arrange everything and sort it out. Normally Confusion has his connections and stuff and can get us a server, but today, the rented one we had just wasn’t cutting it. I tried to go to serveme.tf to get a new server but none were available. Thankfully though the other team managed to grab a server. Now to find someone to fill Confusion’s place.

We originally wanted Maxillaws to help. He was already with us at the time, going over strategies and stuff. Okay, he’s Silver, but in NA only. He would have offclassed and played at a huge ping disadvantage. I added the leader of our opposing team and asked. At first they said no, then they said yes, then they said no, then they said yes. Maxillaws cheered, then they said no. We had to rope in Davjo, who has no microphone and has never played with us before.

As for the match itself? There’s little to say. It was a steamroll. We lost gloriously, our asses well and truly handed to us. Davjo kept on pushing out ahead, leaving me open. Keith being the experienced Engineer and Davjo and Sham being more Scout players meant we lacked experience in the explosive class department. Our morale was down before the match even started.

I’m going to go on a tangent and say that the map this week, cp_mojave, was bloody horrible. It’s got both huge sight lines and loads of annoying places to build sentries. On top of that, the Rescue Ranger is allowed and there’s so many places you can spam projectiles. It’s a horrible map for Medics, there was nowhere at all I could stand and feel even remotely safe. The map is also very maze-y and all over the place. Just like Warmforst, the map I played as a sub Medic in last year (where we lost but not too badly), a single team wipe and it’s all over.

In the end, they captured all points (stage one and two)  in an astonishing 3:34. We managed to capture the first point in stage one before running out of time. Lack of practice, bad communication and low morale just did us all in.

There’s a pattern forming. Last year, I was asked three times for three separate matches. The first time, I didn’t play because whoever it was (it wasn’t Confusion) said the enemy team forfeited. Then Confusion asked me to play on Airfield and I helped him get a 25 kill streak. Then he asked me again to play and we got rolled. This season has followed exactly the same pattern. So if next week, the enemy team forfeits, I’m going to freak out.

If there’s one positive side to all this, I didn’t drop Uber at all. That’s not too bad.