SPUF does Competitive – 6v6 Week 1
Oh look, a new series of stuff! Yes, Confusion, Keith, Sham and I have been plotting something behind everyone’s back. Yes, we formed a 6v6 SPUF team. With Davjo (who you may or may not remember) and Wolk (who you definitely don’t know unless you’re Keith). I know, crazy, right? But we’re all totally game for this.
We’re playing in EU Steel. Confusion had originally opted for Silver, I suggested Iron, we met in the middle. He didn’t want to have to deal with 1. rude Iron players and 2. Timmy, so he created the team. We’re SPUF EU, or the Special Party of Underrated Failures. European Edition. Experience-wise, we’re all kinda on the same level, with W0lk probably having the highest (he’s played in 6v6 teams before) and me being the lowest – my only prior experience being our team from Season 4 4v4. More on 4v4 later though.
Team composition is simple. I’m playing Medic (of course), Confusion is pocket Soldier, W0lk is roamer Soldier, Keith and Sham are Scouts and Davjo is Demoman, since no one ever wants to play Demoman, and he’s the only person who can do so (and is willing to do so) moderately well.
So yes, Wednesday 3rd was the date for our first match. The other team were supposed to be hosting, but Confusion sorted out a server and we played at ‘home’. The map is Viaduct_Pro, the only King of the Hill map for 6v6 this season.
As always, we started off with a lot of messing around. I promised that I’d use the Crossbow, if everyone practiced rollouts. Which, to be fair, we did, but our first rollout was abysmal – we went all over the place. Might have been because the first round started rather suddenly, since we’d forgotten that we’d set ourselves to Ready. Not that it mattered. Our first rollout and I was miles behind, but the team didn’t need me, we pretty much wiped them. Keith defied his own logic of calling himself bad and managed to get a killstreak of 6.
The first three rounds all play out in the same way, with us sticking to our classes, while the enemy team attempts to push back with a more unusual set up of a Heavy/Medic combo, two Scouts, a Soldier and a Sniper. While they manage to capture the point a few times, we mostly dominated unless they managed to pick us off while we were weak.
After the first round, some of us asked if we could mess around and play ‘silly’ classes. I said no, that we should wait until we’d won three rounds. After all, it was our first match of the season and I didn’t really fancy losing it because we were dicking around. But after winning 3 rounds with relative ease, I kept my promise and let everyone play as they please. Only me and W0lk stuck to our original classes, W0lk because he was having fun and me because I suck at everything else and not having a Medic would have been stupid – there’s only three useful health kits on the entire map.
We won with slightly less ease during the fourth round, then decided to play an extra round for funsies. We ended up with a lineup of Medic/Soldier/Engineer/Pyro/Scout/Spy, and Sham as Scout got an entire Ubercharge off me. Sham will also be doing some more detailed analysis of our matches, so stay tuned for that!
As for me, well, it’s pretty clear what I need to work on. My Uber-building times are pretty poor, averaging 60 seconds (nearly 70 in the last two rounds due to unusual class choices). My rollouts are poor as well, everyone went all over the place and I didn’t give everyone enough overheal, particularly W0lk. And of course I could do with better crossbow aim, although I did get a couple of hits on their Scout and Soldier. My positioning was actually mostly alright, but I need to run more towards team mates and less back towards spawn.
Still, good game. It’s nice to use the Medi Gun again.
For those who like numbers, here’s the logs for the first and second halves.
Next week, who knows? It’s early in the season.