The Field Medic: Militarization of a German Nurse

Along with the rain came the Field Practice, a beret with a Medic class emblem over which Medic wore a nice pair of silver earphones. I assume it’s for communication with teammates and the home base, but I cannot understand for the life of me why any Medic will want to better hear his teammates yell for him to top up their health and babysit them for the match. There’s a microphone on the headphones, but going by personal experience only 2.57% of the playerbase will listen to what their Medics are saying.

The Field Practice is the latest military hat the Medic received. The prevalence of military-themed cosmetics for the Medic is actually something I wondered about. Not counting the TFC-inspired set, Medic has 14 military-themed cosmetics. In contrast, he has 11 medical-themed cosmetics, and that includes the Blighted Beak and Grimm Hatte, cosmetics based on medieval plague doctors, and the Doctor’s Sack and the Unknown Mann, which is not so much of Medic being a doctor but more of him needing one. In fact, his first hat, the Prussian Pickelhaube, is a hat commonly worn by the German military, as well as being an icon of Imperial Germany during WW1.

Aside from military-themed hats, he also have a few coats and body armor. One of the most notable one was the Das Metalmeatencasen, which is based on German WW1 bulletproof armour and has a ridiculously stupid name. Seriously, all the Medic cosmetics released in the 2013 Summer Event have these bloody faux German names that is a real pain to pronounce or remember. That one guy in Valve who came out with these names should be slapped with a pretzel.

I wonder why the Medic of all people get associated with the military. He’s the weakest offensive-wise and dies to pretty much every other class. He has absolutely no combat skills of note. And in fact, considering his sadism and uncontrollable urge to commit heinous acts in the name of science, if he does serve in the military he’ll be court-martialled for doing terrible things to POWs. Or his own teammates, this is the man who implanted mega baboon hearts with dubious devices attached into his teammates after all.

Maybe the Field Practice has the right idea. With the headphones and the beret, he is probably the commander and the person coordinating his team’s offensive approach, much like a Medic in a competitive 6v6 match. But still, the question remains: why does Medic have so many military-themed cosmetics? Is it because of his innate desire to maim that prompts him to dress up for the hurting he wants to deal? Is it for intimidation? Or does he just want to show his predecessor, the TFC Combat Medic, that he can dish out as much pain as he can heal?

As for cosmetic suggestions, you can just scroll up and look at the cosmetics the various Medics are wearing in the pictures. But if you are a bit short on metal or keys, I do have a little tip for you. The MvM badges are pretty OK as military badges. As long as it doesn’t clip horribly with whatever shirt cosmetic you decide to put on, it’ll be fine. Of course, that is assuming you played Mann Up before. If not, well…