April 16th – 23rd

Taxes are due everybody! Hooray! If you’re anything like me, taxes are a long and laborious chore, and I’m even more qualified than most because I worked as a tax preparer for over a year. I’m only 24 for god’s sake, I’m supposed to be spack-dab in the middle of the part of your life where you look forward to cashing out your W-2s after work and buying a round of drinks with your refund. But the IRS is not a fan of entrepreneurs or freelancers turns out… But I digress. In the world of Team Fortress 2, taxes don’t appear… [Continue Reading]

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March 2nd – March 9th

Been a while since I did one of these, eh? Well, since real time has finally caught up to how far I’d gotten along the timeline, I thought I could take this opportunity to try and keep something of a real regular schedule going. March 5th, 2009 saw a number of limits placed on ‘ducking’, aka crouching. A timer was enabled to prevent spamming of the ability while running and a cap was placed preventing the player from crouching more than once in air. This got changed the next day and Sniper mains are unhappy with it to this day. They… [Continue Reading]

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My Top 9 Favorite Team Fortress 2 Unlocks

Unlockable weapons. Team Fortress 2 has a LOT of them. And aside from the occasional overpowered(Machina, Baby Face’s Blaster, Darwin’s Danger Shield) or underpowered(Sun-on-a-Stick, Eviction Notice, Panic Attack) ones, most of them work really well. Heck, certain unlocks have even become synonymous with Stock, like Sandvich and Ubersaw, or completely change up a class’s playstyle, like Chargin’ Targe and Huntsman. To honor these excellent weapons, I thought it would be appropriate to list my 9 favorite Team Fortress 2 unlockable weapons. A few ground rules before we begin: 1. No Stock weapons, for obvious reasons 2. No reskins of existing… [Continue Reading]

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Why Scout is Awful and Underpowered

I don’t dislike any of the classes in TF2. You’d think Engineer, but honestly as a Demoman/Medic main, it’s my job to destroy their nests, and without them I’d have significantly less to do at any given moment. Sniper likewise I’ve never really cared about because I can always seem to find routes that let me avoid them. Not to mention that my favorite weapon, the Sticky Jumper, turns them into my favorite prey. So this article is kinda tough for me to write, because I don’t really hate anyone in TFC either. Pyro, maybe, but he’s too pitiful to… [Continue Reading]

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Why Battle Medic is my favorite class

  Today Medic announced a fun initiative for anyone who’d like to write two themed articles; one on which class is their favorite and one on their least favorite. And I would be remiss not to bring up the class I find more fun to play than all nine from TF2. The Combat Medic from TFC has an unparalleled mix of mobility, firepower, and health regeneration that makes him truly unlike any other class from either game. As this old article goes into detail on, his primary job is to send himself flying through the air with conc grenades deep into… [Continue Reading]

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Why Heavy is my favorite class

When it comes to favorite classes, most people usually say someone like Soldier, or Demoman, or Scout. Nearly every single class has someone who thinks it’s their favorite: People love Medic, Spy, Pyro, and even Engineer and Sniper. But nobody seems to love the Heavy. That is, except from me. I LOVE the Heavy. When it comes to classes in this game, I usually have phases where I play some classes for a long time, but then later don’t play them all that often until I get back to them eventually. But not Heavy: I could always pick him every… [Continue Reading]

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The Unbalanced Infinite-Hitscan-Range-Man

Walking along Frontier, trying to actually do the objective, and then bam. Sniper headshots you from across the map, and proceeds to taunt, because “Snipin’ gud job m8.” I’m sure everybody who has ever played TF2 has experienced this pain at least once. My opinion has always been that the Australian Camper Van Man has been unbalanced, and some people could argue that he isn’t unbalanced because his weakness is close range, well heads up, the Jaratewacka combo exists. OK, enough talk, let’s get into why he’s unbalanced. 1. Sniper effectively counters everybody Really the only class that moves fast enough on the ground to… [Continue Reading]

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On Trimping

Trimping is what separates the demoknights from the demoknaves. iReima has a great series where he turns a sword and shield into deadly instruments of ballet that let him put to shame anyone who considers the demoknight an underpowered subclass. Personally I can’t trimp to save my life. It’ll happen on accident a lot, and I mastered the minor ability to land on slopes and negate fall damage, but I use that in my sticky-jumping instead. I don’t think it’s much of a secret that when I want to play an advanced mobility class, I bust out the Sticky Jumper… [Continue Reading]

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The Lost Art of Flagrunning

This article is going to take the same pensive tone of the similarly-themed “The Art of the Backcap“, except whereas backcapping isn’t completely lost, flagrunning by and large is completely absent from TF2 in the game’s current incarnation. It was largely dead from the getgo. Flagrunning is the act of playing with one objective in mind; reaching the enemy’s flag, grabbing it, and getting it as close as you can to your team’s capture zone before you die. It may sound odd for me to claim such a simplistic act is completely gone from TF2 (after all, matches do end… [Continue Reading]

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The Art of the Backcap

The backcap is an under-appreciated skill these days. It seems like nobody ever sends a brave lone gunman to scout ahead and take the next point milliseconds after you finish capping this one. And while this loss of a fundamental strategy is sad for the state of TF2’s metagame, it can be quite fun if you’re willing to be the team’s backcapper. Backcapping, as the name implies, involves racing ahead to the next control point once determining (or just hoping to God) that your team can take this one alone. The two most popular classes to backcap are scout and… [Continue Reading]

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