Would Highlander really work in Matchmaking?

In our beloved little competitive matchmaking beta, we currently only have access to 6v6 matchmaking. While it doesn’t really look like the much stricter, more organized community competitive leagues, it feels similar. 5CP maps, the odd King of the Hill map, optimal teams including Medics, Demomen, Scouts and Soldiers, 6 players per team (obviously)… You get the point. There’s also plans to have a Highlander matchmaking thingy, but it’s been greyed out since the beginning. But I’m wondering, will Highlander really work? In terms of getting people to play classes, it can happen. Highlander has been the other staple of… [Continue Reading]

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Thoughts on Matchmaking

While I missed the first matchmaking stress test, I was awake and ready for the second one! Sorry EU fans, maybe one day Valve will have one at a time that’s not horrible for you guys. I don’t have enough to do commentary on 16 minutes of footage, so I’m just making an article. I loved how easy it was to queue up; just click the button and you’re off to the races. I played 6 matches and won 5 of them, so the players seem really competent for the most part. There were usually 2-3 people with mics on our… [Continue Reading]

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Why ETF2L allowing the Pomson and Short Circuit in Highlander isn’t so insane after all

With Highlander Season 9 coming around, ETF2L has decided to allow a few new weapons – the Pomson 6000 and the Short Circuit. Now, many people think this is rather strange. These are two weapons that really do shake things up. I’m pretty sure that ETF2L has their reasons and they’ve probably already made them public by now, but I’m a lunatic with his own blog so I’m going to write about my own reasons. Let’s start with the slightly less sane one. Originally, the Short Circuit wasn’t an issue. It was a rather quiet little weapon, hiding away in… [Continue Reading]

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Help me! The importance of knowing where everyone is…

Let’s face it, I am a spastic twat with all the coordination skills of a donkey wearing ice skates. I’m bad. And in organized play, this is multiplied tenfold in my awfulness. No seriously, poor old Jensen so rarely gets healed because I can’t damn find him. Okay, to seem less cruel to myself, Jensen is a good old Scout who never stands still, which makes even just locking onto him very tricky, but you get what I mean. Knowing where everyone is could be considered the second most important thing in the entire game, the most important thing being… [Continue Reading]

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Medic does Competitive… or not…

At the start of UGC season 5 of 4v4 and season 18 of 6v6, I had a plan. The plan was to document my time playing through two seasons. It’d be full of ups and downs, interesting things and stuff I learned. The story of a Medic going from pub server nobody to competitive game nobody. And a bit of fun. As you can plainly see, that hasn’t happened. Originally, the reason I stopped writing was because I didn’t really want to write about our awful 6v6 losses. 6v6 was supposed to be the main focus of the series of… [Continue Reading]

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Retrospective 2, or what little I saw of it…

Retrospective 2 is a TF2 tournament, more like one we’d recognise, with eliminations and things like that. Normally, I see all these things advertised on the News section of the Team Fortress 2 website and I don’t honestly pay much attention to them. They’re tournaments I’m not skilled enough to play in, or they’re LANs which I’ll never be able to play in, or it’s an announcement about ETF2L. That’s pretty much it. I wouldn’t have given Retrospective 2 any further thought if it wasn’t for W0lk, the SPUF 6v6 roamer and 4v4… thing… asking me about it. You see,… [Continue Reading]

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Conundrums of Philosophy

Crossposted from Steamcommunity guides For some time now I have played competitive TF2; primarily Engineer in Highlander. Not usually being on the front line has given me time to think, and time to observe the front lines. And now, I would like to share a few of those observations and beliefs. But, before I do, a quick clarification. This article is not meant to be an authority opinion on competitive play, but rather just an enthusiast. I seek to enlighten, not inform. This article is full of my perspective and opinion. Objectively speaking, none of it is right, nor is… [Continue Reading]

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Prof. NiceHeart’s Guide to SMG Sniper

Prof. NiceHeart was a short-lived SPUFer who got himself banned when someone realized he was an alt of Dr. EvilBrain, a prominent user who got himself banned for creating the shortest-lived itsurblog in history following the messy closure of the original. NiceHeart’s other claim to fame was being SPUF’s resident SMG-maining Sniper, and recently he set some time aside to advise others on how to improve at this oft-maligned subclass. One final note: At the time this interview was done, the Cleaner’s Carbine had these stats.  Welcome! Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m Professor NiceHeart and I main Sniper for pubstomping,… [Continue Reading]

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Competitive Demoknights

There has been a large deal of discussion regarding Demoknight as of recently, most of which stems from the recent changes to the Tide Turner, overall the Tide Turner got people to take Demoknight seriously as a both a threat and an ally. Now there are multiple competitive formats in TF2. First up, Highlander, which is a 9v9 format where classes are restricted to one of each class per team. Next we have the 6v6 format which supports up to two of a class, (excluding a few people, who are limited to one) and involves dual Scouts, Soldiers and a single… [Continue Reading]

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Very Festive SPUF Event

After EotL, everyone was very depressed. So I, sensing an opportunity to make people feel better, conjured up a little event. The premise was simple. A normal Highlander match with an extra Demoknight (can’t leave out those Demoknights!), while wearing your festive items. And hopefully, the Winter Noisemaker. The map rotation was simple: Winter TF2 maps only. You can’t have a Smissmas party on Dustbowl now, can you? Although the game started late, as we tried to sorted out players and stuff, but we managed to get some wonderful people from the Fast Company regulars to fill any slots and… [Continue Reading]

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