Spy’s Alcove

Spy tutted as he flicked through Mannly Hats Quarterly. It was a Smissmas special edition issue, but it was the same old common nonsense. Ugly, crumpled top hats, ugly, stupid bandannas, ugly, horrific hats made out of scrap metal, ugly, pointless banana hats… Worse, half of this edition consisted of ugly Smissmas decorations. All tasteless and poor and pathetic. Throwing the magazine down, Spy decided to get himself a drink. He had half a bottle of fine red wine, stashed away in a hidden compartment of the chair he was sitting in. There were little hidden compartments everywhere, all containing… [Continue Reading]

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The Meet your Match Update is here – Early Thoughts

The Meet your Match update has shipped, after apparently holding off for a bit as to not disturb a major ETF2L match, which is nice of them. Honestly though, I’m not sure what to say. I suppose I’m happy that we’re getting an update, and that we’ll be getting more updates in the future. Of course we got new taunts. The TF2 youtube channel had them uploaded but private for ages. Taunts are basically the new hats, but better because they don’t fuck with the art style in any way. Of course we got crates. The keyless crates are interesting.… [Continue Reading]

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Little-Known TF2 Mechanics

In order to make this list, said TF2 mechanic needs to (1) heavily affect some aspect of playing the game normally, (2) be completely unexplained or hidden, and (3) be something I somehow only learned in 2016 despite my pathological addiction to analyzing every facet of this game. I’ve divided the list into three “major” and three “minor” mechanics. Major 1: Projectile Models on some weapons affect aerodynamics. Several of the projectiles in TF2 actually care about the drag on the fired projectile, which means that, for example, most of the grenade launchers fire even more differently than their stats… [Continue Reading]

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Practical Advantages You Can Gain With Taunts

Taunts are a silly yet fun addition to TF2 that have have grown more and more pernicious as time goes on. Nowadays they’re hard to avoid with very attention-drawing musical jingles, unusual effects, and contagious dances. But like everything other seemingly-pointless just-for-fun game mechanic, I’m here to nitpick the hell out of the entire concept, wringing out every possible competitive advantage. 1. Generic all-purpose third person. The first and most obvious, taunts give you an ability to look around corners and get a more broad screenshot of the map around you, with the only downside being the few seconds of… [Continue Reading]

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The Deadliest Ringer

The Dead Ringer is a bizarre watch. Taking the feign death concept from Team Fortress Classic and really running with it, this watch has been the source of more bugs and issues than any other aspect of the most buggy class in Team Fortress 2. There’s also the question of just how a watch can get away with so many bizarre long-standing machinations like the few in this list. Even in a world where cigarettes can summon disguises and piss can selectively extinguish, it’s still pretty hard to rationally explain how a watch can: 1. Regenerate health. If you intentionally start taking… [Continue Reading]

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Weapons that are deemed underpowered, part 2

We’re back again with a bunch of weapons that some people deem underpowered and crap and awful, but I think actually have a use! Last time we looked at the Overdose, Mantreads and Red Tape Recorder. Today we have four more weapons! The Sharpened Volcano Fragment. Yes, this piece of garbage isn’t as useless as it seems. The one use I’ve noticed this weapon having is in combination with the Degreaser and one of the Shotguns. Since the Degreaser has less afterburn damage, using this allows you to still give them full afterburn. Still a garbage weapon but has at… [Continue Reading]

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Weapons that are deemed underpowered

In this game there are several weapons which people view as garbage, now most of them are actually complete shit but a few of them are just being utilized the wrong way. Listing time! The Overdose: “OH MY GOD!”you say, “That 10% movement speed is amazing for decent medics and the penalty doesn’t mean anything.” say the good Medics. whereas newer players soon realize that it has to be active and don’t see a point so scrap it immediately. The real use of the Overdose has nothing to do with 10% and so much more to do with 3%. Let’s… [Continue Reading]

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Random Crit Balance

Random crits favor not just the people already doing well, but also certain classes, or more accurately, they don’t favor certain classes. It will never feel fair to drop a hype bar, banner, mmmph, heads, ubercharge, while moving a sentry, while being spychecked, or just die in general to a random crit in general, but some classes get more use out of random crits than others. Information on crits in this article come from the 2009 TF2 Blog Post on the same, and the TF2 Official Wiki entry on crits. Random crits scale from 2% to 12% as a function… [Continue Reading]

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Spies – Out of Place?

Spy has always been a tricky class to balance. He’s designed to be a pick-class, someone who takes out key targets – generally a Medic or Sniper –  so the rest of his team can gain the upper hand. But unlike our other pick-classes, Scout and Sniper, Spy really struggles to do his job effectively. Really, when you think about it, Spy is incredibly out of place in the world of TF2. While Sniper sits on some ledge a mile away making his amazing picks (often baiting his team to distract the enemy so he can get those tasty tasty… [Continue Reading]

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Scout – the Village Bicycle

The Scout main and the Medic main got together on Steam after an amusing conversation on the League of Legends boards. It was the Scout main’s birthday and the Medic main had made a very silly picture to celebrate. Then it turned out that they were both women who had spent way too long playing their respective classes and thought that really flirting with their husbandus (like waifus but better) was rather silly. Especially once you start to tumble into, well, weird stuff. The weird stuff is everywhere though. Even if you’re not actively looking for it, it somehow seeps… [Continue Reading]

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