spy

The Art of the Backcap

by

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]

Ways to Play Spy if You Suck at Spy

by

Isn’t spy awesome? I can’t help but give mad props to the character for what he willingly puts himself through in the line of duty. More than any class he relies on wits and positioning to outsmart the enemy, and all of his weapons put him dangerously close to an entire arsenal of retaliation the millisecond after he stabs, saps, or shoots. Boy, I wish I could do that. But I can’t. I really really can’t. No matter how much I try to play spy, whether I’ve equipped the most overpowered loadouts on the best spy maps against the worst… [Continue Reading]

Sniper’s Parental Predicament

by

Note: The following story is set in the past, back when Sniper’s foster parental units were still alive and kicking and living in a nice house in the middle of nowhere with a purple dog and a talking computer. Then that TF2 comic happened and everything changed. But this story still makes sense as long as you set it before the time the TF2 comics are set in.

Read more

Straight Upgrades In Your TF2

by

So let’s face it: there are weapons that, in TF2 are just better than their stock counterparts for a multitude of reasons. As aabicus mentioned in his article, there are only a handful of weapons that are objectively better than their associated stock weapons. However, we’re here to talk about ones that, while they are not objectively better, are better in almost every conceivable scenario. So let’s get right into it. 1.  Me Petite Chou Fleur. The Ambassador has been in the game for a very long time, and is basically the staple of upper-level/competitive Spy play. Knives are (usually) variable, but most… [Continue Reading]

A New WAR! Update?

by

Shortly after the release of this year’s Scream Fortress, a Facepunch user named testinglol (who has leaked and predicted several previous updates) found code in the game files suggesting there would be an update that would pit the Spy and Engineer against one another in the style of the WAR! Update that happened all the way back in 2009. Being a Spy main, this interested me supremely. You can find a full list of the features here, or watch Valve News Network’s video here. But for those of you who didn’t head off to soak in those links, here’s a… [Continue Reading]

On Stealth

by

Stealth and Shooters have always been strange bedfellows ever since they first met. On one hand the genres don’t appear to mesh well, what with your standard FPS starring a one-man army who plows through hundreds of mooks with an ever-increasing assortment of deadly weapons, and stealth involving slow, laborious sneaking past individual guards and relying on not making sound or setting off alarms. On the other hand, that’s exactly why stealth games have a dedicated niche fanbase, exactly because it goes against the conventions of the genre and uses the core elements of an FPS in a creative new… [Continue Reading]

Your Eternal Frustration

by

A couple of weeks ago I realized my inventory had filled up with duplicates. I seemed to have three of every weapon I didn’t like and none of the weapons I was really keen on. So I had a look at Crafting blueprints on the Wiki. My Spy loadout was looking a bit bland and I wanted to try out a new knife. So the first new thing I crafted was Your Eternal Reward. What a mistake. To craft this knife you need to mix Reclaimed Metal with the Cloak and Dagger. Alrighty, I had three of those watches and… [Continue Reading]

The Big Earner: Not that much of a Big Earner

by

When the Uber Update came out, it gave everyone except Engineer a set of weapons to work with. Pyro got shafted a bit by getting just one weapon, but it opened up a whole new strategy of det jumping, which is kind of big. But the downside of getting a whole new array of weapons, is that they all suck! Maybe they don’t. For this article, I’ll focus on the Spy sector. More specifically, his knife, the Big Earner. The Big Earner +30% cloak refilled on kill -25 HP penalty It doesn’t look like the penalty wouldn’t do much harm,… [Continue Reading]

Altering the Invisible Man.

by

The Spy, a class of deceit, subterfuge, and sabotage. He holds in his arsenal: a knife capable of killing anything in one hit, a gun in case he’s caught in a bad situation, an electro-sapper to destroy enemy fortifications, a disguise kit to seamlessly blend in with the enemy, and finally a collection of watches capable of rendering him completely invisible. Those watches are pivotal to everything the spy can do. His disguise kit is useless without being in the right position; a position only reachable by an invisible man. His knife only has strength from behind. How can he… [Continue Reading]

The Solemn Spy

by

My very first article here was about the Solemn Vow, and now, over 100 articles later, I feel it’s time to revisit this glorious, semi-overpowered weapon. I’m feeling so sentimental about it that I’m even using the original photo from that article. In the original article, I spent most of my time going over the game play elements of it, how it allowed the user to make more informed decisions about whether to run away or not. Today, I want to talk about some different aspects of this weapon. The Solemn Vow to me has sentimental value. I managed to… [Continue Reading]