Note: This applies less to playing the spy in small-sided competitive games, as there are different mechanics in play all together, this is a piece on the spy in regular format TF2 play.
Battle is not a concrete, straightforward thing. Many people believe that winning games is all about numbers; kills, deaths. Victory is not merely a body count. In TF2 you can fight battles all day long, and slay hundreds of enemy combatants, and unless that’s your explicit goal (such as in arena mode), they will always return to fight that same battle over the same point or the same target in the next wave of attack. Stalemate. Surely you’ve seen it, where one team is holed up in a defensible position, and the same situation repeats itself, übers are pushed away, advances mowed down by sentry fire, and enemies hammered by critical explosives, all to no avail. This is where the game needs to be changed. This is where we find our friend, the Spy. He doesn’t take the most names, he takes the right ones.
This is not strategy guide on the Spy’s gear, or the finite points of aim or twitch reflexes, but rather a series of observations and treatise on the thinking side of the spy, much of which is done subconsciously while you’re playing, and not really thought over save for what makes sense or what seems to be the best idea at the time, regardless of big-picture strategic value. Let’s explore the mind of a cold blooded killer.
