Playing the Sniper Rifle in Team Fortress Classic

Aabicus, don’t you mean “Playing the Sniper”? No, I mean playing the sniper rifle. Because that is your job. Your life. That gun is a battlefield-stomping menace that boasts more flexibility and versatility than anything in Team Fortress 2. I know you think you’ve fought sniper rifles in TF2, but you haven’t fought a gun that can: *Charge and headshot from the hip *Charge-up damage infinitely *deal slowdown on bodyshot that never goes away (unless healed by a medic) *Deal knockback to friendlies, leading to the comical-looking but super useful “Sniper Jumping” technique *Gib on fully-charged headshot But believe it… [Continue Reading]

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A Tale of Two Communities

Lately, SPUF has gotten a bit cabin-feverish, and I can’t say I blame them. The anger seems to be directed at Valve’s repeated promises of “great stuff on the horizon!” and the actuality of the extreme drought of new content for TF2. Recently, even the throwaway crap such as blog posts, cosmetics, and localization-file-only updates have dried up. I can understand why SPUF is upset. But I disagree with how a large amount of this anger seems to be directed at Dota 2, Valve’s newest cash cow and spearhead of the MOBA genre that is clearly getting the lion’s share… [Continue Reading]

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Advice for Playing Greg

In honor of the newest comic revealing the name of the TFC Demoman, I thought I’d take this opportunity to write a guide on how to play him if you ever feel the need to give TFC a try and just embrace the grenades. Greg has so many explosive toys to play with I doubt you’ll even get a chance to try them all out in your first life before your uterus is wrapped around a tree at least ten yards away from your death’s epicenter. Just like in TF2, I main Medic and offclass Demoman,  so I’m significantly less… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Ball-Kicking Boots Is My Favorite Cosmetic

My two favorite cosmetics are Archimedes and Giddeon, but if you ignore the birds then my favorite wearable has to be the Ball-Kicking Boots. Generic-looking, yes, but they spawn a soccer ball for your team. In my opinion this trumps any possible visual bonuses from anything else. A free soccer ball has a whole host of uses, almost none of them combat-oriented. Here are some opportunities no other cosmetic will give you. 1. Give your whole team something to do while stuck in spawn. If you’ve played TF2 for any amount of time, you’ve probably gotten bored while confined to… [Continue Reading]

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A Love Letter to TFC’s Escape Mode

Author’s note June 2020: I’ve updated the server addresses at the bottom of the article. Both servers are still active, go play on them! As far as I know, “Escape” mode never made it to TF2 in any fashion, so whenever I get the urge for it, I crank up Team Fortress Classic and play with its healthy repertoire of Escape maps available. Also (unlike the TFC proper servers in my area) it still has a healthy playerbase today, which I link to at the end of this article and anyone who wants can go play with. At its core,… [Continue Reading]

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The Secret Way Scout Can Still Fire Nails

All glory to Trebel for this awesome visual bug he found. This glitch could be very old. I wouldn’t be surprised if this existed since the first release of TF2 in 2007. The conditions are simple, but rather unlikely in normal play. 1. Spawn as scout on a map with Resupply Cabinets. Equip the Scattergun. 2. Jump on top of the Resupply Cabinet and reload your scattergun so it ejects a shell onto the top of the cabinet. 3. It’s not a scattergun shell, it’s a nail! What? This is almost certainly a holdover from TF2’s Development, when Scout’s primary… [Continue Reading]

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Why do you hate Snipers so much?

This question was brought to you by Medics’s siblings. I finally did this for you, now shut up. ————————– Aabicus: Snipers can be teeth-gnashingly annoying, but in all honesty they don’t bug me as much as they could. I’ve since learned to be very careful before crossing into territory where a sniper could see me, and unlike most classes, I’ve got a way to turn myself invincible against all damage, for when I finally poke my head out. That’s not to say that sniper’s niche of “deals lethal damage from the other side of the map” isn’t incredibly difficult to… [Continue Reading]

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Playing the Team Fortress Classic Medic

In general, you can take what you’ve learned from playing Team Fortress 2 and translate it to Team Fortress Classic. They are the same 9 classes after all, and they have mostly the same loadouts, just with more shotguns. Some things will throw you for curveballs (I wrote a pretty extensive guide here) but in general you can guess what each class is about. Except one. TF2 will not prepare you in any way to start playing the TFC Combat Medic. Especially if you’ve played the TF2 Medic. Playing the combat medic like this will instantly label you as a… [Continue Reading]

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