Section 1

For a couple of weeks I have been intending to produce a set of small competitive play guides, outlining the roles of the classes and the general strategies on the most popular maps. Having just smoked the last of my weed, I can't think of a better time to begin.

The idea of this is that it provides everybody on the team a good basis for what they should and shouldn't be doing in matches, and in specific positions. Everything in TF2 is fairly methodical, and a good eye for adapting tactics on the fly, as a group, is very important.

Really, TF2 competitive play can be taught, to a certain level. The rest comes from experience and how your team decides to adapt its tactics. Evidently, you won't be very good if you can't even aim a pistol, but experience and teamplay is more advantageous than raw aim alone.

That's what I intend to do here - teach you how to play competitively.

**01. Class Guidelines.**

TF2 is a game of attack / counterattack. Everything that happens territorially throughout the maps is an example of this. The problem is coordination. When you have a meager 6 players over large maps, forming and attacking with small groups of players to take advantage of a narrow window of opportunity is vital. This is where individual class's roles come in. Everybody must operate as part of a team, while being able to handle themselves individually.

Every class has to fulfill its individual niche while supporting the team as a whole, creating what is essentially a frontline using what classes you have to offer.

I would like you to read all of them, not just your classes, as I expect you to do with the tactics as well. This is, after all, *Team* Fortress 2, and if you don't know what the rest of your team is doing, how are you ever going to adapt? Also, I will add a few team-specific things per-class so that you know what you can do to help whomever is playing it.

**Class specific guides**

**Medic**

As a medic, you are the backbone of your team. Everything revolves around you and your ubercharge. Players will be coming at you from all angles;both friendly and hostile. You need to be alert, and able to assess situations quickly (a good way to do this is DM_Store healing, seriously), while providing good care to your team. This means no (**NO**) toggle healing. You simple cannot keep up with the demand for your uber with toggle. At any time, up to 5 people will be calling for you, and you need to attend to every one. This requires you to assess who requires healing the most while in and out of combat, and not neglecting certain players.

(PRO TIP - If a medic doesn't heal you straight away, it doesn't mean he doesn't know you're there. Keep yourself safe - don't run up to the medic screaming for heals if the medic is in combat, as the chance is you will get gibbed first. Really, if the medic is healing one or two soldiers who are actively fighting with enemies, give him all the time he needs.)

Medics - you will be leading the push - not literally, always stick behind your soldiers at a safe distance, but you need to provide the soldiers as much health as you can give them while they are in combat - they *will* be taking more damage than any scout, or anyone out of front-line combat, so it is imperative to keep them as healed as possible.

However, when you are out of combat you need to heal everybody equally. I cannot stress this enough. An example - a medic has an overhealed soldier peeking at the enemy, throwing random spam. He takes a little bit of spam but not enough to kill him. He isn't in danger of dying. A scout comes behind you with 25% health, and you continue to heal the soldier. The scout needs to return to his position, and neglecting him could mean the death of his partner, or himself, and eventually opening one route for the enemy to attack you.

As a medic, you will need to know everybodys names, common classes and importantly, how your heavy classes (Soldiers, demoman) like to play. You need to know your players, as they need to know you. Play with them on publics, using your main class, though if we plan to scrim every night, within a few weeks you will likely flatten everybody on a public. You four players need to be a well-oiled team. You need to respond to eachother well, both physically and vocally on ventrilo. You need to know what your players intend to do, and they need to know how to respond to what you want them to do. Which leads to the last point.

**You need to be the voice of the team**. No other class, with the exception of soldier, can fulfill this role, and none can perform it as well. As a medic, you will know where everybody on your team is inherently. You will need to use this information to produce ever-shifting tactics and to coordinate what could potentially be a very unorganized team. This means you need to vocalize every action you intend to take. Constantly relay where you are (but use common sense here, don't block other important comms with locational reports if you don't really need to), especially when nearing battle. You need to meet up with a soldier or a demoman as fast as you can after respawning, as you cannot defend yourself effectively, and a boosted heavy-class is more than enough to fend off a few players. From this point in, you are a team, and you need to communicate as such. I can't really teach you how to do this, as it is different for everybody, but if you want to watch me in a few scrims, I'll be more than happy to answer your questions and give you advice.

(this is getting really long, I wonder what the reddit wordlimit is)

**Soldier**

Ah, the soldier. As stubborn a class as possible. The soldier is a mobile tank, a high-skilled HW guy, with the ability to soar like an eagle. You are the teams damage dealers. You are the teams frontline. You are your medics lifeline, yet the bane of the enemy's. Large pushes revolve around you. As a pair, you are capable of dealing more damage in a short amount of time than any of the other classes. This means that when a stalemate forms (more on these later in the guide!) you have to root it out. This section will not be as long as medic, as I do not have the experience to write as much. I will teach you what I *know* as soldier, which comes from my medic experience.

Firstly, you are a pair. You need to act much like the scouts - calling a target and attacking that, as a pair. If you do not focus fire, your effectiveness will go to waste. Like the scouts, except you are a frontline class. Your goals are to either trigger their ubercharge if you both sport one or eliminate their medic, or whatever is easiest to attack. If you can get a shot on the medic, if the medic **is** weak, by all means, attempt to get that last shot by rocket-jumping then proceeding to rocket or shotgun him from up high. However, if the medic **is not** weak, do not chase him. He will escape if he has any competance. This brings you onto attacking your easiest target. If a soldier is shooting you, chances are you can shoot him too. You need to eliminate heavy classes, which are the main threat to your medic and yourself, before dealing with lighter classes. Evidently, you don't need to chase a demoman 100 meters away when there is a scout 10 meters away shooting you in the chest, but if the heavy class is actively seeking to kill you, you need to finish him before he does you.

(PRO TIP - The rocket-jump is your key tool. If you are below someone, rocket-jump up to his height. Height is key in the soldier class, as you may well know. Firing down upon someone is far easier to do than firing back up, and as such if you can take the height advantage, do.)

This leads onto your relationship with the medic and your partner (that sounded better in my head). You need to assign yourselves as 'Primary' and 'Secondary' soldiers. It DOES NOT matter which you choose, just that you have assigned them to you and your partner. What it allows you to do is a very, very effective move. In certain places, especially defending 2nd point on badlands, it is the most effective way to keep yourselves alive. What you will do is, say you are defending while standing on balcony. If 1 soldier jumps up to the spire, the Primary soldier needs to jump up, engage him until you are weak, then return to your medic. All this needs to be opened with the word 'jumping' or something similar, to notify that you are jumping up, and something along the lines of 'returning' when you are coming back to the medic. As you return, the Secondary soldier should take the same action - jump up, engage until you are weak, and return, while notifying via comms. This is vital for good soldier play - alot of teams don't do it but it makes ALL the difference in alot of situations (which I will outline through map strategies).

The Primary and Secondary allocations apply to alot of other situations. Like I said, they do not matter, but knowing how to use them is key. As a soldier, you will be ubercharged alot, and knowing what do while you, or your teammate, are charged is vital. Because of the way the medics ubercharge now works, the ubercharge depreciates faster based on how many targets the medic is switching between, as you well know. This means that the uber is more effective if you use just one soldier for the charge. What you need to do is push with one soldier, creating a temporary front-line just outside of the chokepoint you are pushing past, and have the other soldier use the ubercharge as a cover to peek and spam. That's all. Most of their team will be occupied, at this point, by either an ubercharge or a demoman, or possibly scouts, so the secondary soldier will be fairly low-priority for their team. It is a good time to spam their secondary soldier (which may not be ubered as well), and take some shots at their medic as they come out of uber. I will explain what to do if you are ubercharged later in the writings.

(If there is anything I have missed so far in this, don't hesitate to message me on reddit or steam ([sc.lofty](http://www.steamcommunity.com/id/lofty))

**Demoman**

Unfortunately, this is the class I know the least about how to play, but I can assist you with the tactics, or research any questions you may have (I Lanned with the (debateably) best demoman in the world all of last year, and Dr Justice (some of you may know him) is my instagib teammate).

I'll skip the bullshit here as this is getting pretty fucking long.

Your role as demoman varies wildly. You are the 1-size-fits-all class. You can fulfill any role fairly effectively and provide what is essentially a skeleton-key of maneuvers to attempt to gain ground or out-wit a team. You are fast (over short distances), you can do alot of damage, and you are able to block off multiple routes. You are a very effective ubered class, as not only do you free up both of the soldiers, but you are just as effective in their role. Really, the demoman is the best class for clearing large distances. If you need to push, but they're 30 odd metres away from where they have you blockaded (good example - granary last point), the demoman has the speed to clear the distance, but also, and crucially, can force them backwards with stickies.

You work like a mercenary for the medic and soldiers. You come and assist them when they want you to, but you're never really working for them. You're a lone wolf class. You help everybody, while fulfilling your own goals. Goals which are very similar to that of the scouts.

You are required, if there isn't a way for the soldiers and medic to push, to attempt to make one. You can do this one of two ways - coordinate with the medic / solds for you to create a diversion, allowing them to push un-scathed, or working with the scouts to remove x player from the game, so that the medic can push. At the same time, you need to work for the team by securing a chokepoint yourself. Every class will have a choke-point to hold. The soldiers / medic will hold one, the demoman will hold another and the scouts will hold a third, or assist the demoman. You will be assigned one (see the tactics) in every situation, which allows you to do loosely attack them, hoping to get a lucky frag or working with the scouts to do this.

This means that you cannot just suicide. The demoman is too important, as stickies are impossible to pass without an uber, and attempting to do so is stupid, so most won't attempt it. If you intend to remove a player from existence during a stalemate, you can't just throw yourself at it. If you attempt to enter solo, everybody will engage you. You will produce a short distraction, but nothing more. If the scouts enter, providing a fast-moving distraction, then you can enter unnoticed and unleash little balls of hell before anybody knows what is happening.

I will lay out your tactics more in the map-guides, as there are so many it's not worth generalizing.

(Starting to wonder if this is worth it)

**Scout**

Oh my oh my. I sure have written alot.

Scout can be summed up in one word. Annoying.

It's their whiney New York accent, their obnoxious quotes and the motherfucking sandman (though this is banned in leagues), but most importantly, it's the playing style. Scouts are great classes for demoralizing people.

And no, I don't mean that in some weird, gamesense-slang way. You can genuinely demoralize a team. Ever seen it when a team gets rolled even though they had the superior players? Demoralization. Because you are fast, quiet and have a double-jump, you can sneak around the maps behind the enemy and drop suprise attacks on them. Imagine the feeling of a soldier to have been killed by that fucking asshole scout duo for the 3rd time running. Morale is a very real thing ingame, both overall for their team and individually. If someone gets angry or *annoyed*, they will most likely perform worse. Some players will be steely-gazed robots who don't get affected by this, but the majority will be hit hard by this.

As scout, you can make their players perform worse through near-humiliation, and as such make the job easier for you and your team. The way in which you can do this is difficult, but you will need to learn how to to unlock the full capabilities of your class.

Because of the way TF2 plays out, alot of the time you will be matched up holding the chokepoint which the enemy's scouts are also trying to defend. As such, this making scout vs scout combat your most vital skill. Improving this will improve your entire game. Every other class should be secondary to improving your scout-killing skills. And not just 1v1, but 2v2 especially. You need to learn to attack the same target. Unlike the soldier, you will be doing the same things, so you don't need to assign yourselfs as Primary etc. Much like the solider, however, you need to work as an effective team. When you meet their scout-duo, which you undoubtedly will, you need to engage the **closest** scout as you see them. 90% of the time, this will be a good guide provided you stick close together. This allows you to effectively drop them. Whoever gets that first kill is at a huge advantage. You will get shot half as much, and most of the time, the pair who gets the first kill will not fail to get the second. Doing this almost always, with the exception of a few positions, allows you to escape behind the enemy and attack them to provide a useful distraction for your team, or attempt to stealthily knock-off one of their players who may be respawning (spawn-killing is totally fair-game provided you don't waste time on it), or coordingating with your soldiers or demoman to produce a push.

You are the waste class. Because of your speed and your low HP, you can be used to clear stickies, suicide or do all manner of things without impacting the integrity of the heavy classes too much. Losing a scout is much less threatening, provided their scouts aren't going to push behind you, than losing a demoman, soldier or medic.

Scout is a very simple class to play, but every player crafts their own niches, their own routes throughout the map and their own playstyle. Rarely will two scouts play exactly the same, or even similar. Tweaking and refining the playstyle you will inevitably find is key for all classes, but especially the scout who is not restricted in maneuvers by tactics or a medic.

That's it for this section (holy fuck 3000 words). Make sure you read each section once, then read it once more later on. Read the whole sections please. I spent over an hour writing this one section, and I don't really want my time (nor this team) to go to waste.

Section 2

**02. General Guidelines**

Having laid out the class-specific guidelines, my plan now is to list a few things which are important, yet apply to everybody. If you don't follow these, the team will fall apart and you won't get particularly far in any map, no matter how well you know the positions.

Again, I ask of you to read this section multiple times so as you can remember it, or draw from it during matches.

**Ubercharge**

This is competitive play. The ubercharge makes everything tick; who has it, who doesn't and the medic's life are key elements to pushes and retreats.

During play, the ubercharges will sway. You will have the initial push, which on most maps will require the medic to build uber on the move (no setup time on any of the CP maps (except well)). When both teams hit the middle point, it is a battle for class domination. The scouts attack their scouts. The heavies attack their heavies. The way it plays out is based on how many spam-kills you get, or have made against you. Neither team can traverse the point, due to the sheer amount of spam around it, so distant spamming is key. Once a single heavy class is lost, the tide turns due to the significant loss of spam. Every class is key on the middle, and the medic needs to stay alive. If both teams don't lose their medics, then within about 40 seconds of the game starting, both medics will be close to, or ready to drop their uber in the hope of an advantageous kill. Ubercharge isn't just the basic, however. Kritzkrieg, when used properly, can be an extremely useful tool (more in this soon).

As one team falls back and the other captures the middle, a stalemate will inevitably form (unless you kill their medic on middle). This is when defending your side of the stalemate is imperitive. One soldier, preferably, will be charging up the medic. Try to fire 1 rocket, reload. 1 more, reload. This means that you will always have 3 rockets loaded incase the enemies try anything. Again, readiness is key. Once the charge is full, you have two options. One, wait for them to push, and the other is to make a move yourselves. If you get the ubercharge before them, that is a good chance to push (this is also where fake medic calling comes into play - you can call that you are charged before you actually are, so you can mislead the team into not attacking you straight away). Pushing is quite self explanatory. You push at their team with all your firepower, hoping to get a few kills. Everybody needs to be coordinated in pushing, so that they occupy their classes (scouts need to engage scouts so that their scouts aren't an issue for heavy classes, etc). When a push is called, everybody must follow that order. It is imperitive to use all your might in a push, any less and they can use more (if that makes sense).

Alternatively, if both teams have uber, what happens is not dissimilar, but a whole new game in its own. Because of the way that uber degenerates, it becomes a game for the medic to keep as many people alive with as little healing as possible. This means that you will get chances to take pot-shots at both of their soldiers as the medic switches to heal the one taking damage. You do not want to stray away from their medic, as he is your ultimate goal - only spam what is in your range. Because of the switching game, the medics uber will degenerate, meaning that the more damage you do, the faster his uber will drop. This is key, because you can force him to use up his uber faster than yours, giving you hits on their medic before yours leaves uber, allowing you to eliminate a vital part of their team. Because of this, pushing with 1 person is advised, and everybody should attempt to stay **AWAY** from an uber if you yourself are not ubered, as they will target you. However, if the medic's uber is close to dropping, feel free to swoop in and help remove him from the game.

Performing these maneuvers is all about timing and experience. Experience as a team mainly, but the timing rarely chances. Ubers are 10 seconds flat, usually averaging at around 6 or 7 seconds, so knowing roughly when to attack is key. The soldier who is ubered needs to take advantage of this and attack their medic *as soon as* his uber drops. The medic needs to die, to give your team the upper hand. Again, though, use common sense. If the medic has already ran away using his uber-charge as cover, do not chase him if there is a closer target.

The kritzkrieg works much in the same way as uber, but it needs to be used inconspicuously. If they know you have it, it becomes ineffective. The key to it is suprise, total and utter. You need to run into their view just as you reach 100% on the charge, so that you can hit it and fire a crit rocket before they even realize that you have it. That is an ideal scenario. The kritzkrieg works everywhere that the ubercharge does, provided you use it sparingly and effectively. I'll speak to any medics more about this, as it would take alot of space to explain here.

**Comms**

Voicechat, ventrilo, and soforth. Communication with your team. This is the single most vital aspect for a team to grasp quickly and efficiently.

If you cannot communicate, your tactics and individual skill become useless. It's no good pushing with 1 medic and 1 soldier because noone else was paying attention. Likewise it's no good pushing solo as a demoman because you mis-heard or weren't paying attention. You need to make your comms louder than your ingame sounds. You need to be able to hear every single word crystal clearly, and every command needs to be followed.

Being medic, I will likely be calling for the intial scrims, and probably for much longer. The one thing I ask of you is to follow my orders. If I ask you to do it, do it. Ok, if we're stalemated and you have a better suggestion based on your own view, ask me. If we are in combat, however, and this applies especially to heavy classes, you need to follow my commands. There won't be very many, but they will be important. Retreat is the single most important command I can give you. If I tell you to get out of fire, or fall back to the next point, do so. Don't hezitate. If you're a soldier, rocket-jump backward (if possible). Do whatever you can to escape the scene as fast as possible, without endangering yourself too much (else escaping becomes pointless). I will usually call this early, very early, and as such if you do not comply, I won't take it lightly. Not understanding is not an excuse. Listen harder.

There are few things more annoying, or confusing, as wrong intel. Everything you see class-wise should be reported. I will list the names for every section of every map I explain tactics for, and learning these is key to calling. Knowing your left + rights under pressure is important as well, and you would be suprised how many people mess this up (repeat offender here). If you're going to call something, it's better to wait a second for your head to process what you want to say before blurting it out and crowding voice comms. Clear comms are essential so that every player can hear and be heard.

Do not shout on comms. It usually comes out distorted, disorientating and generally annoying if you speak too loud or get too exited on comms. Actually no, exitement is alright, but try to keep your voice at a normal speaking level. Once people begin shouting, someone will shout over someone else. We are not in competition with one another.

Do not chat on comms. If it does not need to be said, type it, or say it at a round end. No moment, other than while waiting for a new round to start, is appropriate for chatting. It serves no purpose other than to fill comms, and the less there is the better. Small quips and comments are fine in off-times, such as during a stalemate, but when someone is trying to coordinate keep chat to a nul, please.

**Movement as a team**

Another aspect of Team Fortress 2 is staying together as a team. Telling someone to go from point A to B is fine, but when there are classes of varying speed, you need to coordinate your movement.

The easiest classes to coordinate are scout. One scout needs to lead, and the other needs to follow him. Who leads and who follows is entirely up to you, but whoever is following needs to be able to keep up and keep close, so that when you do find an enemy, you can both suprise them quickly.

Harder, however, is coordination between the medic and soldiers or demomen.

The medic runs faster than both of these classes, so keeping up isn't an issue. The issue is knowing where to go. The medic needs to act as a horse-rider, and the soldiers are his horse. The horse doesn't know where the rider wants to go, so the rider tells him. The medic needs to command the soldiers, but the soldiers need to lead the way, so as not to put the medic in harm's way. It's very simple to do, but it's also very easy to ignore and mess up. The medic needs to call where the soldiers should be heaving every time he is with them, and the soldiers need to comply.

One last thing in this section. When you are dead, you are far from useless. Scouts, if you are dead and your partner is not, coordinate for you to meet up once you respawn. Likewise with soldiers and medics. The soldiers need to meet with the medic ASAP so as to protect the medic and buff the soldiers.

The next section is going to be a strategy-runthrough of cp_badlands.

Section 3

**03. Map strategies**

What is a game without maps to play on? And what is a map without all the little niches that only playing for 500 hours reveals to someone? TF2 is full of these, and trying to explain them all here is not worth the effort. You will learn them as you play, believe me.

Instead, I feel I can provide a good basis for tactics and positions around every map, allowing the people who haven't experienced competitive play before to have a foundation to build upon. This is probably the most important segment out of the ones so far, although the others are also extremely important. Strategies make up the entirity of TF2 and I believe that giving you a reference is the best way for you to quickly pick up the basics of the game.

Again, I ask you to read every single line of this, and preferably re-read it for maximum sinking-innage.

I'll keep the intro brief, as these could take up quite alot of space. Without furthur stalling, I bring you

**cp_badlands** ([location names overview](http://imgur.com/BtOKe.jpg) <- click this first!!)

The map. The big one. Everybody plays this map, wether you like it or not. You will not avoid it. It is everywhere.

However, it is also an extremely good map, and plays out so fluidly that you'd think valve actually support the competitive communities.

The way I plan to structure these strategies is as follows - Middle Push, Defence (CP1 - CP4) and Offence (CP2 - CP5). I will throw in little class-specific tidbits here and there to keep you reading, and hopefully to teach you some things you didn't know before.

Ok, so both teams have readied up, and you just spawned. Now what? Well, the first thing to focus on is making your way to middle as fast as possible. On every map, every class will have a specific route to take to reach middle in the fastest time possible. The scouts are pretty simple, but the soldiers and especially demoman need to learn their routes. I won't outlay them here as it will eat alot of space, so ask me if you want to see (I can probably find you some good demos).

As you spawn, the medic needs to heal the demoman, so don't be bunny-hopping up and down. This makes everyone's life more difficult, and there is no reason for it, ultimately. The demoman will proceed to sticky-jump away faster than the medic can run, and as such the medic will begin healing / overhealing the soldiers, ready for the middle point. You will end up your house, and ready to get onto the middle point. Here is where the speed becomes essential. If you soldiers are too slow, you will not make it out of the door before the stickies land at it. A good judge of your speed is how far along the medic is. The medic should never, ever stop running at the start of badlands, so that he can avoid being stickied into the house, and the soldiers should be able to keep up with him quite easily.

As you push out into the middle point, you will be greeted with [**this view**](http://imgur.com/BnA0m.jpg). This shows roughly your positions within the map (excluding demoman, who should be on the balcony) after you are outside in the middle point. The aim here is to spam them until they lose a heavy class. Here, the soldiers really need to be focussing fire, preferably at a soldier on the floor. You are aiming to get a single kill, so focussing one target is ideal.

Scouts, you need to be underneath the bridge, fending off their scouts. Do not get yourself killed. I cannot emphasize this enough; if you die, their scouts have no opposition up to our medic. All you need to do is hang quite far back in canyon, and fire at their scouts to ward them off. However, you will be the first class to middle, along with your demoman, so a good idea is to meet their scouts on the point, and focus fire on one to attempt a kill. Do not cross past the big metal circle on the point, however, as you will enter their soldier's own-zone when they arrive. Once both of you are weak, or you have successfully killed 1 or 2 scouts, head under the bridge. If both scouts are down, you are free to harass their medic, or sneak into their house to attack the demoman. [**Overview of scout's middle-point tactic**](http://imgur.com/W7GAn.jpg)

Soldiers, you need to have one of you on the train-car, and one on the edge of the point with the medic. Your goal is solely spam, then offence once you manage a single kill. It is a simple thing to explain, but difficult to do in practice. Again, I emphasize, focus fire.

Once you get your kill, one of you can quite easily rocket-jump up and toward them, while raining down hell. This gives the other soldier + medic an opportunity to gain ground onto the point, starting the capture. I don't feel this needs a run-down specifically. A few tips, however. The soldier on the train - make sure you watch your left side. Scouts can approach through the shit-house if you do not pay attention.

Demoman, your role is the most varied, as usual. At the start, you need to be lighting fast, and aim to reach your house's balcony. From there you have access to a 50% health-pack, and all the cover you need to spam spam away.

The first thing you need to do, ideally, is throw stickies to their side of the control point, aka where their scouts are. This warns them off pretty effectively. Once they have scarpered, begin firing stickies at the door to their house. If their medic / soldiers are already outside by this point, sticky the front side of the point and begin throwing grenades at them. This keeps them off the point, and hopefully keeps them spammed enough that they don't get a minutes rest. The grenades don't even need to hit, just land nearby to cause confusion and pressure.

That's the main bulk of the middle point strategy complete, now let's say that you forced them to retreat, and both of you are charing ubers, both of you with 6 players alive.

You need to defend your point, by holding what is widely known as choke. Choke is on every map, being the main route between the middle and second points. On most maps, this is a very tight chokepoint requiring an ubercharge to pass.

You need to position yourselves something like [**this**](http://imgur.com/ip35S.jpg). The idea is to cover off every single entrance, while providing an even spread of firepower.

Scouts, you have a difficult job here. You need to attack their scouts who will likely be at their resupply. All you can do is attack them until they re-supply, and continue doing this. [**Overview of your plan of attack here**](http://imgur.com/LVoxe.jpg). You need to attack their scouts, force them into resupply, and as they go in, jump up onto their base's balcony. It's difficult to pull off, timing-wise, but if their scouts decide to chase you onto balcony, all you need to do is camp the way you came in. If they jump up after you, they will be crouched and very slow moving, and as such you can easily get a shot off into them before they do to you.

You can also attempt to evade them by using the complexity of their base to your advantage, then use your advantage of being behind them to coordinate a distraction with your team. Just one example of the many possible outcomes.

Soldier, you need to spam the choke, while the other soldier charges the medic's uber. Be wary for pushes, so as I explained earlier, fire 1 rocket, reload. This keeps 3 loaded at all times.

Demoman, you are tasked with holding the house. You need to sticky [**these areas**](http://imgur.com/CDwmv.jpg), in order to keep them from entering the house and attacking your medic. If they push against you with an uber, which is often the case, just run to the right toward your medic and keep your group together ready to either counter-uber or flee.

Pushing out of this position is much like any other push. One soldier will go in with the medic, and force them to use their uber, at which point everybody holds away from the range of the ubered players. Once their uber drops, every heavy class needs to descend upon the medic and his uber-target like hot shit and wipe them off the map. The more efficient you become at doing this, the easier a time you will have attempting to push.

There are a few variable factors in this push. If, for example, your scouts cannot beat their scouts at resup, your scouts can go through the door your demoman has stickied after the medic's uber has dropped, and engage from there. Be advised though, this gives their scouts alot of scope to back-cap.

The Demoman should spam from the door which I just mentioned, keeping yourself safe until you need to push on. Alternatively, you can sticky-jump right up to the Spire and secure it for capture.

Again, assuming that they have lost 3 or 4 players and are retreating, you need to capture CP4. This is quite a simple maneuver, but easily messed up.

[**Movement overview**](http://imgur.com/EmG3U.jpg)

The medic needs to be defended, so assuming you have no scouts available to capture, one soldier and the demoman need to jump up to the point. Demoman, the first thing you need to do is sticky the balcony or the front door, depending on their location. Soldier, your job would be to keep anything from blocking your capture. Pretty simple here really.

If a scout or two are available to capture, capitalize and use the time to move your heavy classes to the enemy base, preparing for your push to last point.

If you already have an uber, and know they do not, take a left at the front door and go directly through the lower section into CP5, and attempt to capture. If not, take a right and set up at the top of the stairs, charging your uber ready to push in.

[**Position Overview**](http://imgur.com/M8CUC.jpg)

The medic needs to stay on the back stairs, as it provides him cover if the enemy decides to push. One soldier needs to stand half way down the stairs, watching the top-right doorway and the bottom door. The other soldier needs to be watching the top-left doorway, while charging the medic. The demoman needs to sticky up the right side. Most will sticky right down at the bottom, on the entance to CP5, but some will sticky further back, or even coat the floor with stickies. Experiment, find what you like, but keep the right side on lock-down.

Scouts, you need to dart around, waiting for a push. If one of you has died, and your team is preparing to push into last point, you could switch to sniper (if you're good, it's not worthwhile if you can't hit for toffee), and snipe from a few positions - [1](http://imgur.com/PHUMo.jpg),[2](http://imgur.com/dcIzY.jpg),[3](http://imgur.com/G4bqx.jpg)

When you get your uber, it's standard procedure. The soldier + medic should push in through one of the top doors, either left or right, and b-line for their medic to kill him or force him to uber. The soldier not ubered can come in just after the soldier / medic to provide firepower, and as usualy the scouts and demoman should hold back until the ubercharge has finished.

From here, scouts, you can do what you wish. Choose an entrance, run through it, try to get some kills or cap. Everything else on this point is experience, and can't be explained. Demoman, you too. If their demoman is dead, you can enter the right side door and spam from lower. If he isn't, you can backpedal up to the top, and push in where the medic / soldier did. This high position provides a very good spot for demoman to finish off the inevitable swarm of half to low health enemies left on the point.

If all goes well, congratulations! You capped!

Now, let's say that you aren't doing so well. You're on last point, and you need to get out and cap CP2.

Well, if you're on last point, you need to take [**these positions**](http://imgur.com/1qx8C.jpg).

The soldier and medic on left need to charge the medic's uber, and the soldier on the right needs to be watching the top window and the bottom door. You can see when they push as the top is made of glass and the bottom is...er...a door.

The demoman needs to watch the right side. That's his job. Scouts can all too easily push in through there and cap the point when noone is looking, and that needs to be stopped. If they push in, the demoman needs to move his stickies from the door to the point, so that you don't permanently need someone standing on it. This frees up the soldiers to attack from height. Evidently, if the demoman dies, one or both of the soldiers need to drop down and protect the point from capture.

Scouts, here you are invaluable. You need to find a route out right as their team pushes in (take the opposite height to where they go - if they push high, run low, etc). You need to escape and capture. If all goes well, your team can defend long enough to buy you the time to capture CP2, but it's a very difficult thing to do, as the point captures so quickly.

Now, let's pretend like that worked, and you have captured CP2 and moved up to balcony.

You need to take positions somewhere along [**these lines**](http://imgur.com/1qx8C.jpg).

The soldiers and medic have pretty standard positions. All 3 stay on the balcony, out of view (snipers are used alot here) and one soldier charges the medic. The other one is tasked with watching the routes into the balcony.

The scouts hold resupply just as they would if they were holding chokepoint pushing to CP3, by hanging just outside the doors and returning for health every few scuffs.

The demoman is the most versatile class here. He can essentially free-roam because of the amount of cover offered by the balcony and spire, allowing him to get alot of damage off on the enemy team.

I don't think I need to speak too much about this point, other than that the soldiers need to apply the strategy I told earlier (jump up, attack, jump down), as it is only really held like this very very occasionally.

Now, you get a few kills from your demoman and you decide to push them back to their chokepoint. You need to position yourselfs [**like so**](http://imgur.com/Rofu5.jpg).

The soldiers cover the choke, and charge the medic, while the demoman can watch the house and spam some grenades over.

The scouts will remain at the resupply, skirmishing their scouts, waiting for the time to push. That's all they can do at this point really - try to kill but not get killed.

When it comes time to push, this is just like any other. Push with a heavy class, pop their uber, wait for them to run out, everyone else barges in. You can utilize alot of tactics from the initial middle point rush on this section of the map, so it's pretty simple to grasp how you should push forward on through this point.

That and my mind has died from the last 6 hours of making this crap Cheesy

I think the best thing I can do now is summarize how TF2 is played, now that you have seen a strategy for one of the maps. It's a pretty simple concept, even if the huge wall of text made it daunting as fuck.

[**Confrontation / Chokepoint overview**](http://imgur.com/VxrCn.jpg)

Basically, that map lays out every border which is contested throughout the playing of a single round of badlands. You start off assaulting middle together, and you end up either falling back to 3, 2 or worst case 1, or pushing to 4, 5 or 6. Every push you make is with the goal of breaking past these boundaries and pushing back the opposing team. Once done, you re-form your team on the border and charge your uber, ready for the next push. That's it really. It's very simple. Evidently there's alot more to it than just that, but that's the general idea.

Really, I can't type any more now. If anyone has questions, something to add, whatever, add me - sc.lofty on steam. I'm in the reddit team group, and the general reddit group.