I have often joked before that TF2er can’t play CTF. Only, far too often it hasn’t been a joke, but a statement of a sad truth
So I thought I’d create a guide to CTF to point out the differences between CTF and other game modes and suggest a few basics how CTF should be approached to make it work.
This is not intended to be a strategy guide. What you will find here is far more basic.
Let’s start with the name.
The game is called „Capture The Flag“. Let this sink in, then repeat after me: (...)

Anybody up for some decorative madness?
Apparently more than one would have expected. At least I would not have foreseen that people would go nuts about a new headgear for their favourite class. Hmm, I correct myself: People cherish and celebrate it even if it is for a class they never play (though often with carefully hinted disappointment) as long as it’s a HAT.
I assume Valve answered a long suppressed desire for decorative headgear which probably was seething in players from day one. (...)

There are not many online computer games where you can play a psychotic Scottish explosives expert with one eye (and of African descent). However, it’s lucky for me that TF2 is such a game.
The demo man offers a unique playing experience of any first person shooter that I have come across. I’ve played my fair share of FPS, and the theme is always about being able to lob a grenade and shoot directly at the enemy. The demo man changes this older, proven, tried and tested approach. I honestly (...)

KOTH or “King of the hill” is proving to be rather popular on TF2 servers these days. It’s a strange mixture of the previous TF2 Arena and the current TF2 point capture style of play. It is neither an all out death match nor a fully fledged regular TF2 experience. The key concept is as follows:
• Either team can capture the centralised control point on the map
• Once a team captures the point, they must hold it for 3 minutes to win. Each team has their own 3 minute timer that must count down (...)

When the recent update introduced a few new bugs the reaction from the community prompted me to write a little rant, but I also started a discussion on the forums of my friends of and around Clan WDG about this topic, basically following the same line of saying “errors happen, don’t make such a fuss about it”. Quite naturally I was provided with a lot of thoughtful counter-arguments and also was offered some facts I hadn’t initially considered. All this led me to revise my initial statement and (...)

Okay, over the weekend I found some time to play some of the new maps, though probably not enough for a thorough examination. So allow me to present you a few first impressions.
Let’s start with the most exciting new content of the update: Hats.
New hats for the people. I’m excited. I’m loving it. And I’m looking forward to the entire TF2 fashion collection. Boots, belts, pants, hey, how about Victory’s Secret underwear?
Okay, I lied. I don’t really care about hats. I haven’t received a single (...)

Yesterday night Valve released their “Classless Update”, containing tons of new content as well as changes and tweaks for existing stuff.
A short summary of the update’s content:
• New Gamemode “King of the Hill”
• 3 new maps for KOTH: Viaduct and adapted versions of Sawmill and Nucleus.
• A remodeled version of Sawmill for CTF
• Yukon, a new 5-point CP map
• Offblast, a new arena-map
• New hats
• A limited amount of medals for Americans and insomniac others (no longer available).
• Tons of (...)

Noticeably the frequency of articles has decreased during the last couple of weeks. But if you were hoping I was already running out of steam I’ll have to disappoint you
A few weeks back I started posting a series of articles covering the Fort’s motto of „Honor, Sportsmanship and Teamplay“, explaining and elaborating on the terms and their relevance in (and around) the game.
The first two, Teamplay (1 2) and Sportsmanship Teamplay (1 2), took a while to write, but eventually pretty much (...)

Many may not know this, but both predecessors to TF2 had each class carrying grenades, most even two different kind of grenades (or grenade-like tools).
Most classes carried your standard hand-grenade, but TFC also featured a number of specialized grenades which gave the respective classes an additional edge. The only class not carrying hand-grens was the scout.
Scouts and Medics carried concussion grenades. When detonating the grenades caused a spherical blast which pushed enemies away (...)

I will probably never quite understand on which criteria people base their class choices on.
„It’s Wednesday. Wednesdays I only play sniper, demo or pyro.“. „I’m in the mood for engy today“. „My horoscope advises not to play medic this week.“ „Flipped a coin to decide between huntsman-sniper and rifle-sniper“.
What a lot of people obviously don’t do is check the class layout of their own team and let the classes already present and those missing influence their decision.
I guess you’ve seen it all (...)