A solid start for FNR! and A Hive of Scum and Villainy is born

FNR! had their first game last night and got off to a pretty solid start, losing 3-5 on Badlands but winning 6-3 on Gullywash, overall achieving a Draw. Their opponents were Team Euphoria who used some interesting tactics, using two pyros at one stage on Gullywash and not just on last, normally you only see one pyro defending the last point by airblasting ubers away. Watching, it seemed the initial effectiveness of the pyros was largely due to the element of surprise, but once that was gone, the soldiers and scouts seemed to take them out relatively easily without them bringing much to what was going on.

The other piece of 6v6 news from the WDG community, is the birth of a Hive of Scum and Villainy. Yes, at long last, I have a  6v6 team! I’m not sure if we’ll be keeping the name, for some reason it kept going round in my head everytime I thought of us, so I decided to go with it for the time being.

Anyhow, we’ve played a few games now and done badly but spirits remain high. We’ve played a few games this week, the first via tf2lobby and after various confusions involving map names and server configurations, got a game together on cp_gullywash which we lost but not before we managed to capture a couple of points and even drive our opposition to last once. In the excitement of it all,  I had a bit of a positional awareness situation at the start (I fell off mid) but by the end had managed to rally myself and manage some nice sticky traps.

Gullywash mid; perilous

For the next games, we had a couple of FNR! with us. We were playing a Div 6 teams so you could argue that this was unfair and that they’d carry us, but as one of us remarked, currently we’re so bad we’re beyond carrying so it didn’t really matter. We had varying success, in one game winning a round, but going to pieces in others; looking at you Badlands. It was useful having FNR! with us as they gave us tips as we played and much feedback afterwards. Much.

It’s still about teamwork, communication and positioning, and getting out of those bad pub playing habits. Our soldier found himself bombing our opponents when he had 2 hps; doesn’t matter in pub, does in 6v6, I found myself isolated but carried on merrily spamming choke instead of retreating, doesn’t matter in pub, does in 6v6. It’s very different.

But we all feel that together, in our raw unformed state, we’ve something to work with and we’re having fun, so it’s all good.

(as an aside, while I was reading up on stuff about playing 6v6, I found a post in the ETF2L forum on team cohesion. Copied from NATF2 forum and written by one hooli, it states, and at this point the younger and/or more fragile of the Readership may consider looking away:

You have to understand balance and how it plays it’s part in TF2. You have yin; the soft, passive, feminine and supporting principle of the universe. Much like the nourishing and life giving breasts of a women(that is why females are physiologically inclined to play medic). And then you have yang, the hard, aggressive, masculine and offensive principle of the universe. Much like my p_s.

Hmm. Interesting.

The full text can be found here http://natf2.com/topics/7091-hooli-s-team-cohesion-guide

To be fair though, he does make some good points.