I did an interview with Fragga, a soldier from the other side of the Atlantic. He's a soldier that used to play a lot in European leagues and recently made the switch to the North American scene. With more experience on both sides of the Atlantic than any other player in tf2, I thought he'd be a good candidate for an interview. The interview does a lot of comparing TF2 in North America with TF2 in Europe and also discusses weapon balances.

Kermit: Introduce yourself and explain how you first started playing TF2.

I'm Fragga, I main soldier but also play scout and sniper. My first FPS game was Doom. Quakeworld was the first game I took seriously and in 1997 I joined the newly formed clan 4Kings. Later on I joined Demonic Core with my brother and some others who all lived in the same city as myself. Coming from a Quake background the soldier class in TF2 seemed the obvious choice, and back then the soldier was a powerful and influential class which could carry a team with a good medic.

A relatively old and short interview (about a month old) that I was too lazy to post until now. It's with eHfK, head ESEA TF2 admin and discusses the upcoming ESEA LAN, ESEA's future plans with TF2 and more.

You’re stepping down as an ESEA admin after this season, any reason why?

I've really enjoyed everything I have done with ESEA and trying to build a community around it for TF2, although it wasn't as successful as I had hoped it would be. It is a very stressful job, as some could imagine. I often find myself being the middle man between an upset community and management that doesn't want to budge. It has also become a very time consuming job, and as I am nearing the end of my university career, I think it would be best for me to focus on my studies. Who knows though, I may just pull a Brett Favre.

About a month ago I created a medic roundtable with some of the game's best Medics. Since then, I have received a lot of requests to do more roundtables with other classes. The next class I am doing is the demoman. The class I wish I could play well.

When TF2 competitive was just starting out, it was like the wild wild west, no class limits, no rules. There was always a big debate on how important the demoman is in 6v6, or even 8v8 play. I remember a thread debating if teams should run a sniper or demoman all the time. I also remember a team that ran 5 demos and a medic...good times. That was before the tf2 players started understanding exactly how much the demoman can do in a match. Once more and more players started playing demo to their full potential (sticky jumping, air-piping, sneaky traps), it was no longer a debate on whether the demo should be in every single starting lineup.

Sure, I could have gotten invite demos like Solid Snake, destro and ducky. But the 3 demomen I chose were a lot easier to reach and I know will give me a timely answer. Hate if you want, but these 3 demomen chosen are no doubt in the list of top 10 demos in North America.

b4nny is the demo for eMazing Gaming, the #1 seeded team in ESEA-Open.
You Must Recover is the demo for Apocalypse Gaming, the #2 seeded team in ESEA-Open.
Droog is the demo for Vicious Gaming, the #3 seeded team in ESEA-Open.

Another reason I chose the three of them is that I have played against all three and I feel like they all have a different playing style, but all three have found a way to successfully play at the high level of TF2. I always thought there were only two types of demomen, the aggro demo that causes a lot of damage (and take a lot of damage too), some aggro demos would be destro, ducky, chupa or most Euro demos. Then there are the defensive/trapping demos. If we put it in football reference, they would be the shutdown cornerback, take out half the field/map and forces the opponents to only work with the other half. One great sticky trap (Big Interception) could change the tide of the whole round. When I think of classic trap demos, You Must Recover, SolidSnake and Arc come to mind. But after talking to these guys, I realized that there aren't just 2 playstyles, every demo has their own level of aggression and in the end, it really depends on what the team needs most. Good demomen adjust to the needs of their team while the stubborn demos keep playing their own style and blame their team if he is not getting enough support by scouts or heals from the medic.

Instead of bullshitting more about what I think about the demo, why don't we just get straight to the interview? So without further adieu, dj's Demoman Roundtable.

Sorry for the long wait everyone. Since the start of part 1, the beta of SC2 was released and Buick was unreachable for a good week. I finally gave him enjoy guilt to finally finish this interview. Some really good stuff about TF2 strategy in this interview, unless you're one of those tl:dr guys. This interview made me realize that there are definitely smart kids with interesting things to talk about in this community. Look for me to find my next interviewee soon.

But for now, enjoy part 2 of "An Evening with Keith Smerbeck"