CommunityFortress

Ladies and gents, it's Friday!  The weekend!  Take off your ties, grab forty ounces of malted beverage, and set fire to noobs!  In-game.  Set fire to noobs in-game.  Come on, now.  Don't make me put disclaimers down.

Even better than Friday?  We're going into Week 11 of the CommFT Highlander Tournament, the championship brackets!  The best of the best are getting ready to slug it out on Turbine and this edition of the Strategy Series takes one of those championship teams to task.  Mustardoverlord, from Oedipus and the Motherfuckers, has given me the goods.  Not content to type a few measley sentences, he has given me a saga of victory, a bard's tale of power-drunk digitial vikings on their mad expedition to control points unknown.

What is best in life?

To pick the enemy Medic, hear the screams of their Scouts, and to see them driven into their spawn before you.

Team Name

Hi, I'm mustardoverlord, team captain and demoman for a pretty nifty team called Oedipus and the Motherfuckers. We're more of a “competitive circle jerk” team than a lot of highlander teams, as every single one of our members will be in Esea-O or Esea-IM this season. We're not all from the same team, although a decent amount of us (Swarth, Schnell, Robotic, Nosferatu, and myself) have been on a team called simpLicity at some time or another, and another group of guys (mgib, Curdle, Root, and guy_) are from a mini circle jerk of their own! We haven't lost so far in the tournament, and are gonna finish in the top 3 no matter what we do, but complete victory is far from assured.

How did you prepare for this particular CommFT HL Tourney Match?

We prepare for every highlander match the same way: by not preparing. My team has scrimmed but once, and it was for a map we never ended up playing. Still, we all know our stuff pretty well, and go into matches with a good competitive mindset. Such tomfoolery wouldn't cut it in 6v6, but highlander sort of allows for more autonomy and goofiness on the part of the winning team. 

What were the strategies you used during the match? Did they work? Did you have to make changes on the fly?

Generally, our strategy works like this: our scout tries to clean up damage, our solly mainly roams with the gunboats, our pyro gets lots of heals and does more short leash roaming, me and the heavy soak up the majority of the heals (especially me) and get the majority of ubers and kritzes, our engi gunslings and shotguns a lot, our sniper bosses shit, and our spy dead ringers and goes huge. If they didn't work, we wouldn't be here right now mang! As for changes on the fly, the most we've really had to do is counter key players on the other team. The most notable example of this would be in our gravelpit match against the lovely and talented Death Marked Soldiers. Although we won 2-0, the first round was INCREDIBLY close. Their sniper (xlr105) got an uber drop on our medic while we were holding B on red, and coupled with some great play from their scout (Wulfy) and some nice picks by their spy (big Sylon), they managed to cap in like 4:10. We lucked out and barely beat it by like four seconds. Then, the following round, we switched up our classes to try a different dude on sniper, and tried to get better protection from their scout for me and our medic. It worked, as we won that round more convincingly. 

If you could change anything about the strategy you used during the match, what would it be?

In general, we've had to change classes around a lot, and the hardest thing for me has been finding the best player for each class. My team is comprised of quite a few scouts from 6v6, since they're generally good at utilities, so I've had to try to find the best heavy, spy, sniper, scout, and engi configuration. It's been rough, as our recent pummeling by Kawaii Explosion shows.

What will you do differently to prepare for upcoming matches?

Next time, we'll scrim...maybe. It depends on what I can get my team to do, honestly. I mean, if the map isn't some left field oddball pick, like lakeside or glacier, we might not have to scrim as much, but at least one couldn't hurt. In addition, I want to get my boii Nosferatu Man back on med. No disrespect to Robotic, who's a great player, but medic isn't exactly his forte. He was certainly a good enough medic to do well against Lonely Hearts, but that was granary, perhaps the easiest medic map around, and they were far worse than Kawaii Explosion. The latter team kind of tore poor Robotic a new one, sorry to say. I'd love to have the dude back on heavy, or possibly soldier (which he mains in 6v6), although he'd be perfectly satisfied warming the bench.

Have you learned anything specifically about Highlander strategy while playing in this tournament?

I've definitely learned more about how to position the utility classes (E.G. that the pyro can protect the combo well, etc.), and strategies for maps not found in 6v6. However, I would primarily like to use this space to critique many of the pub highlander teams (as opposed to 6v6 circle jerks), for what I see as the most glaring reason they often lose to the more less coordinated circle jerks (other than DM, which isn't the main issue, as a lot of top HL teams have good DM as well). I feel like quite a few highlander teams just don't use their medic properly, and it ends up costing them. When I say use their medic, I mainly mean the ubercharge. A lot of teams don't really count uber well, split uber well, or use it at the right time, from what I've seen. I think this is probably the biggest overall weakness with the average highlander team. The uber matters just as much in 9v9, yet some teams don't seem to base their play off of it enough. Just a quick criticism. 

What class is the most difficult to use or coordinate in Highlander? Why?

That's a tough one. I'd say probably medic, actually. It's the one class whose job actually gets a good deal harder when against an actual strong team, as it can be more difficult to create heal orders on the fly and prioritize the right people. In addition, a lot of the maps in highlander can kind of make the medic a sitting duck to a spy, bombing soldier, W+M1 pyro, or sniper. Scout would probably be the second hardest, the only class whose job doesn't get much, much easier in highlander (HIGHLANDER DEMOMAN IS SOOOO EASY MAN).

*

Demoman wept.

Like what you see?  Want to be part of the Highlander Strategy Series?  PM me on the forums and I'll send you the questions.