Scout – Foxx
Soldier – πρ (pronounced pie ro)
Pyro – Deadwolf/Hackasaurus
Demoman – Ragnar
Heavy – Battlebull
Engineer – Fleabeard/Sesquipedalia
Medic – Fishy
Sniper – [N/A, still trying to pick one]
Spy – Jihad Bomber/Pandas
We've seen a lot of big name Platinum teams, but what about the rising stars of Steel? Hit the jump to check out Reddit [WEST]!
I know you guys are all from Reddit, but could you give me a little more about the team?
Battlebull: Yep we’re all from the Reddit West server, a lot of us play just regular pub matches there, so we got together and thought “why not give this a shot?” A lot of us had some previous competitive experience. I was on “Axl Ffu” for ETF2L, now known as “Axl Wat” in platinum.
Deadwolf: I was on a team but it was just kind of a mashed together group for last season.
Foxx: I was doing comp in other games, just not TF2.
Battlebull: The rest of our players range from CEVO-O to people we just play with a lot. They’re pretty good, we just have to hammer the teamwork in.
Can you give me a rundown of who is what class?
Foxx: We’re trying to nail down a sniper right now, the engie is either fleabeard or Sesquipedalia, Battlebull is the heavy, our two pyros who switch off are Deadwolf and Hackasaurus, and Deadwolf also plays a very good engie. Our two spies who switch off are Jihad Bomber and Pandas. I’m one of the scouts and I’m hoping to register another scout very soon.
Battlebull: The demo is Ragnar, and our soldier is πρ (pie ro).
Deadwolf: You forgot Fishy, our medic.
Foxx: Oh poor Fishy!
Battlebull: OH the most important part of the team! He’s our medic, ubers us, heals us, all that fun stuff.
Foxx: He’s so passive all the time, he’s always there and I totally forgot him. He’s so quiet! Great guy, great medic.
What are your specific goals and/or focuses this season?
Foxx: Considering we’re not a team that’s been together for years and that we haven’t had the time to really come together as a team, one of our goals right now is just to become a more functional and cohesive unit that has planned rollouts. A big thing is getting every member to have a good sense of what they’re doing in each match and have set plans for each map so we have much better focus when we go up against teams that may be better than us in terms of DM skills and general teamwork. Something I always believe, and this comes from a past in baseball, is that you can have as many good players on a team as you want, but if you can’t make them work as a team it’s completely useless.
Deadwolf: I think we all work well individually but we definitely need to work on how to fit that all together into teamwork.
Battlebull: Yeah, a lot of us have pretty good DM. We practice with MGE and do a fair bit of lobbies to bring it together cohesively. We always see who our opponents are, always try to find frag videos of them, try to see how they play, then study and build around it. First and foremost we are here to have fun, and then we’re here to win or at least give it our best.
I know we’re only three weeks into the season, but what have been your best and worst matches so far?
Battlebull: Foundry. We aced it and didn’t drop a single round, but we were clumsy, it was a slogfest. There was little to no cohesion as we washed over them in waves of meat and bullets. We won, but it was really messy. After Foundry we started to sharpen that up a little bit, and the best example of that would be on our most recent match on cp_follower. The first round took ten minutes or so. We didn’t really have much practice on it, but immediately after that, the next four rounds took under ten minutes each. Looking forward, NLL, which I believe stands for Never Love Lost, has a lot of ESEA-O players that have a lot of experience so that will be a real challenge facing off against them.
Have you developed a particular style yet? What sets you apart from the other teams?
Foxx: A lot of the players on the team have very open minds coming into the competitive scene, and they aren’t set in this mode where they’re looking out for number one the entire time. I think the problem with most new players is they want to be MVP of the team or some facsimile of that and it just doesn’t work. If you’re in the mindset where you run up behind someone and the sniper headshots the person you’re trying to flank, and you get mad at the sniper… that’s not what should be happening. You should be “good shot” and move on.
Battlebull: We had a couple rounds where we were short a person so we ran mini-sentry defense on Badwater, or when we had our pyro take a few shots from the enemy level 3 then deflect it back at them. It’s those kinds of little tricks that we pull off sometimes that set us apart, I think. Tactically speaking, we try to play very aggressively, and try to see how the pros play, how they hold uber conservatively then push together in one big move. Our spies, who are a nightmare to deal with, don’t always go for medic picks. It’s highlander, so anyone they get whether it’s a demoman or a pyro is good, because that’s one less person for us to deal with. We haven’t experimented with kritz yet because we prefer to play it safe with the uber.
Thanks very much for your time guys, anything to add?
Foxx: We’re interested in seeing what happens later on in the season because I know we’re only a couple weeks in, so we’re just scratching the surface. There’s some pretty stiff competition out there. I’m definitely looking forward to the rest of the season.
Battlebull: Yeah, looking at the prediction threads nobody really picks the Steel teams. It’s either all away teams or all home teams, so I hope we provide some interesting matches where people can go “Oh yeah, those are the guys who totally killed that combo with the sentry rocket reflect!” or something like that. Solid play speaks for itself, but some fun things like that don’t hurt either.
Foxx: I’d like to get casted this season.
Battlebull: Thanks for the interview, and yeah check out the Reddit West server, just google “Reddit West”, hope you can drop by, we’re almost full 24/7, so come in and have some shenanigans with us!
