I am writing this guide as there have been people wanting to know about the more competitive side of Team Fortress 2. As there is a wealth of information out there on the internet I thought that I would bring it together and save you the trouble. I am assuming that you know about the basic setup of a 6v6 team.
Before you can get into the more competitive side you will need to get a microphone. This is essential because you will need to communicate with your team.
Here are some Podcasts that specifically talk about comp TF2.
Kritkast
This podcast is done by Clan Vengeance and is a round up of everything Team Fortress 2 related.
Control Point
Although it has finished it is still interesting, the people who did this podcast now do Nation of Gamers (NoG) which talks about games in general.
Friendly Fire
The Friendly Fire Podcast is aimed towards people who are at an intermediate skill level and who wish to improve their game. It is hosted by Brian (Mint Condition), Jeff (Jestr), Dan (Highstepper) and occasionally Torin (Sigma) who currently doesn’t host as he plays matches and scrims when the show is recorded.
Here is a link for the random chatter forums which are linked to the above podcast. They are reasonably active and have a thriving TF2 section.
Random Chatter Forums
Here are some good websites that cater for North American competitive Team Fortress 2.
GotFrag
Community Fortress
CommFT
This is community fortresses YouTube channel which has a lot of demos of games which are very good and are definitely worth a watch as they show some good strategies.
AG Community
This is a good active community which has three teams. One of which is a low team which has a rotation so less experienced players can get a chance to play. They also have two 1000fps servers and one 500fps server. One of their servers is available to use if it is pre booked.
There are many guides which aim to give you a basic idea of what competitive gameplay is like. Here are some of the bests ones.
Ubercharged Competitive Guide
How To Get Involved
The way that most people who are new get into competitive is by playing pugs. You do not have to be good to play in them however you must be willing to obey orders, be eager to learn and ready to communicate.
There are pug groups out there which regularly organize pugs. One of these groups is CP PUGS
To participate you will need to have Ventrilo, Mumble or IRC.
Download Ventrilo
Download Mumble
Download IRC
TF2 Lobby
This is a browser based interface which once you have registered it allows you to easily jump into 6v6 games, it stores a lot of statistics about how well you have done, what matches you have played etc. Once you have registered it is easy to get into a game and play. At the moment there are around 50-100 players on at any given time. It bypasses the need to use IRC, Vent and Mumble so its the one that I would recommend. The only problem is that because it is new it doesn’t have an established community and people can rage quite or fail to turn up to the game.
