hey dude,

I co-lead my first team this ugc season, and although it's HL, I might be able to give you a couple of tips that helped us.

1) I've had success just going on the ugc page, looking at teams in our division and adding their leaders. Lots of teams are receptive to this at lower levels since many of them are always looking for scrims too. Then you can build up a relationship and play those teams consistently, which is pretty good. For finding short notice scrims, you might want to try the tf2scrim IRC channel, although I can't say much about that myself.

2) I'd advise against the Cali server even if it will be better for a couple of your players. Chicago/Dallas is the best way to go for everyone, otherwise you get people who are really screwed over and you'll have teams bitching about the ping on your server. Save yourself the headache.

3) Watch old matches on the maps if you can. Find demos or stvs to look at. Getting your team to run around for a bit in the map can really help. Mess around, make up names for map locations, and just look at all the architectural features you may have never really thought about mid-game. It's a great way to find hiding spots to both use and check.

As for strats, it's good to see what other teams do to flesh out a general plan, but the best thing you can do is just see what works for you in game and try to adapt when things don't work out the way you thought they would. Then you can go back over those stvs later and see why things happened the way they did, what your strengths are and what you need to work on.

As for 3)

In my opinion the best time I had playing competitive TF2 was when everything was new to me and my teammates so you can experiment with stuff. That is if you like to theorycraft and try out unorthodox things and learning what is effective/good by yourself.

If you wanna skip all of that and just learn how it works - there are plenty of great ressources.

A Guide to 6v6 meta
MGE Video Archive
etc.

And as for maps just run through them while everyone is in mumble. Talk about your ideas, things you've done that worked, things that went badly, etc. So your teammates get an understanding how you play and you get the same from them. As for naming conventions, you can either create your own with your team. Or you just follow this guide: Labeled Maps for players new to comp TF2

1. Scrim teams in ESEA if you can, start low then work your way up. If you just scrim UGC steel teams you'll be stuck in UGC steel forever.

2. Try to rent a cental server, either texas or chicago since that's what you'll be forced to play on a lot. Hmm maybe UGC is different and you get to use your own, but half your team will ping badly if you're split in half like that. Might as well get used to it.

3. There's many ways. You can get a team mentor to get you started, or you guys can watch demo's of better teams and see what they are doing and try to figure out why they are doing it. This is where the mentor comes in handy so if you're all really that new, that's your best approach.

GL!

I would slow down, not only are they a brand new team, they're brand new to competitive TF2. They're not going to learn anything from getting stomped on in <10 minutes every time they get a scrim. It wastes both team's time.

I recommend learning the mechanics in and out, practicing your DM, and scrimmimg other steel teams. Once you start beating those teams easily (which you will if you're dedicated to improving) then move up to scrimmimg silver teams. Once you start doing well against them, start looking for platinum/low open scrims. You're probably going to get beat a bunch more than you win, but hopefully by that point you'll be experienced enough to learn from your mistakes.

Good luck dudes

There's a lot of "new" teams in ESEA-O and it's just a great place to find scrims. People post "low" there every night. They are also looking to play in ESEA, so why wait?

And they are new to 6's not TF2, so i think they would come along best with a 6's mentor.

A lot of "new" teams in Open are good. Or even if they were "mediocre", that's still significantly better than a UGC Steel team that has had absolutely no prior experience in 6v6, not to mention there's no way for him to tell who's on a "good" Open team and who isn't. I would also support adding the other Steel team leaders and setting up scrims until your team gets the hang of things.

I really don't think they are new to competitive TF2, just 6's. I guess maybe take a bit of time to get your feet wet but at least try to scrim teams above steel as soon as possible, even if you get rolled the first few nights.

I guess I just don't understand why anyone would shoot for the bottom ever in anything; politics, fighting, sports, etc... The general rule is "Always attack up, then you never really lose".

But what do I know? Than again, I've pulled some tail way above my pay grade :)

https://www.youtube.com/user/MediMarx I've got some general guides for some of the maps and will be releasing more soon. Blank, Cyzer, and RR have demo reviews on their streams those are great to watch as well. Also old casts will help too :D

and the MGE archive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIxJCkSHqBU&playnext=1&list=PLD098F81F2CA74F00&feature=results_main Although some of the info on this is dated.

If you're super new, try and find an open player or a UGC plat player who would be willing to mentor you a bit, and talk things over.

Also pyyyour's stream VODs, or any of the mix^ players stream vods are really good to watch (along with the other streamers I already named).

Don't get a cali server - the furthest west that's acceptable is Denver in most peoples' cases, it's best to go with texas or chicago as everybody has already said.

Also have 1-2 back ups lined up, because a few weeks into everybody's first sixes experience several people are going to quit or flake out.

I'm sure if you added people via the UGC "all teams list", you could find teams willing to scrim.

2) Most of the time UGC tries to match East teams with East teams and West teams with West teams (barring playoffs), so I would honestly use the best server location for my own team. Beyond that, if the other team has an issue you can always use theirs, and if they are too cheap to rent their own server (which costs practically nothing) they can't complain about what is offered.

Also Texas servers fuckin' blow, don't get one. Chicago is usually best for everybody, but like I said if my team is West I would get a West server.

To my knowledge, the only other active competitive format is Highlander, which is quite frankly, way different from 6v6.

Again, given they're completely new, they aren't going to learn anything from getting rolled every 5 minutes against better teams because they don't understand how the game flows yet (maybe if they have a mentor, but even then it's hard for the mentor to pick specific points when they're being out-DM'd, outpaced, out-positioned, and ultimately outplayed). If they scrim against other Steel teams they'll have a much higher chance of picking up things because the rolls shouldn't be as huge.

i think its also important to point out that at the low levels of 6s a lot of wins usually come down to DM fights.

meaning there isnt going to be a lot of emphasis on teamwork but more on hitting shots. if you recognize that, then i would even say your first step is getting your DM up to par before really trying to employ strats outside of basic positioning.

the next part is having everyone on your team get their rollouts down on every map: your heal orders need to be correct, your demo needs to hit the right jumps, your scouts need to coordinate where they are going at mid, and your roamer can't get too far away from your medic. your pocket should just be equalizing, but needs to know when to start getting healed so that both of your soldiers have ~300 when getting to mid.

even with those fundamentals in place, you'll probably win most of your matches in steel just by getting to mid quickly and with good health, and then the DM to take the rest of the points easily.

marxist is super helpful, im sure if you guys start scrimming and give him a STV demo to review he can give you more feedback later on.

1. If you ever get a scrim request from someone called forgets, decline immediately.

.

added you if you're still looking for a scout

I don't understand why you'd want to scrim a low open level team, wouldn't they be miles ahead of you?

I also added you to try out as scout If by chance you still need one

Just advertise low low scrims in IRC, some nights you will get wrecked others you won't, but gaining experience even in beatdowns will help. If your team is mostly in Cali, get a server in Dallas, also when you purchase your server, make sure it has 14 slots at least if not 18 (so people can spec). Lastly, get a team mentor to spec a couple scrims a week. (I am assuming your team is not total comp noobs and do understand the concpets of 6s from pugs, mixes, lobbies)

1. regardless of what you see on #tf2scrim people just usually search by ESEA open rating which is kind of retarded since "rating" is just a mucked up version of how confident they are in their ability, not what they actually play. But if you want to find a scrim on your level just put in "UGC Steel team yours 6v6" in tf2scrim and wait for a response. of course scrims only go down later in the day at around primetime, and if saying UGC steel doesn't work, try low open since its like the same thing. Yours indicates whose server you want to play on (change to yours/ours later when you get one), and 6v6 indicates you aren't looking to play a highlander team.

2. always go central, it's not a preference thing, it's more of a team thing. While you might be based on the west coast, a lot of teams are based on the east coast and in most cases no one is willing to compromise more than 50% for a server. just go with dallas, i believe its a better ping than chicago though i might be wrong

3. look up "adam skyride mge tutorials" and look at how they play those maps, it's been years since they've been made but little has changed. Meta always revolves around medic as always, and you needing uber to push into things. if you smash mid, take 2nd fast and consider pushing last if your med has uber and their med died, otherwise use the idea of picking (killing someone on their team) to insure that when you engage a team you're in an advantage. if you don't know what to do, push off uber opportunities. its a good start.

yea, good point. if you don't have a team leader who knows what he's leading, get a team mentor (much easier to find than individual mentors).