tf2strategist

[tf2strategist]

Oh my god I’ll keep an eye out for fundraisers but my hometown is in flames.. they think it might all be gone.

#important #not tf2 #not headcanons

[tf2strategist]

^They're currently taking donations for Maui mutual aid

#important #not tf2 #not headcanons

[tf2strategist]

I must make the Kalteshulter.

The deadline is coming.

If there is any time to debut my work, it is now.

#… #tf2 #tf2 update #tf2 2023 #( I’m going to try. )

[tf2strategist]

Maaaybe I just interpret too much in this because I love Demo so much, but I really had the feeling that Demoman has taken care of Engie until he had build his level 3 sentry because you see him standing here with engie shooting bombs

and first leaves after Engie is done and gives him the sign to go

and I just really love that kind of teamwork

[tf2strategist]

Oh I am in LOVE with these headcanons! I found the mention of wondering how much of his personality at the base is an act as well an incredibly intriguing idea, and a fun one at that.

That, and the description near the end of him being “the friendly face on the other side of the street” or “the guy you run into at the grocery store that turns towards you and tells a bunch of jokes in a row and it’s so weirdly pathetic and charming at the same time you can’t help but laugh” puts him in such a familiar but different light that I had never really thought of him in, but that makes PERFECT sense to his character.

While in the comics he’s portrayed as a bit of an annoying loudmouth before getting a more genuine characterization near the end (or the issue before the end, anyway), the characterization you wrote sort of fits that more developed personality in the later comics alongside him in the games.

I just. Hgh. The idea of him being that good at manipulating people in his most comfortable environment (or is it even manipulating people? More-so himself) is SUPER cool and fitting to me, and also fits the autism headcanon where he’s just learned to mask incredibly well while remaining unfazed by deeper attempts to fit in with his peers since he’s just not interested in it—keeping him genuine and earnest, if that makes sense?

Having written that, it gave me the idea that maybe the longer he spends with the mercs as their unusual mercenary found family, the easier it becomes for him to manipulate on the field.

Thinking about how that’d translate, I imagine that he’s learned how to speak to enemy team members the same way he’s been spoken to for months or even years. He’ll ask questions with a more cutting tone towards the enemy Engineer using vocabulary he picked up from his own. He doesn’t always get it right, but more often than not he can waltz into enemy territory and as long as he’s not posing a threat during an active battle, he can end up making (tense) conversation with the opposite team.

Additionally, my initial idea was that the other mercenaries notice that he’s a little more careful in the enemy base, knowing better what turf is closest guarded, especially since he’s a predominantly flanking class.

Will reblog with more ideas about the above topic.

Scout has incredible street smarts! While it seems irrelevant in the base dropped in the middle of nowhere, he is invaluable during contract missions located within urban areas.

He can notice an undercover cop in a second, distinguish accents, recognize a scam happening, pinpoint a drug dealer who looks like a sweet old granny and see the signs of some group's terf markings. The team is looking for some local hotshot and they have no leads? Scout runs to the downtown and locates the first bodega/laundromat/bar/gas station/pizza parlor, blends in and befriends some entry-position-apprentice who gives him all the info he needs.

South Boston is the top school in the world for the street-smarts and Scout graduated it with honors.

yep! while scout has resigned himself to the position of “the stupid one” alongside a crowd of extremely talented, socially awkward PhD owners, once somebody finally has the idea that he seems good at talking and drags him along on a mission they figure out pretty quick that holy shit this kid is good at talking.

Engie’s usually the negotiator if they need one at all, mostly because he knows how to say please and thank you when it seems necessary, but he still has sort of a… distrustful aura around him. the accent’s disarming, sure, and does a great job pushing through a crowd of white middle-aged church moms, but it turns out there are a lot of parts where a moderately-wealthy-looking fourty-year-old white man with a little bit of a weird glint in his eyes ain’t really that welcome. so they might send scout in, since he really, really wants to go in and they’re all out of options (unless they want to send sniper, and he’d probably leave the building having bitten at least four people on reflex)—and when he comes back out he’s got everything they need to know, plus some free snacks, plus an invite to some teenage boy’s birthday party.

it turns out that little air of authenticity goes a long way—and the team watches him flip from polite upstanding church-boy cashier to poor sad orphan boy on the streets to egregiously annoying emotional armor-shredding “class clown” in what seems like seconds, and I guess it should occur to someone at some point that he’s spent his entire life figuring out how to blend in places like that and get what he wants.

(everybody would joke he got the ‘good actor’ gene from spy, if it didn’t just make them sad. also, a few people see him effortlessly skating his way person-to-person, molding his conversational targets like putty, and wonder exactly how much of an act he might be putting on back at the base, too.)

addendum: of all the characters he is able to axt in, “suave” or “ladykiller” or anything along those lines is not one of them. please don’t get me wrong. he’s the friendly face you see on the other end of the sidewalk, or the guy you run into at the grocery store that turns towards you and awkwardly tells a whole bunch of jokes in a row and it’s so weirdly pathetic and charming at the same time you can’t help but laugh, but he’s still terrible at romance, and as a matter of fact most things Involving charisma in general. he just takes advantage of that sad wet kitten energy, you know? it works out

#tf2 #headcanons #tf2 headcanons #tf2 scout #scout tf2

[tf2strategist]

Follow the bouncing flames

With the release of the Jungle Inferno update, Valve left many test attributes in the game code. Some of these were designed to make the Pyro’s flames reflect off of surfaces. A few years later, two very humble geniuses named Gamemaster and Gray found the attributes and implemented them in a plugin called Alternative Fortress, giving the Backburner the ability to bounce flames off walls.

For the record, I actually had nothing to do with this. It’s solely GM’s work, and he deserves full credit. (This does nothing to reduce my genius and/or humility.)

Anyway, this is what I’ll be talking about today: reflecting flames.

Keep reading

#Pyro trick shots… Dude #This would bring about a whole new category of Tf2 Youtubers/Footage #Think about it!!! #If you balanced it to work well enough #then boom. New form of skilled Pyros/possibly not a subclass but something similar? #Think spy trickstabs and demoknight tricks! #I think it’d have a lot of potential for raising or at least extending the Pyro skill set / skill ceiling if that’s the right word for it. #not headcanons #tf2

[tf2strategist]

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Note that your text should not have a lot of anti-aliasing, so using a paint brush to start isn't going to work well with this method. Just use the standard G-Pen if you're doing this by hand, or, just use the text tool and whichever font you prefer.

Once that's done, take your magic wand tool, and select all the black. Here are the magic wand settings I'm using to make the selections:

All selected?

Good.

Now, find a brush with a scattering/tone scraping effect. I use one like this.

You can theoretically use any colors you want for this next part, but I'd recommend pastels as they tend to blend better.

Either way, let's add some color to the text.

Once that's finished,

You're going to want to go to Layer Property, and Border Effect

You'll be given an option of choosing color and thickness. Choose black, and go for at least a 5 in thickness. Adjust per your own preferences.

Now create a layer beneath your sig layer, and merge the sig down onto the blank layer.

This effectively 'locks in' the border effect, which is exactly what we want.

Hooray, you've finished your watermark!

Now let's place that bad boy into your finished piece.

You'll get the best mileage out of a mark if you can place it over a spot that isn't black of white, since you'll get better blending options that way. My preference is for Overlay.

From here, I'll adjust the opacity to around 20-25, depending on the image.

If you don't have a spot to use overlay, however, there's a couple other options. For white, there's Linear Burn, which imho doesn't look as good, but it still works in a pinch.

And for lots of black, you have Linear Light

Either way, you're in business!

EDIT since this has escaped my usual circles, and folks aren't as familiar with my personal usage:

An example of one of my own finished pieces, with watermark, so you can see what I mean about 'relatively unobtrusive'-- I try to at least use them as framing devices, or let them work with the image somehow (or, at the very least, not actively against it).

I know it's a bummer for some people to "ruin" their work with watermarks, which is part of the reason I developed this mark in particular. Its disruption is about as minimal as I can make it while still letting it serve its intended purpose.

There's other methods, too, of course! But this is the one I use, and the one I can speak on. Hope it helps some of you!

#not headcanons #important

[tf2strategist]

Alright, I'm doing it.

Today at 3PM EST on this freshly made Discord server I'll be going through Heavy's voicelines, reading them with my thickest Russian accent, talking about Russian phonetics, and answering any questions you guys might have.

DON'T MISS IT! Here's the DIscord server link again! Join, chat, tell your friends! If a decent number of people shows up, I might make it a regular thing.

#tf2 #not headcanons #👀

[tf2strategist]

hiii im the artist who drew the autistic sniper art and i just wanted to say i love the tags you left!!!! ive never gotten a long string of tags like that on my art before so it was really awesome to see and fun to read 🫂 thank you 🫶

Bahaw hi!!! I’m so glad to hear it :D your art is awesome and I got super excited seeing it, haha.

As a friend on ao3 once said, peace and love on planet autism!!! >:DDD

I love when ppls art gets me going into a spiral of headcanons like that haha, I can’t help but write it down lmao—Next time I should probably keep it in the text and not the tags for the sake of readability though; I just didn’t realize I’d ramble for that long bahahah

But yeah!!! Everyone go check out this cool artist NOW or else <3

#not a headcanon #sniper tf2 #tf2 sniper

[tf2strategist]

Extra stuff in the tags. I’m normal about this image. Totally.

snipertism. sniper autism. :-)

#tf2 #team fortress 2 #important #not tagging this so everyone can see it #you have to look at this. with your eyes 💖 good headcanon because it’s not a headcanon it’s actually true <3 #*points at this man’s taunts* this man has autism. good for him #yippee!!! #anyways I think he’d pick up the lizard and it’d immediately like him and he’d pet it for a while before releasing it #he’d do the same with like. random wild birds. #I call Medic a Disney princess but if Medic is a Disney princess then this man is a Disney queen #he will always be able to do just that little bit more by taming literally everything in sight and still letting it remain wild. #kangaroo at night attacking him? #actually no it’s not he’s having a friendly handshake with it and giving it head rubs #rabbit being watched from afar? #uhhh no it’s not it’s in his lap and he has some healthy foods for it. #owls hawks and other birds chasing each other down? #no they’re not they’re all perching on his shoulders and he’s giving them food. they are existing peacefully now until they leave. #snakes beneath the camper? #oh no they’re supposed to be there. They like the shade and the sun reflected off of the sides of the car. #lizards in the base? #he’s the one who moves them to a safe place before someone inevitably freaks out. #I think Scout also gets to get in on this too seeing as he has chucklenuts and his redbird. #or cardinal? idk are those the same thing??? ;; #he’s not as good at getting animals to like him but he goes to Sniper sometimes for help if there’s something he genuinely can’t handle. #he’ll be like “Yo snipes I found this cool lizard on the window and he’s trapped but I can’t get him into my hands” and Sniper is like #“say no more.”

[tf2strategist]

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween Everybody!!! This is from the new Scream Fortress comic. You can read it at: teamfortress.com

[tf2strategist]

somebody's definitely made this joke already but i think scout in all his early 2000's whiteboy swag would definitely fucking smoke DDR. he'd be one of those freaks that are straight up just breakdancing on the arrows. breaking it down transgender style. you guys understand what im aiming at

#tf2 #so true about the beat saber part too. I can see it. #not my headcanons #tf2 headcanons

[tf2strategist]

I think the TF2 mercs take turns giving pep talk to the team before match, and they almost equally suck at it. Soldier is too patriotic, Engie - too strategic, Spy - too pretentious, that sort of thing.

The only person whose speeches the team actually loves is Demo. He makes no sense but he puts his entire soul and pussy into it. He says shit like "Lads... Today ya have'ta ask yerself... are ya a man? Or an imitation of man? D'ya go oot there with fire in yer eye and fight in yer soul, or d'ya yield like a sorry buncha loosers?! A' say today we take all th'bombs and rockets and shove them up the BLU's arses! Thus begins our thousand year reign of blood!" and everyone loses their goddamn mind.

#tf2 #tf2 demo #team fortress 2 #tf2 headcanons #this is so true!!!

[tf2strategist]

I headcanon that Demo fucking LOVES Halloween and it’s the only time he really pulls out all the stops and gets reeeeeally theatric. So lemme jot down a few hcs :]

He has a list of costume ideas he wants to do in the future

He puts a lotta time and effort into his costumes for sure

He really does love theatrics he just doesn’t get into it much and uses Halloween as an excuse (even though he doesn’t need one)

I think he uses magic because that fucking rules and the whole thing about him hating magic is staged because he just wants to be able to give a reason to hate Merasmus other than the fact that he was mean to Soldier

He uses magic to make his and everyone else’s costumes more realistic

I think he also used a little magic to put on a good show for the rest of the mercs once and scared them all half to death. Maybe even all the way to death for some of them

He is no longer allowed to do that

They tell the BEST scary stories and have the added real lore from their experiences with the paranormal

He helps everyone with their costumes whenever he can because he really does enjoy it a lot

He has been directly responsible for at least one of the Halloween events the team’s dealt with and is not really sorry because it’s really fun to him

[tf2strategist]

Dear goodness I hope I don’t come across as any of these. Same here that I won’t cancel your headcanons but I 100% agree.

For Sniper, I like to see it as he’s not the best with words, but he’s patient and while he may come across as nervous in a situation it’s out of surprise or out of being flustered. I don’t think he’s like that normally, since you can definitely see that he isn’t through his voice lines ingame.

He’s a professional after all!

Such in a shitty fucking mood today. Tell me about your LEAST favorite thing the TF2 fandom does. The worst widely accepted headcanon. Hatred rage violence. I'll probably bite someone.

#not sure what to tag this at this point

[tf2strategist]

another post about tf2 scammers

about a week ago i made a post about what types of tf2 specific scams are floating around steam, how to avoid them, and how to identify a scammer. a scammer literally just added me and to a newer player/steam user, their profile could come across as legit so i'd like to go through it and pick apart some of the red flags i look for when people like this add me on steam. hopefully it'll help some people lol idk

this is the profile of the person that added me. it seems normal enough at first, they have a decent steam level and their profile is personalized with artwork and a background. they've also written a bit about their hobbies and favorite tf2 maps in their description. initially, i thought this person knew me from tf2's steam forum and added me from there, but i did some snooping around just to be safe.

here is their full description. i know this might seem pretty normal, but for me personally descriptions like this are a red flag in my mind. the first part would be fine if they had any workshop submissions or had posted their work anywhere, but they haven't so it looks more like they just added some random hobbies specific to tf2 to make them look more legit. i've also never seen anybody list their favorite maps on their profile and in combination with everything else it just seems like they're trying to come across as more knowledgeable about the game than they actually are. this isn't enough to get me to block or report somebody immediately, but it does make me raise an eyebrow at least.

next, i scroll down and i see what games they play/own. 7k hours in tf2 is mighty impressive, but there's another red flag here: these are the only games this person owns and has played, and they're both free to play. for someone who has been on steam since 2015 at the very least, you'd think they'd play more than just tf2 and csgo.

another red flag is their friends list: there's only 8 people here. again, if they've been playing tf2 since 2015 as they claim, it means they'd have been on steam since then as well and most people would have a lot of people added in that time. (i've been on steam since 2014 and have 342 people added.) i know some people only like to add close friends or people they trust, but if this person added me out of nowhere and i've never spoken to them prior.

with all this in mind their profile is extremely suspicious, so at this point i've got a good hunch that they're a scammer. let's dig a bit deeper.

private inventories are another red flag as i mentioned in my previous post about scams. you can see the trade history of some items using websites like backpack.tf, and because of this a lot of scammers will keep their inventories private to prevent people from seeing if their items were stolen from someone else. it also prevents you from seeing what they have if they're chatting to you about trading.

this is an absolute dead giveaway. despite having 7k hours in tf2, they have absolutely no playtime on any of the classes. not only that, but every single one of their achievements were unlocked on the exact same day at the exact same time, which is impossible to do unless you're using an external program. it seems like this person used the program to unlock some achievements, then idled on the menu to inflate their hours on their profile. this is also why a lot of scammers won't have their stats visible; it's to prevent you from seeing if they actually play the game or not.

so yeah after seeing all this, i was 100% sure this was a scammer. here's them proving me right by doing the "we need you to play on/vote for our team there's money involved and we'll give you items" scam.

when i'm talking to a scammer i like to pretend to be engaged in order to keep them engaged as well and waste their time a bit, and because of this there's another red flag to add to the heaps of them this guy already has: why would you add a heavy/sniper main and ask them to play soldier or scout, especially when soldier is their least played class? surely someone who is looking for teammates for a tournament where money is involved would also check the stats of the people they're supposed to be playing with.

i sent them a couple more messages and they unfriended me shortly after. i've since blocked + reported them for scamming/phishing.

[tf2strategist]

I’m not one to try and spread negativity, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s the constant drawing of (canon) Demo, Soldier, Heavy, and Medic as stick-thin.

I struggled to draw their body types at first, but getting into tf2 actually helped my art style a LOT as I was forced to branch out of what I was used to drawing.

I just wish more people would do the same.

Such in a shitty fucking mood today. Tell me about your LEAST favorite thing the TF2 fandom does. The worst widely accepted headcanon. Hatred rage violence. I'll probably bite someone.

#tf2 #not a headcanon #team fortress 2