Hey all,

 

Well its that time again, lets get right into it, the most elusive of the classes and in my opinion the most rewarding, the Spy. As a spy your job is to advance ahead of the frontlines and disrupt your enemies secondary and fall back defenses. This means taking out vital key defenses like turrets or pesky snipers, all while behind enemy lines dodging and tricking enemy players.

 

You have the most lethal melee attack in the game, you can disappear from site at a whim and hide amongst enemy players. This all may sound like your class is godlike, but it has its downfalls and lots of them, it takes a knowledgeable and smart player to be a good spy, you must always have your wits about you.

 

Your Primary targets are stationary or close to stationary targets, as i stated above those are mostly snipers, engineers and their toys. Every once in awhile you can pick off a lone foolish heavy or the like, but for the most part they will be in spawn waves if they are smart. As a spy you have two options in taking out targets, cloaking your way there which renders you all but invisible. Time this method so that you can be in cover when your cloak wears out. This helps to integrate yourself into enemy lines as any teammate running towards their own spawn is usually *tested* by being shot at in order to make sure they are not a spy. If you can accomplish moving in behind enemy lines with cloak you look slightly less obvious as a disguised enemy.

 

The other method is, running in as a disguised enemy. Depending on the map and the situation this can be done easily but make sure to choose your methods carefully. Once behind enemy lines pick your targets...a big mistake new players make is they are too eager. you have a lot of time, pick your targets so that you can make a clean getaway afterwords. Remember, if you are disguised you take on the name of a enemy teammate...so if a enemy sees a character running around with their name...well you do the math. Because of this I prefer the cloak method, Skulking around as a disguised enemy as little as possible.

 

So your first target is enemy engineer equipment, which may prove difficult if the engineer is very close by, remember to always ALWAYS sap the enemy turret before attacking the engineer. sapping the turret disables it allowing you time to kill the engineer...reverse the order and as soon as you attack the enemy engineer the turret will take you out. Also be aware that your pistol does very little damage, so only take out the engineer if you see a very good opportunity or if you can backstab him and kill em in one hit.

 

Your top enemies are by far pyros, a smart enemy pyro will *test* just about every player they see so if you see one anywhere near you go cloaked or avoid them...but avoid them inconspicuously. Which brings me to my final point. Almost all new spy players get a quick hold on how to cloak and backstab...but they do not think about what they look like when doing it. As a spy you will die far less often if you act like you are on the enemies side. Avoid teammates gunfire, use cover and point towards the frontlines. Do not sit directly behind targets as this is a big red flag for enemy players. Make yourself look like a convincing teammate and you will find yourself living much longer.

 

The spy is one of those classes you could write about for pages and pages, but I aim to keep this shorter then pages and pages. What I wrote should be a good starting point for any new spy or a good reminder for some veteran players. As always I hope you enjoy this article, I will be writing up another part on the team fortress 2 walkthrough soon.

 

Cheers,

 

Z