Decided I'd spread this through a few forums, since I'm pretty happy with how this guide turned out (and whenever I ring on blands, it seems that retaking spire is a total crapshoot with random and useless comms about who's staying on last). Here's the post:

On one of my youtube videos, I was asked the following:

“Hey Sigma, who do you like to leave at last after a successful last defense and enemy scouts are still around?”

I started typing my answer as a comment, but it soon got bloated and started including every possible last push situation, so I decided to take the whole thing and post it here instead. There might be a few holes in it or there might be some better way to push it, but this is the best way I’ve come up with. Enjoy?

Retaking the spire from badlands last is an intersting push. There are a lot of varying situations where you can successfully retake, but you need to cover the right doors at the right times or you just get screwed. The following describes the push methods that I have used in the past and have found to give the best chance of recapturing spire while also landing periodic checks on the doors to minimize your chances of being backcapped.

Note that if the enemy scouts were just an early death on the push and they’re alive now because they’re respawns, you should realize this in game and then you can basically ignore the following — you just need to send a soldier past dropdown and you can’t be backcapped. Another notable exception to the following is if there was a death before the push, or a very early death during the push (particularly on the roaming soldier), and the fight was drawn out for 20s or so, you need to leave a soldier to stop the potential spy backcap, in which case you can ignore all the rest of this stuff about covering doors and just beeline spire with everyone else.

So, if you have 5-6 players still alive, you leave no-one on last. Send the combo+demo by dropdown, checking the box and lamp hiding spots, and either out dropdown or off of bats and push up to corner to deny a re-push. The roamer should go out bottom left, checking the signs, then checking the hiding spot in trash and coming out bottom mid behind the combo. One scout should go through bottom mid, up to cliff in front of the combo and over to spire. The other scout should move through top mid or bottom left to left bats, then directly to spire. You can drop any one player from that and you’re still covering everything (the bottom left scout just needs to check the hiding spot in trash if it’s the roamer who’s dead, and will need the pocket to jump over to help him if there’s something there). This push is the best way to get your spire back off an advantage when you have 5+ players, regardless of if it’s 6v5, 5v4, or 6v1 — only change is if there’s going to be an uber fight on grey, have bottom mid scout check lobby but then go to spire from bats.

If you only have 2 players alive, you can’t push it unless they’re wiped, so I won’t go into detail there.

If you only have 3-4 players alive, you can’t really cover everything and you need to leave someone. The assumed state of the enemy team here is that they have only 1-2 players alive, including at least one scout who had time to hide. If their players are fresh spawns or their positions are known, just beeline spire with everyone and send an explosive class by dropdown. If they have 3+ players alive, at least 2 of which were not fresh spawns, you can’t push in this way *unless* you have your medic up and they don’t, in which case the appropriate pushing technique is to leave your scouts on last while your combo moves towards dropdown, then do the same push as you would with 5-6 players once you have your spawns, using your health and uber advantage to seal the deal. So, for the 3-4 vs 1-2 situations, the clearest way to describe it is by examining what each class does individually (some overlap here). Note: if a scout moving up used bottom left and you have a soldier spawning in <5s, you can move everyone off last and have the soldier watch it:

Scout:
If your team is scout/scout/medic, take a buff, and have one scout check bottom left + lobby, the other scout goes bottom mid + checks dropdown, then both beeline spire*
In all other situations, take a buff if the medic is up, then beeline spire.

Soldier:
If your medic is down:
If you are the only soldier OR you are the pocket soldier, stay on last
If you are the roaming soldier AND the other soldier is still up, move out bottom left and go to spire
If your medic is up:
If you are the only soldier up OR you are the roaming soldier, stay on last
If you are the pocket soldier AND your roamer is up, move up with your medic past dropdown while your roamer stays on last

Demo:
If a soldier is up, move to spire while the soldier stays on last
If no soldiers are up, stay on last

Medic:
Buff any surviving scouts so they can rush spire.
If you have more than one explosive class up, move up with the demo or pocket while the roamer or pocket stays on last.
If you only have one explosive class up, stay with them on last.

What this set of logic accomplishes is a fragmented version of the 5+man retake, which lets you shift easily into a full team push once you have enough spawns. Once players spawn, they fit into the same role as they would normally in this push with one notable exception: if you're the roamer and you stayed on last, no-one ever checked bottom left, so you must stay until the cap is done or the positions of the surviving members have been called**.

Everything else works out nicely — if the roamer stayed last, then there's no worries, and if he didn't, he cleared the hiding spots on bottom left, so as long as everyone else checks dropdown, you can't get backcapped. By the time you get your spawns, it's very likely that you know the positions of the enemy or have spire close to capped, so you can get your team to yard fast. The major benefit of pushing like this is that you get very quick cap time with your scouts (critical), and you get your demo to yard as fast as possible to deny the corner. Note that this push WILL FAIL if the other team has 4+ up before your demo at least makes it to bats (you get this situation if they had a bunch of deaths at the start of their failed push, then you took a couple at the end). If you hit this case, just have your scouts abandon spire before they cap and return to a last hold (or forward hold) — even if they cap it, they will die, and you will lose the round as a result.

Note: the absolutely critical communciations you need to pull this off are:
#1: call the position of any surviving enemies once you see them. You can often account for everyone, which frees up your players at last and lets you have a stronger retake of yard
#2: if you are the roamer, call whether you're moving bottom left or covering last (esp. if you're still spawning). Everyone else's activity can be determined purely from this call
#3: if you are the main caller, call the exact push situation on at the beginning (whether there are potential hiders, whether there is a spy), and call for the abandon if the spawns don't work out for you.

*this case leaves your medic alone on last, but that's okay. Because you specifically checked the close hiding spots, your medic will be safe until an explosive class spawns (unless you have like crazy 20s spawns on your explosive classes, in which case you should not do this push).

**You might say "but Sigma, if I just check bottom left now, it will work out, won't it?". It won't work. The reason is that a hider could come from there at any time depending on whether he was using a sign, trash, or what have you. Any spawning backcap will use dropdown or maybe bottom mid to get in, so if you leave last empty late in this push to check bottom left, you'll stop a backcap from there but you're open to the spawned backcap from dropdown. The reason everyone else but the roamer can move up freely is because they're all checking dropdown since bottom left is already clear.

Thank you Sigma, I love you.

Sigma, you have my vote for sexiest competitive videogamer alive... and there are people like Huk out there :D

in all seriousness, great guide, this is a question I often have a great deal of difficulty answering to my mentees as many of them are still stuck on "demo at last" mentalities and it can be really hard for them to know how and when to execute the push.

My question is: if the enemy medic got out of the last fight alive, is it worth it to send a scout to chase the kill or should he head straight for spire. This is assuming a situation where the medic got out early and is already at dropdown or so, falling back into valley.

My question is: if the enemy medic got out of the last fight alive, is it worth it to send a scout to chase the kill or should he head straight for spire. This is assuming a situation where the medic got out early and is already at dropdown or so, falling back into valley.

I wouldn't bother chasing him in that situation. If he's still close or your scout is already in range to 2-3 shot by the time he's out of dropdown, then go for it. If he has a lead on you like you described, chances are you'll chase him to mid, do 70-100 damage, then get dunked on by a soldier jumping out of spawn. Better to have the cap time on spire.

Thanks for the read sigma, good stuff there.

God I miss playing roamer or demo. Literally would always just tell my team to go and would hold last by myself. It is so hard to push out of last because the timing is so so critical.

Sigma is dead on about the respawns and covers bottom left top right, et cetera.

why do you need two scouts to cap the spire? i usually send one batts to cap spire while the other holds forward spawn. what's your take on this?

oh and added this to the mentor guides section

why do you need two scouts to cap the spire? i usually send one batts to cap spire while the other holds forward spawn. what's your take on this?

There's a few reasons I like to put both scouts on spire:

Getting the cap as fast as possible is really important, because no matter how thorough you are with checking doors, the longer you're off last, the more likely it is you get backcapped or they simply get so many spawns in yard that you lose.

If you have a constant 2-4x from the time your combo passes dropdown, even if a scout comes in dropdown after they're gone, you'll cap spire before that scout makes it to last, so you don't need it constantly watched.

It's feasible for the enemy demo to spam or a soldier to jump and knock a single scout off spire before your combo locks them out of yard, but if you have two, at least one can avoid the sticky damage and jumping a soldier into 2 scouts is suicide.

In case something goes wrong -- you eat some sticks, there's a scout hiding on spire, etc. that causes you to lose a scout, you still actually get the cap (putting a soldier up there is a huge health sink).

If you were to put a scout at forward, he can see stuff there, sure -- but if someone actually comes, it's just a straight up 1v1 or potential 1v2, which I prefer not to rely on. Half of the goal of this push is to only cause a 1v1 if it's your buffed scout vs theirs (in the scout/scout/medic version) or if it's your roamer fighting a scout in bottom left (massively favoured for the soldier).

God I miss playing roamer or demo. Literally would always just tell my team to go and would hold last by myself. It is so hard to push out of last because the timing is so so critical.

Yeah... when ringing on roamer I'll often make the call that I'm covering last then just push anyways if I know their spawns can't get in fast enough. Anything to avoid the terrible "combo + demo watch last while scouts and roamer suicide out" play that seems to be the default XD

Very good read Sigma.

Have you considered doing similar guides for other common situations that teams have trouble with (ex pushing Granary mid-yard through the stalemate, retaking point on viaduct)? Would comprehensive guides like that be possible, or just too bluky to manage?

Have you considered doing similar guides for other common situations that teams have trouble with (ex pushing Granary mid-yard through the stalemate, retaking point on viaduct)? Would comprehensive guides like that be possible, or just too bluky to manage?

I don't really plan to go through every point and do this. I might as well start writing a book on how to play TF2 at that point, and I don't really have the time for it. I might make some similar posts in the future, but probably not on a regular basis.

Take their spawns into consideration of course but not having anyone watching dropdown is a bit suicidal. sending a scout and scout or roamer to spire, combo demo through stone bridge to choke and keeping a scou or /soldier on dropdown is more safe. if a scout gets through dropdown and goes for last its very possible the whole enemy team will suicide on 2nd just to buy him time to cap last - sending a soldier v scout scout or scout soldier is suicidal and pointless, but sending 2 soldiers and a demo will definitely stop the cap for some time. it doesn't matter if they all die if last is capped =p

Take their spawns into consideration of course but not having anyone watching dropdown is a bit suicidal.

Not really. When pushing with 4 or less players, you're blocking last for some or all of this push, and everyone who moves off of last is checking dropdown as they go, so there's no risk. When pushing with 5-6 players, this is how the timing works out, even if a scout comes in at the worst possible time:

T=0: the push is called, scouts start moving to spire
T=10-12: Spire starts to cap (11s on 2x, 7s on 4x). The combo is now at dropdown.
T=15: The spire is ~3-7s from capping, and the combo is now at grey and dropdown is open. An enemy scout comes out of house, rushing last (will take 10s to get there and 1.5s to cap, so you lose at T=26). The enemy combo jumps in to block the cap.
T=16-26: It will take 2-3s for someone to actually get on the spire during this fight, so you have 8 seconds to put at worst 5 seconds of cap time on spire in a 6v3 situation. If you lose 2-3 players to their suicide, then yeah, you're screwed, but for the most part I think that's a safe bet.

Now, of course this won't work if your scouts aren't on spire immediately. The only thing that would stop them, however, would be 3-4 enemy players already in yard at T=10, in which case you could lose if you also have the enemy scout come in at the perfect timing. However, that requires the enemy team to have those players spawned and in position. This doesn't happen unless they backed out of their push without losing the medic, demo, at least one scout, and one other player. This is a pretty specific situation already, but if this is the case, you have the advantage of already knowing where all their players are, because you just saw them push.



All that said, it is worth noting that for this situation to work out, you have to be fast getting out of your last -- ie, killing the last guy in the room as you're walking forward to spire. If you're killing the last guy with your combo behind the point and then milling around for 3s trying to figure out if it's a good idea to push, you'll fail this for sure. What I think it comes down to is the concept of a committed vs. a tentative push. As soon as you pop uber on your last defense, you should already know if your exchange is good and if you'll turn this into a push. At that point, 15s before the fight at last is even resolved, you can already call that you're pushing spire and have some forward motion, but not fully committing to sending your combo out dropdown until you have more information. If their only deaths on the push are scouts, then the rest of them get out alive, and their scouts are spawned by the time you're at dropdown and you have no cap progress, then you don't commit to spire.

I have a man crush on you sigma....might be bigger than the one I have for caidh.

On a serious note every single player that is looking to call for their team should read everything sigma writes about pushes/anything really. I remember reading his push guide (I think it was from a year ago, but it still applies) and it really helped me out from a low/mid perspective.

You own sigma.

I might as well start writing a book on how to play TF2 at that point
I'd buy it.