From a Distance

When coming up to an engineer’s sentry gun, the distance can be your best friend. When out of the range of the sentry gun, whip out your pistol and take it out. If there is no engie repairing it, you can take it out rather quick. If there is an engineer on it, try to aim for him so that you can THEN take out the sentry. Other than that, keep your distance!

Rubbing Noses

Getting up close and personal with an engineer’s gear can be hazardous, but you can take it out if you are fast enough. The trick is to “pop out” of corners, blast the sentry with your scattergun, and run back behind the corner. Doing it right you will get your damage in while the sentry is turning around to shoot at you. When doing this though, stay away from any walls behind you. A level 3 sentry can get rockets off pretty fast, and if you are next to the wall they hit you will take damage.

The “Boink” Report

Getting a bat kill on anything other than a level 1 sentry without an uber is pretty impossible (or just really really really rare), but to do it you need to employ the “Pyro Spin”, which basically means just circle the sentry hitting it with your bat. Hopefully if you don’t go too fast you will keep the sentry spinning towards you but never ACTUALLY hitting you. Good luck though, I just keep to my scattergun on this one.

From a Distance

If the heavy has a medic on him, GET OUT. There is no good “tip” or method I use to take care of a heavy with a medic, especially from a distance. Sometimes if you are lucky you can pick the medic off with the pistol, but I wouldn’t count on it. If you find yourself pinned by a heavy, try to keep him spinning his gun up and spinning it down. When his gun is actually in the process of spinning up and spinning down the heavy is completely vulnerable. What I suggest is to pop out of a corner and blast him with your scattergun, this will cause him to spin his gun up to try and kill you. Hide around your corner again until you hear his gun spinning down. The second you hear it spinning down, pop out of the corner again and get a couple shot on him until he starts spinning up. Keep this up and he’ll either ditch the minigun or try to run away, that is when you swoop in for the bloody, bloody finish.

Rubbing Noses

Rubbing noses with a heavy is where you can really have some fun with the scout. First, if he has a medic, you have to off his healer. Once he is solo, your scattergun can do a surprising amount of damage up close to this big guy (especially since he is so big, you don’t have to try VERY hard to aim and hit). Once his medic is done, be sure to keep moving around the heavy while blasting him from all angles, but you need to sneak up on him. If  heavy sees a scout coming for him, he’ll spin up his death machine and waste you in no time. Once you begin attacking the heavy, make sure to stay ABOVE him. Most heavies have 2D tunnel vision, they hardly ever shoot above or below them. Often times when a heavy is assaulting I’ll actually hop and stay on top of his head, shooting down hot lead into his cranium.

The “Boink” Report

Getting a bat kill on a heavy is a badge of honor, but the only really good strategy for getting one is to hit a heavy when he is down. A great time to try and get a bat kill on a heavy is when his medic has just died and he is retreating back to try and link back up with him. The heavy is really slow and the scout is really fast: hunt him down and bat his ass! When you actually do catch up with him, again try to move around and keep him spinning.

From a Distance

From across the map the demoman doesn’t pose much of a threat. His biggest method to dispose of you is to try and launch sticked and detonate them in mid-air. If you are fast and nimble enough then you can avoid these no problem, but to get ridda that demoman you are probably better off (and much quicker) to rush up on him or try and plink him with your pistol.

Rubbing Noses

Up close with the demoman is where you will probably get the most work done. When up close with a demoman he will either 1. try to hit you directly with a grenade or 2. shoot a sticky at his feet in an attempt to blow you up first. When he is trying to hit with his grenade your best tactic is to bob and weave. This usually is done when “rocking the scout” regardless, but it’s especially important here. When a demoman shoots stickies at the ground in an attempt to kill you, just try and keep a little distance and hopefully he’ll blow himself up before you (all the while blasting your scattergun in his face, of course). The key to the demo’s feet sticky move is the assumption that you are following him (or attacking him at a VERY close enough proximity) and that you will be in the are of the sticky when it detonates, and being that he has more health than you he will prevail. Remember, don’t fall for his traps. If he is obviously trying to get you to follow him, run past him to get on his other side. If you don’t do exactly what he wants you to, you can create enough confustion to finish him off before he has a chance to recover.

The “Boink” Report

To get a bat kill on a demoman you only need to know that up close he has a major disadvantage. As I talked about above, donut’ go in the direction he wants you to. Circle around him and keep your approach angles random and you’ll be battin’ a thousand in no time.

From a Distance

From a distance is perhaps the best way for a scout to take out a pyro. At a distance the pyro’s flamethrower is useless, and the scouts scattergun has a definite advantage over the pyro’s shotty. The scout can also pull out his pistol and try to get some more accurate hits on the distanced pryo, if he so chooses. The key here is to STAY AT A DISTANCE. If that pyro can get close enough to whip out his flaming gun of burning (oh and you WILL burn) you are at a serious disadvantage.

Rubbing Noses

The thought of getting up close and personal with a pyro sounds pretty scary as a scout. When up close with his flame thrower, the pyro is almost always sure to win. The key to winning up close with a pyro is to play with the limited range of his primary weapon. Whe you get close, a good pyro will whip out his flame thrower, and as you get away, a good pyro will take out his shotgun and try to gun your down. The best way to take a pyro out is to play with his intuition. Get far enough away he’ll pull out his shotgun, then SHOOT back in close blasting with your scattergun. When you come in he’ll switch back to his flame thrower, so run in, get a good blast or two and run back out to get out of reach of his flame thrower. The key to this working is to play off the lag time between switching guns where he can’t fire either of them. If he does set you on fire, retreat and put it out immediately. The scouts burn like they are made of dry grass, so if you don’t put it out fast you are dead. This technique will probably only work once or twice, though, but hopefully it’ll be good enough to encourage your friendly pyro to try a different class. If he wises up to your tactics and remains a pyro, just keep the distance between you guys and try to take him out with your scattergun/pistol.

“Boink” Report

Getting a bat kill on a pyro is hard work, I won’t lie to you. But it can be done. The trick here is the element of surprise and praying you’ll get some crit hits. Again the rubbing noses “distance bob” technique can work, but instead of using your scattergun you can use your bad. Remember though, if things get hairy always, ALWAYS, keep moving. The pyro flame seems to be the most succeptable to lag, so use that to your advantage. Also double-jumping up to keep the pyro guessing will help you get a home run on him.

From a Distance

The trick when rushing up on a soldier as a scout is to keep moving (you’ll end up hearing that quite a bit in this article) and think carefully enough to dodge his rockets. From a distance the scout can run circles around a soldiers rockets. In this scenario you are probably best if you whip out your pistol and try and get solid hits against the soldier. While strafing and dodging you can pepper him with your shotgun, but he’d be foolish not to just retreat and find some health (and with as much damage as you are doing from a distance he’ll probably only need a little health bottle). If you want to execute a kill from a distance, your best option is to rush up on that soldier and get good solid hits with your scattergun.

Rubbing Noses

When you get up close and personal with that soldier, odds are he’ll shoot his rockets at the ground in front of him (because he’s much more able to withstand the splash damage), when he does this you will be popped up in the air flailing wildly. If you dont’ do anything that soldier will juggle you around until your dead. The best way to get out of this is to remember you have a double jump! When he pops you up in the air and is waiting for you to come down, use your double jump to get some quick strafe action and get some distance between you and the soldier, grab some health, and try and spring a trap on him.

“Boink” Report

To get a bat kill on a soldier can be pretty difficult. The only leg-ups you have are that:

• Soldiers usually damage themselves when trying to kill an enemy up close
• As a scout you are significantly faster than the solder

What does this mean? Get up close with the soldier, try and stay above his head (using your double jump). This MAY work. Honestly, the best way to get a bat kill on a soldier is to get the jump on him and hope for a crit. It can be done, but boy is it hard. The scouts advantage is that he is so quick he can take enemies by surprise and keep them guessing or (best case scenario) surprise them into screwing up big time.

Keep tuned right here, on Montana Fragfest.