Team Composition and Game Mode Assumption

Our context throughout most of this book will be a team of 6 players consisting of 2 scouts, two soldiers, a demo, and a medic. Unless otherwise stated, we will assume that we are playing 5cp and all players on each team have equal DM potential.

The Core Objective of 6s

To win games in 6s you have to complete the objective. In 5cp you have to cap the last point of the other team. To figure out any strategy in sixes, you just have to focus on the objective and work backwards.

To determine the most important thing to have in sixes, we can focus on capping the last point of the enemy, which is the objective of the game. In the game, you can't capture a point unless the previous point is capped. This means that in order to cap the last point, you first have to cap their second point, and to cap the second point you first have to cap the mid point.

What It Takes to Capture Last

But supposing we somehow had magically captured the mid and their second point, then all we would have to do is cap the last point. In order to capture a point you have to stand on it, which means your character has to make contact with the point for a duration of time. If the enemy steps on the point, it blocks your capture.< /p>

Therefore, in order to win you need the ability to stand on the point without the other team being able to step on the point for a certain duration of time.

Resistance From the Enemy

If the enemy exists, and you're capping their last point, then they will want to stop you from doing that. One way is making it impossible for you to be capping—either by blocking it (which is only ever a temporary solution) or by killing you (which is a more permanent solution).

The enemy team would not be able to stop you if they can't get to the point before you finish capping. This tells us what the most important thing is in the game: having time where you are in control, i.e., a period of time in which you can act on what you want to do with a high probability of success.

Two Paths to Time Control

The two main ways of getting this time are by killing enemies or by having spatial control. We'll explain both with the example on last.

When you're trying to cap last, and you're standing on point as a soldier, a well-timed rocket on those rushing to the point gives you a small amount of in-time control because it puts space between the enemy and the point, which equates to time for you to do what you want. That's an example of spatial control which equates to in-control time.

Alternatively, if you kill all the enemies, then they don't exist on the map, and you will not be contested until they respawn.

Hiders and Positional Control

This is harder to pull off, but you can gain time control if you have a hider and the enemy team pushes up. In this situation the hider has time control because it's being derived from the spatial control—where the distance from the hider to all other players on the enemy team is enough such that any one of the players cannot come back and stop the player from hiding in that time frame.

Defining Time Control

Time control doesn't necessarily mean that you have a player advantage or uber or anything. Time control is just something that can allow you to win the game—as seen in the previous paragraph.

Time control matters most when pushing last, because simply capturing the last point wins you the game. This makes it the most important asset when pushing last. But it's not always the most important thing—we'll learn about this later.

Transitioning to Second Point

Importance of Second Point

We mentioned that you can't capture last unless you've captured their second. So it's also just as important to be able to cap their second as it is to cap their last, because we cannot have the latter without the former. So now we need a way to capture second.

Applying Time Control to Second

In order to capture second we need time control on the point. Time control is derived from kills or spatial control. For each player on the enemy team they exude some sort of spatial control. For a scout, imagine a sphere centered on the scout which is the area they control—if something comes into that area they would most likely kill it.

Soldiers and Demomen have a much different spatial control area. For soldiers, they are able to control players better when they are above other players and can shoot down on them, especially when the enemies are standing on flat ground.

Demomen have a control area defined by their sticky bombs and pipe ability. For each sticky we imagine the explosion radius of that sticky. They also have a much weaker close-range control area, which is similar to scout's range but the probability of control is much lower because they have to hit pipes, which is much harder. This leads into why demoman is so important, their spatial control isn't just a sphere around their current location.

The Role of Health and Positioning

When a player is dead, then their spatial control is completely gone—obviously. When a player is weak, they cannot act on their potential spatial control because they run the risk of losing all their control if they die. We'll get more into the health of the other team later.

Holding Mid vs Holding Second

Coming back to the second point, assuming that both teams have 100% uber, and we are holding mid while they are holding second, then what should happen next?

To figure this out, we can run through a couple situations in our head. One thing to understand is that defending is easier than attacking. So whoever attacks has a lower percentage of succeeding. This is because when defending, all you have to do is watch doors and wait for them to make their move. You have time to position yourself in ways that are hard to shoot at from those doors, and so you have a higher chance of winning that fight.

Incentives for Each Team

Therefore, if you're the team holding second, and if you were to lose the second point, then if you lose players, it's possible that the other team can move quickly and capture the last point with the momentum they gain. Therefore, the people holding second have much more to lose than those who are holding mid.

Thus, the team holding second has no reason to attack those holding mid. For those holding mid, they can take risks because it's almost guaranteed that even if they mess up they will lose at most one or two control points.

Strategic Patience and the Sac Play

So we've deduced that the defending team would be put at a disadvantage if they were to attack the players holding mid. So the most intelligent decision would be to just sit there and wait until the other team pushes. This is because they can fight on their own terms and don't have to put themselves at an even bigger disadvantage.

Since we're the ones on mid, then we can afford to take a risk and we don't expect anyone to push us. So if we do nothing, then it'll just be a huge stalemate. This brings us to the idea of sacrificing a player.

Sacrificing a Soldier in a Stalemate

When both teams have no advantage over each other besides the control point advantage, then as the ones holding mid we can try our hand at gaining an advantage at the cost of losing one player.

The player with the most potential is the soldier. That's because they have the ability to close the distance quickly using rocket jumps. Additionally, splash rockets are more reliable than demo’s main weapons—making soldier the best choice to do something in a stalemate.

When sacrificing a soldier, their goal should be to do something which causes their team to have an advantage. So they would like to trade their life for something that is worth more than theirs. Most of the time this equates to trying to force their medic.