A Full Match: Viewer’s Guide

After the TF2 Classic competitive scene decided to go more structured this year, the fundamental questions of rules, win conditions and game formats were raised. Like, how would one play the asymmetric Territorial Domination (TD) maps that spawns teams at random points at round start, and how many players a team would be composed of if the non-class Civilian (VIP) was involved… Not only were these formulated, but also the required server plugins and configs were developed until April to make competitive TF2 Classic possible and viable.

The pick-up games organized regularly already provided testing grounds for most of CompTF2C’s ruleset and server tech, and constant improvement followed the initial release. However, a full scale test was still due, and that is what we present today: A Full Match. In a match that will be played in the 6v6+ format, simulating the so-called sit out mechanic (of the “plus” format) for the Civilian (VIP) players, all four unique game modes of TF2 Classic will be demonstrated competitively: VIP, VIPR (VIP Race), TD and DOM (Domination).

You will be able to enjoy this show match live in the STV server (140.238.103.207:27021) on August 30, Saturday at 20:00 UTC (22:00 CET or 16:00 EST). Read the guide below for what you will witness that night.

Rosters

Sailors silvan (C) bub f Jaws dekrzz Hooovy rainwyre		Dockworkers sage jr Güven Duckle Wag (C) ari Core2Duo
Mercs: low, Kebe, Dreysidel

The two teams, Sailors and Dockworkers, consisting of volunteers of the community, are going to be led by their main callers silvan and Wag, respectively. The game will take place on AltTab’s European competitive server, as EU makes up the majority of the rosters. Nevertheless, North and South Americas and Africa are also represented. The teams have similar numbers of non-EU players to make it as fair as possible in terms of latency disadvantage, and have balance ensured in accordance to the Discord PuG bot ratings. The 1st and 3rd place holders of PuG Ladder Spring 2025, f and bub, will be facing off against the experience of ari in the opposite team, the dedication of sage, and what tricks Core2Duo has up his sleeve this time in VIP/R maps. A program, created by Duckle for the purpose, is used to generate the line-ups satisfying the above-mentioned criteria and more.

Map-by-Map Viewer’s Guide

The match will start with the popular live TF2 6s map, koth_bagel, where the silvan jump was invented. It will be played standard 6v6, with a win condition of 3 rounds (mp_winlimit 3, or best-of-5) as per usual in live TF2. This will be the most standardized format to watch during the event.

The next map will be the flagship map of TF2 Classic’s full release (v2.0.0 in 2020): vip_harbor (Blackstone Harbor). The Civilian players of each team will join the server during the warm-up phase.
Team Sailors will start as BLU, and Team Dockworkers as RED.
BLU team’s Civilian, rainwyre, will be assigned as the (BLU) VIP by the SM server plugin as soon as he picks his class (without requiring a vote) while RED team’s Civilian, Core2Duo will be made to spectate his teammates, and will not respawn, by the same plugin. The player count is then effectively 7v6 in favor of BLU, which is Sailors in this case.
The first part A of the well-known stopwatch format ABBA(AB)* best-of-3 will be played like this. After the teams switch colors for part B, Core2Duo will start playing, and rainwyre will be the non-playing Civilian this time, making the player count 7v6 in favor of Dockworkers.
[*Team A is on the attack while Team B defends. Then the teams swap sides and repeat the same. The side with the most points captured on attack (of A/D CP, PL, or VIP), or the same number of points captured in a shorter time, scores a point. This concludes the first “AB”, and is followed by Team B attacking first, i.e. “BA”. If the score is 1-1 after ABBA, one last AB is played to decide the winner.]

Although the tournament mode stopwatch feature is not included in the current build of TF2 Classic, the plugin of CompTF2C will print the number of captured points and the time stamps in server chat.
Note that the server will not automatically assign a winner after a round of AB or BA.

The viewers are likely to see one of the Scouts on RED swapping to Engineer to defend the harbor.

td_sunnyside will be played 6v6 again, while the Civilian players stand still on the server, spectating their own teammates only (made possible with the plugin, as for the RED Civilian in vip_harbor). The audience will see BLU team starting the rounds at point C (IT), and RED at point A (barn), both rolling out to have a mid fight for the shed on point B (respawn logic fixed by the vscript modification of CompTF2C). In TD, a round is won either when a team captures all 3 points, or by the end of the round timer by the team controlling 2 of the 3 points.

Sailors will be the first team to play as BLU (with Dockworkers RED) for 15 minutes, in other words throughout the first half, with a win limit of 5 rounds. The config will be reset then, and teams will switch colors to play the second half with the same rules. After that, the scores of both halves will be summed up (manually), and the winner decided.

Once the mid point (B) is captured, all 3 points become available for capturing in TD, and are never locked. This gives way to frequent flank plays and back-capping danger/opportunity, and high anticipation required for both defence and offense. Controlling only one point means being on the back foot, but also means multiple back-capping opportunities while defending your “last”, and even instant win if the last push ends up badly for the attackers. Teams may either go for leaving their roamer soldier or an engineer behind, or constantly be on the run with their flanks, checking and coordinating.

vipr_drizzle will see a 7v7 with the return and full-time inclusion of the Civilians. With Sailors on BLU, and Dockworkers on RED, a maximum 30 minute showdown will take place with a win limit of 5 rounds. There will be no setup timer at round start (thanks to the Stripper plugin config of CompTF2C), making the teams have dry mid fights: No über, nothing to hold on to (as well as no time loss or redundant time if the map timer runs close to the setup timer). Something to look out to, as many learnt at this point, is that VIPR also allows for back-cap possibilities, all the way to the last point!

The last map will be dom_sawtooth (Sawtooth Mountain) with its gorgeous view. Similar to KOTH, played with a win limit of 3 (best-of-5). The teams will say farewell to their Civilian players, leaving the server to 12 players. With 3 “KOTH points” at the same time, the teams may be seen to stretch too thin with only 6 players at hand. But in the absence of a widely-accepted 2-point DOM map, and considering this is still highly experimental for the DOM game mode which could not make it to PuGs for a long time now, sawtooth is an acceptable choice. No specific server plugin or other technology is used for DOM, making it the only TF2C-unique mode without customization for competitive. Note that the comeback mechanic of DOM is enabled (set to map default with tf2c_domination_comeback -1).

The STV demo of the game is planned to be recorded and uploaded as a video. However, we recommend that you witness this night live. You have contributed to competitive TF2 Classic with your participation, persistence, ideas and efforts, which made it possible, and gave life to a community that is becoming a competitive scene of its own. It is not only a night to celebrate that, but also to evaluate all that was constructed coming together, and identify where it can be made better.

A Full Match
August 30, 2025, Saturday
20:00 UTC (22:00 CET or 16:00 EST)
STV: connect 140.238.103.207:27021

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