So I've really been wanting to get some proper ideas down on some TF2 strategy for potential clan action and training, and I think granary is a good easy place to start because it is so symmetric. The things I'm gonna list down might be a bit jumbled at first because this is a rough draft of ideas from myself and DoityWottenBastid. I would really appreciate any other input and feedback people have, however should you start flaming it I will at the very least expect you to have read it all.

In summery the things I am going to talk about here are:
>The importance of time and speed for tactical control.
>The affect of visual threat as a deterrent and delay mechanism.
>The need to manage metal and create an efficient build order.

Definitions:
Now really the first thing we need to get sorted is a couple of definitions of various locations throughout the map, so we all know we're talking about the same point. I don't know if they have official names but I'm gonna name them and try and stick to a format, perhaps it will catch on and everyone on the server will know what I mean. At the moment I can't be bothered to use/find/capture images, but I take it we're all fairly familiar with the map:

CP: capture point. They are numbered 1-5 from spawn, and left and right are always specified as the charecter faces from friendly spawn to enemy spawn.

The Garage: The area/entrance at the side of the second capture point (cp2) that has a stairway to the upstairs balcony. It has a garage door facing cp3, a long vent to let you drop near cp3, and 2 exits to cp2 one downstairs at the side, and one leading to the upstairs balcony overlooking cp2.

The Z ramp: Couldn't think of a better name for it but as you head from cp2 to cp3, it is the right hand entrance. There is a room with a zigzag ramp that goes up to the balcony overlooking CP3.


Objectives:
So as someone pointed out in a previous/different thread, granary is mostly about who controls the middle point. As I see it there's really one general strategy employed in public servers: scouts and pyro's rush, fight it out with enemy scouts pyros, by this time the slower classes turn up, and the team that got the most kills will probably end up holding the point. In the situation where a team doesn't field any scouts, they will almost always be on the defensive, usually having lost the middle point from the get go. We were debating how to go about implementing a 'strategy' guide. The idea of making it specific to a premade team with specific classes and numbers was ruled out in favor of a set of general rules of thumb or objectives which we think should be of top priority to each class member.

Time is critical:
Another really important aspect of the game which is used by this strategy is the idea of delaying the other team, while maximizing the speed and efficiency of your team actions. Things like holding back the enemy for even a couple of seconds is vital in letting your team gain good tactical positions, and other things like making sure engineers maximize their metal production and have a good build order will greatly affect the game play.


Initial objective: cap the middle point

The overall objective for this strategy will be to ensure the slower members of the team have time to position themselves around the third point, while cutting off and distracting the reinforcements of the enemy. It will be once the slower members get there that the serious cap starts, until then scouts, pyros, and demos should work at distracting the enemy an covering the entrances.

Important Note: THiS first objective ONLY applies to the first few MINUTEs of granary. The whole issue of what classes are needed and the roles they play are completely dependent on the game situation and the beginning of play is the only situation in which everything is exactly the same. I will be writing up more situations, but as you can see they provide a lot of in depth analysis so I'm trying to take it piece by piece.

Scouts:
You're an excellent distraction. If instead of just going for the cap and fighting other scouts, you have one or two scouts rush PAST the 3rd point and go hassle the soldiers, heavies and medics in the midfield between cp2-3 (on the enemy side) you can delay them enough to get your heavies up on the point and also covering the entrances to CP3 from the enemy side. You don't even have to go for kills, just force them to spend time backtracking trying to shoot you. Generally if you have a quick and mobile scout, one should be enough to stay alive and keep them occupied, leaving the rest of the scouts to help the pyros deal with enemy scouts and pyros at cp3.

Pyros:
Basically going to be doing most of the foot work on cp3, burning enemy scouts and pyros, making sure they keep near the point to step on any enemy capping. Ideally I think it's more useful for the pyros to run round the sides then straight through the middle. Pyros being extremely vulnerable in open ground. Also by standing next to the enemy doors you provide a visual threat and flame wall which slows the enemy rush by a few seconds, unless they're suicidal.

Demomen:
As soon as a team get thier demomen covering the enemy entrances that team can practically guarantee keeping hold of the point. A single demoman can hold the right most enemy entrance (as you look at it from cp3 towards the enemy cp2 it is the doorway on the right - the opposite side to the enemy Z Ramp room). This is a great advantage, holding back a whole doorway with only expending one person on the team. A demoman and a pyro should also be able to hold the enemy Z ramp entrance by themselves too. So here we have a situation where 3 people are holding back the enemy reinforcements leaving the rest of the team to kills remaining enemies on the point, and proceed with capping.

Now the problem is the demoman speed, but it is possible to give the demoman boosts through grenade jumping which is really important. Straight out of spawn there is a big wide open field, where if the demoman uses a crouch-grenade jump (making sure to emphasis distance rather than height when jumping by blowing the nade once you've stepped past it rather than when you're right on top of it), you can cover a lot of ground very quickly. Similarly you can get another speed boost once your outside of CP2. Now this costs quite a bit of health, so it is important for the medics as they leave spawn to specifically target the demomen and give them a buff. You should be able to roughly keep up with the pyros using this technique.

Medics:
Chase after demomen as much as possible to allow them to boost forward quickly, but once you get close to cp3, hang back a bit to let the heavies and soldiers catch up for anti pyro-scout defence, the demoman being relatively poor protection class.

Soldiers:
Well soldiers do what they do best, gain hight, take damage, pose a threat, blow people up etc. Help take out the enemy pyros cause they're a big pain.

Heavy:
Basically run as fast as your fat legs will take you, take out the annoying pyros and scouts and act as a focus for the team to rally around.

Snipers:
meh...snipers, the most selfish class. not much i can say about them. However should you insist on being this class in the first few moments of the map, hang around with the engineers, providing long range defense, plus anti spy. Also backing up the demoman by covering the right hand side of CP3 and the enemy entrance to CP3 would probably help a lot.

Spys:
well you guys know what you wanna do, target enemy medics, and make sure sentries get taken down. It is however very important spies let the other team know whats behind the next corner. They are far better scouts than scouts could ever be, but most of the time I don't see spies giving the team intel.

Engineers:
Right so another important class. Especially in the event of a failed capture attempt. The role I see the engineer playing here, is contingency defense, and transportation. It's a long bloody map and we need to make sure the slow classes get up from pronto! In addition there is a lot of opportunities for enemy scouts to flank the team and go for a steal cap. Now I'm going to write this on the assumption a team has 2 engineers, cause I generally think thats a very good number to have.

So as most engineers know, first thing to dump out is a teleport entrance. Now at this point the choice is whether or not to go back and pick up more metal from supply. I think that really that shouldn't be the case, or if so only one engineer should go back. You lose precious seconds going back which mean a really big deal in the initial rush, and there is more metal to be had throughout the map. Now coordination is important here between the engineers. One engineer should be placing the backup sentry covering the entrances to CP2 in case the team get run over. This will be a level one sentry, and literally the engineer should just dump it covering cp2 and just move on up to help the other engineer set up his station. Now ideally the second, more forward engineer should be holding on to friendly Z ramp room. And we need a full up and running teleport, dispenser and sentry combo there. Now the sentry ISN'T needed there initially especially if the engineers can get some backup from a couple of team mates, but it is incredibly important to build the things quickly. Especially the teleporter exits since they take ages, but make a huge impact. AS such engineers should be hammering at these things with their wrenches to speed the build time. The next most important thing is the dispenser.

Engineers' build queue scenario:
Now for metal management. There's two safe metal spots on the way to cp3, with another out of the way in the garage, and another two extremely unsafe points around CP3. If we assume 2 engineers.

>Both have placed tele-entrances one goes back for more metal (we'll call him R for Rear, and the one carrying on running L for Lead), so the Lead engineer needs more metal, picks up the metal right next to cp2, and runs towards the Z ramp, and dumps a teleport exit around there [see fig 1 in the attachments]. The rear engineer with full metal, dumps a lvl1 sentry covering the entrances to CP2 [See fig 2], and runs to join the lead engineer, making a quick detour to pick up more metal in the corner spot which is past CP2 on the right (next to the freight containers [see fig 2]), just before you enter the covered entrance to the Z ramp.

>The rear engineer now with enough metal builds a dispenser next to the lead engineer. They both work to get the exit and dispenser up, and then go find additional metal to set up the other tele entrance and a sentry and get it up to level 3 asap.

Now by this point the battle has gone either way. You've either gotten the middle point, in which case the rear engineer can move his sentry up to cover CP3 preferably getting their sentry on one of the fright containers overlooking one of the enemy entrances, or you've lost cp3 in which case you're trying desperately to hold the middle ground between cp2 and cp3. It is also very important that both engineers put their Entrances right next to each other INSIDE the spawn building, and make sure they inform the other team which side they have put it on.

Any extra engineers should really be mindful about taking away metal from other engineers. Your first priority should be a dispencer because of the lack of metal around the map.


Right so some other aspects of this strategy.
As mentioned this really is only specific to the first few moments of the game, but I believe those moments are quite crucial. One thing I think is important is class selection at the very beginning of the game. I've mentioned at the top that I have not much to say about snipers, but that's not to say I think they're completely useless in the game. Far from it. The example I was given was that a sniper could be just as good at holding the right hand enemy entrance to cp3 as a demoman. He can stand far back, and see all the way through that doorway. We'll im sure he could, and I bet a good sniper might even be able to pick off more than 1 person as they came in through the door way. The problem is, a sniper isn't Scary. He doesn't provide a visual threat to make the enemy pause and say "hang on a second guys, i don't wanna just run straight in there, let's try thinking about this for a second" where as seeing the flame of a pyro, or the field of mines for a demo through the doorway, provides a proper visual threat: You probably will not survive if you run through this door. And like the rest of this post, it is this kind of meta-game, playing with people's heads and slowing them down just small amounts, that lets you get into superior tactical positions which mean that even if you do have an AMAzingly skilled opponent, you tweak the numbers so that you have the upper hand.

The other point is that it is extremely useful to start off as one class just for the beginning few minutes of the map to help your team get the upper hand, before changing to you favorite class, which might not be as effective at crowd control etc (basically if you want to go sniper, how about starting off as a demo/pyro/scout, and when you inevitably get killed switch to sniper).


Ok so thats about it, apologies for the length. If people find this kind of stuff interested/useful then I'll continue with more parts, specifically:
What to do once you've lost cp3, and what to do once you've won it.

Thanks for reading,

-Innocent.

Good post

I want to see more like this.

Do you have a suggestion of how a team should look like with 6 or 8 players?

Well I reckon no matter what team you have you'll probably always want a medic and an engineer, because they give such an enormous advantage. Demomen are masters of area denial, and I dont really rate a soldier on this map so much, so out of the two (which some might have comparable powers) i'd pick demoman. And then a scout and pyro for fast attack and threat. The last class (in a team of 6) would really depend on the team. A skilled spy,sniper would do wonders against another equally sized team, since the smaller the team the bigger the impact of a teammates' death. Also another scout is completely deadly because this map has tons of open spaces. It practically forces the other team to field a heavy on, and get everyone to stick around him, which makes him a great target for a spy. But I think those initial 5 classes should really be at the core of any team, each of their 'powers' being very unique.


Also I properly tested out using nade jumps to speed myself along granary and I (a demoman) was about 1-2 seconds behind the two scouts and waay in front of the pyro, which is pretty impressive. I got a heal straight out of spawn and used a crouch jump, and then out of CP2 i used a normal jump because a crouch jump would have damaged me too much and also taken me too far. Ended up with 120 health odd and managed to completely mine the right hand enemy entrance to cp3 before their soldier and heavy came through.