Ah, yes - most successful pushes indeed start by sending 6 players running through the same door that can easily be trapped or spammed by rockets. It seems that for about 8 years invite teams just didn't think about running through the same door into a wall of spam.

Middle to second is by far the hardest stalemate to break, unless you have uber advantage, which makes it irrelevant, because every choke is easily breakable when you're invulnerable and they aren't. There are "multiple options" to break the stalemate in that there are 2, which is more than 1. You can either rush a scout and maybe one other player into left yard and hope they roll the dice well enough to not take significant damage while they rush through the door blindly (there's no safe angle to spot for information), or you can send a roamer bombing in from right and hope that he forces or gets a pick. It's also pretty much the only map in the rotation that devolves into two entirely separate stalemates within the same segment of the map. You have a yard stalemate, and a house stalemate, both of which you have to break just to cap the second point.

The map isn't liked because it generally isn't fun. It's discussed very often how stalemates kill a lot of the hype in this game, and there's no map in the game that creates a more boring, linear stalemate than granary. You objectively have less options to use to push and there's effectively no flank, such that any engagement you take will generally be right in front of the entire team.

I mean sure clock, you can't do it *every* time, but it's an option that's on the table that's not usually there on *most* other maps. You can't just flood in on some spot on process or badlands and hope for the best with any real expectation of success when the other team is doing some normal hold. It's at least an option on gran.

I've always had relatively decent success with waiting for teams to put players in the far side of left yard and then just doing a yucky solo uber on them because they're spread so thinly by that point that the fact that the aggressor has to pop first is usually negated by the fact that you're able to put a lot more bodies on them than is expected - because they've allowed the width of Gran yard to screw them over - you can sometimes get a pretty similar effect if, typically, flank players on snakewater push way up into pantry/grundle whatever people call that area now and the combo just solos out of saw.

I really don't consider that an option when we're talking about an actual stalemate where a demoman has put up stickies and is not afk to detonate those stickies. It's also way easier to 6-man rush through badlands choke, or snakewater lower, or process choke, or pretty much any other choke in the game, because those chokes aren't made worse by ceilings, and soldiers can jump above incoming spam, letting classes that get by on foot prioritize the healing.

I also really don't know what you're saying in this second paragraph. Are you saying you uber into the left onto the flank classes? Is it a solo uber or are you overwhelming them with players? Seems to conflict. Most of the time you ever catch people off guard in yard, it's due to an overextension. Sure, that's a viable strategy, but few times will it happen between good teams. And if you do actually take control of the yard, it's essentially given away, as defenders hit S and survive, knowing there's another stupidly claustrophobic choke if they sit inside of the house. I don't know what pantry or grundle is so I'm not going to address it. But while we're on the topic of snakewater, it's another map where you can actually push the second point via smart rotations; you can take engagements as a flank player to draw attention and let your combo push out another exit, because these exits are actually disconnected from one another, and even on different planes, allowing these engagements to be taken in isolation from one another. Defenders have to choose which choke they want to prioritize, not sit AFK in front of every choke and spam their weapons as they do on granary.

Nah - I mean to take the uber right so that you can force their uber and then pull back to the rest of your team with the possibility of isolating one section of the other team (either left or right). It's scary, but even if it goes poorly mid, falling back into mid and drawing out the fight to take advantage of your respawns is a totally viable option as long as your solo isn't completely wrecked. It works especially well if the team really likes to forward hold on garage (it's pretty popular now to have one's pocket stand basically *in* garage in some cases).

The "yard" fight which is a non-point only exists on granary now - although several older maps did have the yard mechanic at one time.

The lower-non-kitchen area of snake mid/second has had so many name changes I have no idea what people call it now. But I'm completely in agreement with you here - Snake and Badlands mid/2 do allow a lot of neat rotation play in stalemates - even gully will let you do it sometimes if teams really like to get super close to a given doorway.