when I was first starting out as a main caller I was convinced that mids involving extremely quick double soldier bombs were theoretically the best, and called them almost every time

the problem is, while one tactic might be best in theory, executing it 100% perfectly every time is not possible, and therefore you need at least 2-3 mids you're really comfortable with on most maps so that the other team doesn't know exactly what you're going to do

I do still believe that, if everyone does their job perfectly and the timing is flawless, double soldier aggression mids are still the ideal, but that's not the best standard to use

You should probably try to have at least 2 different kinds of mids. If one of those mids is so disasterous that you loose with it every time, you could stick to doing the same 1 mid in the OFFICIAL, not the scrim.

Scrim is practice
Official is what you practice for

Also try having a map talk to make sure everyone's on the same page on other kinds of mids

If he always plays to win why is he adamant about going in to mids exactly the same every time?

Literally any decent team will read your mid after the 2nd time you do it and fucking wallop you for being terrible strategists. Tell your pocket to step up, because he might be doing alright at calling now, but if he fails to learn anything and teach you guys anything new, he won't be alright, he'll be shit.

Turns out he was actually just making excuses for himself because he didn't want to say "that strat sounds too shit to be worth practicing" to the face of the more experienced players. Which was sort of fair enough because we got him to try it and turns out he misunderstood what a garage mid was and had the combo do the wrong thing. Once that was corrected things went smoothly, even if only because completely out-dm'd them, but sounds like he'll be more open to try things in future.

There are different ways to practice, some being more effective for others; it kind of depends on how much time you have to practice, the certain players you have, and many more things. Practicing the same mid for an entire half to see what you can improve on or slightly change until you feel it's solid is a pretty effective way of practicing. After that, you would practice another mid for an entire half, for example. Another way of practicing is actually practicing to win, whether it's doing the same thing or changing up your mids. There's merely no way if you're practicing to win, though, you'll want to do the same mid the entire night if you're playing a team your level.

There are 2 mid strats: go forward or wait for them to go forward

You should be able to do both on every map

I agree with corsa in that there are definitely different ways to practice and it kind of depends on your team and the team you're scrimming against as to which is 'best'. If, for example, you scrim one team a lot and learn that they like to play super aggressive, you may find that your passive mid is a good counter to them. If they keep bombing in aggressively and you are able to clean them up effectively, then it could be argued that you shouldn't change anything. After all, it is still good practice and will make you better at executing the passive middle in the future. However, you definitely don't want to entirely rely on that one strategy especially given the fact that most of the time you don't scrim the team you play in an official match on a given week (at least in NA usually), because for all you know it could completely back fire in the match and cause you to lose middle.

No matter what you do in scrims though what ultimately matters most is you are flexible when it comes to match settings and are able to adapt to what the other team is doing. You can play with this in mind during scrims or just dedicate one scrim to practicing a given middle, regardless of what the other team is doing. Even if going your side seem to be working on gullywash in scrims, it's probably useful to switch it up and practice going big door/their side just so that in the match it's not your very first time doing it.

If you are losing mid and keep doing the same mid multiple times in a row without changing anything, and expect different results you're an idiot. (shoutout to bullet for rolling out choke every mid on gullywash vs strolling astronomers and expecting not to get locked out by yuice & friends who went our side every mid, weapons grade autism right there)

Bear you have no idea what autism is.

yes I do have you ever watched my stream

Yeah, anyone who can survive a season with neon has my respect and admiration.

if it works continue doing the same mid, when it fails change it.
mids should always be played to the strengths of the team.

Those people may or not be autistic I have no idea. But if going the same side on mid despite getting fucked for it several times over is what constitutes autism in your mind then you don't actually know what autism is.

Is it even possible to start a thread on tf.tv these days without like a 30% chance of it being derailed by ex-teammates re-opening old wounds at each other?

jojo and bear never played on a team together afaik

Honestly, running the same mid over and over again. over a long period of time, much longer than most teams tend to scrim a particular map (longer than 1 week) is a great idea - especially during the off-season. The reason being that you *should* be developing a system for dealing with any/all counters and reactions of your opponent.

For example I'll take mustard's example of running super-aggro double solly bomb strats on a particular map.

You *should* be attempting to learn how to direct the two soldiers - establish a system that relies on a minimum of communication to get your soldiers where they're going. The rest of the team needs to know what to do, generally, without communication, after that point.

So, you get countered. Figure out why/what caused your mid to fail, attempt to figure out a way to adjust it.

Ideally, you should eventually have a solid go-to mid strat, and a system for recognizing *most* or all possible counters and possible-strats that another team could present, and then it's all just a matter of hitting shots or not.

Then have 1-2 other mids that you don't work on as much to throw in as desperation moves if you end up meeting a team that does something that your system doesn't account for, while you use a strategic pause or between-rounds/stalemates to discuss a way to fix your mids.