Find your way onto a team (by starting or joining one) and start scrimming immediately. When you aren't scrimming, play the game by doing lobbies, in-house pugs, dm servers, RJ maps, pubs and just overall practice on what you think you could do better at.

I did this from the get-go and the long run has really paid off for me.

Started with immediately forming a team as a medic with a few semi-experienced chaps and went on from there. Learned so much through my teammates and I couldn't ask for more than playing with some really awesome peeps. Did a few pugs and enjoyed it but I do digress on how tf2mix sorta changed from the last time I played in it. Tons of complaining and felt that the newcomers were getting a bit too much heat.

DM and MGE are fantastic if you want to improve on your one-on-one and gamesense skills. Power Pugs and similiar groups can provide a more relax environment for pugging imo. TF2Lobby... ugh, I can say that if you don't come across trolls who has a mic, it's a way to improve on your comms.

But erm, enough about that. Definitely chill in Newbie Mixes and Power Pugs, you can meet some cool peeps and possibly find a team. And do UGC if you want to join a team to start building your competitive experience and relationships with peeps.

Psssst, hope you'll come to love TF2 tons. <3 Like me.

there used to be a collection of articles that talked about the basics of 6s and roles for each class but a lot of them have been deleted. everytime i see these threads i just remember all of the information that i devoured before getting into 6s and how its so hard to find this info now. i think there might be a few things on ozfortress and vanilla tv, and while there a few nice threads and things on this site, none of this stuff is in one place.

for now maybe just check out the old mge videos on adamskyride's youtube: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD098F81F2CA74F00

some of this stuff is a little outdated but the key concepts remain the same. GL dude, just try to have fun and dont get too discouraged by whatever experiences you have in tf2 lobby. because lobbies are garbage and they dont even come close to teaching you anything about this format, no matter what anyone says.

I'm in the same exact position as you, thats cool

So I played my first game at tf2lobby.com today and I have to say that it was pretty bad. No one was communicating and a lot of people dropped out within 10 minutes.

I will definitely check out some Power Pugs and maybe even see if I can start a team but the fact that none of friends play TF2 or have any interest in TF2 I would have to find people online.

Those videos are really useful. Thanks!

Hey, maybe we can play together some time!

we should, i'll add you