root/tf2/mga/

MGA — Market Gardening Arena

tl;dr: MGA is a niche gamemode where you're all thrown into an arena and have to kill each other with the Market Gardener only.
Basically, if you like this weapon, it is fun.

Picture this: you're an accomplished jumper. You eat T5 maps for breakfast and, while Hightower is fun in its own way, you'd like to play something a bit more competitive. Maybe for the fun of it, or to take your market gardening skills to the next level. Well, you should definitely try out MGA.

Get your shovel ready and jump right in. Here, you will find that all of your carefully honed rocket-jumping skills will be thrown out the window. Be aware at all times of your surroundings, for UFOs going at Mach 5 may collide with you so fast that you'll only realize what happened after looking at the kill feed. Forget about doing jumps with style. Most experienced players you'll encounter will use the nastiest tricks to get you. If you do not adapt quickly, you may find yourself with 3 revenges to get and a K/D of 0. Honor doesn't exist in this gamemode. Spawncamping (called "souping"), bhopping and trickjumps are a common sight and oft-used techniques.

For instance: in normal gameplay, shooting a rocket above you is simply useless, where it is constantly done in MGA. When the player you thought was way above you is instantly in your face, you will learn that catching your enemy off-guard by falling thrice as fast is an important skill to master. Don't think your experience from Hightower will simply carry over. Jumping vertically will most likely get you nowhere, because even so it can work in casual games, players here are drilled at denying this sort of attack. And another important thing to note is that regular rocket launchers are allowed. Even though they don't deal any damage, some have mastered the skill of using knockback to juggle their opponents, which may or may not be pretty infuriating.

Most servers have a ranking system implemented, by which you can guess how many hours some have wasted spent in the server. And if by some ungodly chance you end up becoming a regular, you'll have the pleasure of meeting the others: opponents whose shovels racked up tens of thousands of kills and whose playstyles are filled with bitch moves and general bullshit.

If based on what is written here you assumed that MGA servers are a toxic place, you are not far from the truth. Some players never got to feel the warmth of their mother. The better a person is, the more racist they'll likely be (though you'll never get to meet them on the Jump Academy servers because all of them were deleted by ban-happy "moderators"). But most players are respectful and should point out your mistakes if you ask them to. Just don't expect them to go easy on newcomers.

There was a time when unofficial tournaments were regularly taking place in EU, but the last main organizer was banned a while ago. Look, it's pretty obvious that the gamemode is currently struggling, so if you're tempted to give it a try, you should. Here are some servers that you can join:

Anyway, welcome to the slums.