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Once upon a time, I never held any sort of love for the Soldier. When I compared him to the classes I liked, there was no appeal to be seen… He couldn’t run around super fast like the Scout. He couldn’t set everything on fire like the Pyro. Heck, I even thought the Demoman was a better choice for explosives, and that was before everyone realised the stupid power of sticky bombs and began pretending they’d been playing the class from the start. Anyway, there he was, languishing at the bottom of my most played list, until I realised that more and more I needed to take up the role in battle… Generally when the rest of my team were all Spies trying to take down a bunch of sentries by randomly running in and then getting burned to death. Yet, alas! I was rubbish at the class; blowing myself up and watching every rocket jump fail miserably! It was clear that I needed to train myself up. And that’s exactly what I decided to do…

Day one – The journey begins

I find myself standing in the middle of the bridge on 2Fort with an oddly steely resolve. I want to be able to do this, and bask in the glee of a crit rocket storm as I fly through the air… Yet when I go for my first attempt at jumping onto the top deck, I find myself doing a tiny little bunny hop forwards at the Soldier screams in pain about the fact he’s just lost a large chunk of health. As far as I could tell, I was doing everything right – Point at feet, then fire and jump. I presumed it must have been bad timing, but the second I try and sort myself out for another go a nearby enemy soldier starts trying to blast me to bits. I panic, aiming at him directly and spamming the fire button. Of course, all the rockets miss. The end result is I’m defenseless, mindless for not whipping out the Shotgun… And lifeless. Hmm. This is tougher than I thought.

Day four – Not always in bits anymore

Some time has passed, and I find myself getting slightly better. Sure, some sentries still rip me apart like the idiotic piece of tissue paper I am, but at least all the kamikaze Pyros are blowing up the second they try and charge at me… This makes me feel immensely smug about myself, up until the point I realise killing an enemy who is running in a straight line isn’t exactly the most difficult of tasks. Still, other things are coming along nicely – I’ve finally realised aiming ahead of the enemy is the way to go, even if most of my rockets still miss due to phenomenally bad timing. I’ve even pulled off a few successful rocket jumps, even if the shock of succeeding sort of left me in awed dumbstruck wonder afterwards. So…

I’m getting better! Sort of.

Day nine – Wait, is this skilled Soldier play I’m pulling off?

It’s while I defend the fourth point on Well, watching people blow up into little tiny bits, that I suddenly realise something – I’m doing quite well. I know this because that Scout who runs up the staircase meets a perfectly timed rocket that was fired ahead of him. I also know this because my rocket jumps no longer see me stumble around like a fool, but instead see me flying gracefully like a swan. Admittedly, I’ve never seen a graceful swan firing rockets everywhere while screaming “MAGGOTS!” everywhere, but you get the idea. Granted, I still die once or twice and the point I’m trying to defend eventually falls, but no longer is this because I’m doing absolutely everything wrong. Indeed, like certain others, it occurs to me that I actually enjoy this method of blasting everything to pieces… The class starts to become part of my general lifestyle, as I wander round my house scaring the cat with random Soldier quotes, and then going on to read handy tips on how to get even better. It strikes me this inow isn’t something I’m doing just to ensure that I don’t have a class I’m truly weak with – I’m doing it because I’m having fun.

(Cheers to General Balls for the images)

Day fifteen – I am the crit bringer. Fear me.

So, to me, it felt like just another game on Granary. I decide to go Soldier, so I rocket jump up to the top of the crates as we fight for the centre point, and start to rain down fiery death on all those who dare to oppose me. I do this like I’ve been doing it all my life, and as we succeed with the capture, I fire one last rocket that crits with a perfect hit on a Pyro who had only just turned the corner and came into view. This goes on, and when my third domination on a player occurs someone actually makes a comment I’d thought I’d never hear – “Wow, you’re pretty good”. This only fuels my resolve. Level three sentry? Flank around, peek around the corner, blast it to bits. Heavy suddenly waaaay too close to me? See you later dude, I’m rocket jumping away. Oh, and have some painful explosions for your troubles. I don’t even flinch when the game suddenly enters sudden death, and I’m not even exaggerating when I say I take out 6 of the 8 opposing players. You could argue that the opposition was rubbish, or that I simply got lucky. That’s your opinion. Mine, though?

I’m not a trainee soldier anymore. I’m a fully-fledged killing machine, and I’m loving every minute of it.