Helpful Strats on badlands

As a scout on badlands, you shouldn't be flanking at mid. You want to get there as quick as possible and basically clear your side of mid so that your combo can get out. If a demo jumps to the train cart, take care of him, if the scouts try and flank or push hard, take care of them. The only time you should be flanking is if you know there is no threat of the other team flanking, or doing something random that could mess everything up. If their scouts get behind, you have to make sure you don't let them get to your medic or demo. If their demo is laying down spam, hes gotta be dealt with. Also, keeping your demo alive at mid is extremely important. Due to their potential for damage, they are huge factors in the mid fight.

As far as defending your 2nd point goes. I find it best if the scouts just watch the right valley area near the 2nd resupply. It's pretty easy to deal w/ anything that comes that way, especially w/ a resupply right next to you.

Attacking the other teams spire is mainly just a matter of what strat your team is running. Personally, i think it is best to just get behind the other team and stay alive. Attack when the opportunity presents itself. While playing scout, it is extremely important that you stay alive so that you can take advantage of opportunities.

It's all situational stuff, making the right reaction is key.

p.s. It is also important to let your team mates know where the enemies are at all times. Communication is key.

Patrick forgot to mention a few things about defending 2nd:
By watching valley, you threaten two things: 1.) Potential medic flank from deck out of your house (in all likelihood, the other team's medic will be near choke/pride rock, and will be focused on healing his team up for a spire push/is healing them during the spire push and not looking for scouts that way) or 2.) Potential backcap of mid point.
If you put yourself in a place that limits the options for what you can do, then you're somewhat predictable and will most likely meet a buffed soldier somewhere.

Furthermore, at mid and if one of your scouts can two shot quite consistently, it might be a good idea to send one on top near your train cart to watch for the demo man/call position of other scouts and have the consistent two shot scout go underneath to hopefully try to contribute spam at a close range to their house entrance. If timed correctly, the spamming scout can add just enough punch to knock out a class or two when contributed w/ demo-spam and soldier rocket-spam. Regardless, you have to know the capabilities of the scouts on your team. Not every strategy works in every situation.

You know...I wrote this a while ago. So check it out if you're a new team and want to get some tactics established:

First and foremost, there are two ways to attack a point: aggressively and conservatively.
Usually, we say "solly jumped" or "aggressive solly!", however, this is not what I mean here. What I'm talking about is tactic styles. If anything, an aggressive push means extending the team past the hitscan zone (where scout shots can become lethal). Almost every mid battle contains both teams acting aggressively. However, that has proven time and again to not be successful. The team that wins mid either gets lucky via scout positions or has a clear tactic in mind. What needs to be done here is to discover the best response to the enemy's best response. That being said, it is very important that everybody understands what type of attack is being orchestrated by your team. If you push aggressively and some of you play conservatively and bate others, then the chance of success is very small.
In this regards, basic roles of the team must be discussed.

There are two types of aggressive pushes: bate pushes, which occur when the scouts or other classes are used to draw attackers away from the medic; and blobs. The blob attack is typically always effective, while bating appears to be more situational (such as at mid or when you're defending the last point at granary, etc.). Blobbing occurs when the entire team sticks together. That doesn't mean that everybody is TOGETHER. But it means that the two sollys lead, the demo and medic are next to each other in the middle, and the scouts bring up the rear (sometimes the scouts should remain separated in case of uber vs uber). This allows the medic to heal EVERY player and for the soldiers to take the projectile damage, all the while the other team cannot come too close for fear of the spam. For lesser known maps, blobbing is an easy way to spearhead a position (note that this will fail on a mid push!!). Furthermore, blobbing does not mean ALWAYS stick together; it simply means to come together for a spearhead attack.

There are fewer conservative pushes, and these rely mostly on the scouts getting behind the opposing team. A conservative push occurs when the other team knows that you're coming but are temporarily caught off guard from another location, leaving their backs exposed. Typical places for such pushes are most effective when attacking non-mid locations. An example would be sending the scouts left side at the final cap on granary (or on the final defense!), sending the demo up top (or a solly) and then having the other 2 stay with the medic and push right side once the attention is focused (say 2-3 secs). This can be variated either way.

Terminology for these must be created and discussed in further detail by your team.

However:

There are two distinct groups that you might want to look at for defense: the double combo and the scout team. The demoman, depending on the map, can be assigned to either team, though he should mostly remain w/ the scouts (w/ the major exception of badlands). On granary and well, the scouts and demoman should be near each other ALL the time (even during the initial spam fest on well...the scouts should seek to protect your demoman from other scouts). The double combo is also important, as one soldier is the primary charger and the other is the secondary charger. When one soldier gets low ammo w/ the rocket, the other soldier needs to start charging while the first gets ammo. Likewise, during uber pushes, the second soldier has the potential to RJ after the opposing team's fleeing medic...It's fairly easy enough. However, the mini-teams will gain more defined roles once playtime together increases.

Adel wrote:I think the terms the americans have for the two soldiers ( "pocket", for the one that sticks with the medic, and "roaming" for the one that runs around) are great

Funny how what we've sort of ended up doing naturally with two soldiers is actually formalised like that as a strategy.

Adel wrote:One thing to say - pushing from middle to 2nd point, we always went down past the train carriage and around the corner, every time. This actually puts us miles away from the enemy who are camping down by their base gates, and so when we have to blow the uber there (e.g. due to demo-spam), I think it was hard for our sollies to make good use of it and kill stuff. For other matches on badlands, we should try switching up which way we go when assaulting 2nd point - e.g. across the walkway past their forward resupply area, or just through the house and out of the side door.