If you're a nancy who prefers to drink martini's - shaken not stirred instead of good manly beer then the spy is for you. The spy is of limited use in clan games against a good clan as the defenders are often very aware of who is where. On public servers the spy kicks butt. Against bad clans it is an excellent way of cause confusion and panic in the enemy's ranks. As soon as they start shooting and stripping armour and health off each other you have achieved a worthy goal. The spy comes equipped with a shotgun, a nailgun, a tranquiliser gun, a big knife, gas grenades and normal grenades.

General tips

• Do not change color before you get to the enemy base!!!!! this gives enemy time to notice you are the wrong color on the showscores screen. Instead change to a class that moves around the same speed (pyro, medic, engineer, demoman or sniper) and move into the enemy base. Once there then change color.
• DO NOT MOVE AROUND WHEN FEIGNING.... rapdancing corpses are obvious. Too many newbies end up with a soldier standing on you so you can't get up and then just axe you to death.
• Shooting or stabbing removes your disguise. It's much better to use grenades.

Offense
A sniper on offense is also an excellent and underused tactic. If the sniper manages to take out even 1 defender it gives the rest of the offense a big advantage.

One good tactic is for the sniper to wait just near the exit of the home base and prepare a shot... when the rest of the offense moves past the sniper slides out to the side and kills any defender who is waiting to greet the offense. This will get the offense across the open area with minimum damage.

If you can manage to infiltrate the enemy base and can hide somewhere near the flag you can wait for the next offensive wave and take out a defender or destroy a sentry. This can really ruin the defenders day.

Defense
This is the role in which a sniper excels. Find yourself a nice comfy spot that is at ground level, is dark, provides cover and has an escape route. If you can take out one of the enemy offensive heavies (soldier, pyro, demoman etc) it will make the role of the other defenders easier.

Another useful place is where you can overlook things such as elevators where the enemy will be standing while you line them up for some .30 calibre therapy.

You can also act as a 'lead magnet' after you have pissed the enemy offense off :)... you have a friendly soldier or two sitting in cover nearby. When the enemy are crossing open ground you kill one and then step into view... the enemy will open fire with everything they have ... as they are about to reload the soldier boys jump out and give em some rockets. This has the effect of either either making them dead OR they stop shooting so much at you next time they cross (dead usually :) ).

Psychological warfare is one of the main reasons for being a sniper... it makes an enemy itchy if they don't know when they are going to die suddenly.. flares are useful for this.. just drop one into a dark area to make em sweat :)..

Aliases and commands

Good feign:
Tosses a backpack out when feigning death (as long as you have rockets)
alias qfeign "discard;wait;dropitems;wait;feign"
bind X "qfeign"

Speed toggle:
alias +slow "cl_forwardspeed 240" alias -slow "cl_forwardspeed 320"
bind a +slow

Color change:
alias blue "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 2;wait;impulse 1"
alias red "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 2;wait;impulse 2"
alias yellow "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 2;wait;impulse 3"
alias green "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 2;wait;impulse 4"
bind X blue //team 1 color
bind X red //team 2 color
bind X yellow //team 3 color
bind X green //team 4 color

Skin change:
alias snip "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 2"
alias sold "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 3"
alias demo "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 4"
alias med "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 5"
alias heavy "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 6"
alias fire "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 7"
alias eng "wait;disguise;wait;impulse 1;wait;impulse 9"
bind f1 scot //scout
bind f2 snip //sniper
bind f3 sold //soldier
bind f4 demo //demoman
bind f5 med //medic
bind f6 heavy //heavy-weapons dude
bind f7 fire //pyro
bind f9 eng //eng

Gren timer:
alias primeone1 "primeone; play Gren.wav; bind X throwgren1" alias throwgren1 "throwgren; bind X primeone1" bind X "primeone1" alias primeone2 "primetwo; play Gren.wav; bind X throwgren2" alias throwgren2 "throwgren; bind X primeone2" bind X "primeone2"
For the gren timer to work, you'll need to download this zipped wav and unzip it into your Quake/fortress/sound/ directory

Class binds:
bind X "reload" This will reload your weapon.
bind X "saveme" This will yell for another medic or an engineer.
bind X "inv" This will tell your inventory of grenades.
bind X "discard" This will drop stuff you don't need.
bind X "showclasses" Tell you whos playing what
bind X "disguise"
bind X "id" Is that another spy?

Other resources:
Spy Academy
UKFN Tactics for Spys
TF Guide class strategy for Spys