After a full month of Well, a map we as a community almost gave up on, Patrick "Jimmy Breeze" Harvey reflects upon our relationship with it.

Read Patrick's last column "Why The Pissing Contest?" HERE

This column is the sole opinion of the author and does not represent the opinion of Heaven Media Ltd or the opinion of any affiliates.

It's been a busy month for Team Fortress 2. Despite all the storylines and controversies that have come and gone, and all the wonderful things I could write about, what sticks in my mind is Well. A lot of Well.

I know, I know. I can hear you nerd raging from here. You just had to play through hours and hours of this monstrosity of a map and now here I am before you, my gracious friend, expecting you to read about it too. Stay with me.

Well, for those of you that don't have the pleasure of knowing, is a map that we sometimes play. We all had to play it recently because it was included in the ETF2L league-wide fixed maps schedule. For a variety of dull map design reasons, Well plays very differently from the rest of the map pool. And as a result of its peculiarities, a lot of people really don't like it.

Many would argue that we don't "play" Well, we can only "endure" it. Compared to the staple maps, it's considered slow, uneventful and prone to stalemates. At best it's generously described as a "technical" and "tactical" map. The glamorous gameplay that we see on Badlands, Granary and Gravel Pit is almost entirely missing.

I wasn't particularly looking forward to the proposition of spectating dozens of games on it either. Watching 30 minutes of Well can sometimes leave you with a feeling of deep despair that I'm only familiar with from a few ultra special what-am-I-doing-with-my-life moments: explaining to my parents that I'm trying to forge a career in esports journalism; when everyone's delicious meat-based dishes arrive and for no good reason I've ordered from the vegetarian part of the takeaway menu; and, after watching all the daily episodes, reaching the end credits of the Hollyoaks omnibus at the weekend.

That's kind of what it's like forcing yourself to watch twelve angry nerds throw down on Well.

6.30pm: Daily Hollyoaks wank. 7pm: Vegetable biryani. 7.30-10pm: Well.

So, as a kind of coping mechanism, I challenged myself with detailing how Well went throughout the month, taking an in-depth look at some games, and asking myself what, if anything, did we learn from it? Here are my findings.

Lesson 1 - You can tell a lot about a team from watching them play Well

The first meaningful Well of February was the ESH Razer Moray Menace final between TCM and Power Gaming. It was the first ESH prize tournament for TF2, Power Gaming were making their official debut as Power Gaming, and, as the first big online match of the Spring/Summer season, tonnes of people turned up to watch.

Power were horrible. They laid a stinkbomb in front of hundreds of people expecting a quality game, and presumably, their new MGO bosses too. Rather than watching these two powerhouses trade blows, all we got to see was one team reduce the other to looking - and playing - like a division 4 squad. Power's play even stunk up SourceTV as people disconnected in droves. In fact, Power stunk it up so bad, their only strategy seemed to be to wait for the gates to open and then waddle up to middle without any plan other than to grin and take a giant dump on the control point.

TCM rolled to a 5-0 smackdown, replete with three "perfect" rounds where they capped middle, CP4 and CP5 on their first attempts. After a broken blitz play from TCM on middle, Power mismanaged their forty seconds of total offense with three of them, including Olli "paavi" Kettunen at medic holding uber, getting decked by a trademark Ahmad "Byte" Fansa sticky trap on their single CP4 attempt. On defense, if they weren't getting wiped on perfect rounds, every counter-attack opportunity they generated was spoiled by TCM's scouts on constant backcap duty.

Power somehow found it within themselves to get their heads straight and make a real game of Badlands. It went down to the wire and it took a last minute cap for TCM to get the win. The post-mortem was this: Power obviously just didn't "get" Well, and if you're able throw away maps in that fashion, you can't ever expect to win two or three map sets, and therefore you're not an elite team. Their failure to adapt confirmed everything we thought about them. All aim, no brain.

Page 1 of Power's Well playbook. Pages 2 and 3 are a lot better.

Lesson 2 - If you prepare for Well, you will win games you're not supposed to

Their next meeting on Well was to be an even grander stage, the fifth ESL EMS final. Power were coming from the loser bracket, TCM were the defending champions, and, as if ESL were not-so-closet TCM fans, the maps were announced as Gravel Pit, Well, and, believe it or not, a second Well for the decider map. Eyes were rolled. Obituaries were composed. Sarcastic posts were written.

But something happened in the meantime. TCM inexplicably found themselves drawing Well 1-1 versus a newbie divsion 1 crew, Team Empire, in their opening official of their ETF2L S7 campaign.

How did Empire do what Power had so catastrophically failed to do? I don't think it has anything to do with the "you can't beat Russians on Well" stereotype. (And, by the way, what a fantastic national stereotype that is. Your nation may suffer chronic alcoholism problems, be staring into the abyss of a demographic timebomb, but hey, you're really good at Well!) Empire spent all their practice time on Well, and absolutely none of it on Badlands, and it showed.

If you watch the game, you'll notice sloppy play from Marten "Springer" Coenen at medic and complacency all round on TCM's behalf. Empire took full advantage. And beyond that, you'd see that they were very clever about how and where they stopped TCM from controlling the tempo. Power studied the game closely and practised hard.

Back to EMS, and after a lopsided Gravel Pit went in favour of TCM, Power won both Wells, 4-3 and 4-2, forcing a second finals set. Despite Byte having another great night (and seriously, for those of you not paying attention, he has been the best demoman in Europe since Winter Assembly at least, save for that Empire game and one magical night from Tomas "Extremer" A; go back to the second EMS finals set and watch him hit all the key pipes and Kalle "hymzi" Honkala miss all of them that mattered - even on the day that Valve bugged/nerfed pipe accuracy - the next time you're desperate to make some stale stickies-based "joke"), the TCM scouts running similar backcap routes, Power outsmarted and outplayed them over the full sixty minutes of the beast.

Their middle strats, this time round, were great. Efficient and purposeful, Power kept TCM guessing - and guessing wrong - with different looks at middle and strong play from Jaani "hocz" Laakkonen at soldier and Tuomas "vallone" Vepsäläinen giving TCM fits as sniper.

Power proved our assumptions about them wrong that evening. I love to see teams taking their job/hobby (their "jobby") seriously, so full marks to those Finns. They made the leap to being the best team in Europe, for one night at least.

Spoiler: the other team dies at the end.

I could have written roughly the same story about multiple games from ETF2L. The Last Resort were beaten by FakkelBrigade 3-5 on Badlands which they followed with a 3-0 masterclass on Well. Power were dominated on Badlands only to come back and squeeze a 3-2 win out of Well against what women want. I Don't Know? Frog were probably a round away from making Dignitas fold after a nervy 1-2 loss there. Plenty of other teams split their Week 1 fixture too.

Well does test teams in ways that the other maps just don't. Okay, part of that test isn't thrilling and involves being patient and picking your spots. But despite it's reputation, it's a lot more than that too.

Although counter-attacking is difficult, clever teams have finally started catching onto defensive efficiency metrics (at least at high tier play) and we don't see as many pointless impenetrable CP1 turtles as we used to. Players have to improvise a lot, yet be super disciplined about the threat of backcaps. Teams that do their homework and scout their opponents, have skilled callers and understand clock management have a puncher's chance to upset the big dogs. That's not really true of Badlands or Granary.

So I'm glad that we're still enduring Well. Our game is better for it. I'd miss it if we stopped.

Another reason to play Well: babes can't get enough of it's multi-tasking style gameplay.

Funny, then, that not so long ago I was at the forefront of the campaign to scrap Well for ETF2L Season 7. If it wasn't for a bizarre intervention from a survey of division 1 players where 62% of respondents unexpectedly voted to say they'd like to continue playing Well, I wouldn't be writing this.

If Well wasn't part of the game's original anaemic map pool, there's no way we'd be playing it today. With the set-up time alone it'd be labelled a "public" map, never mind its genuine architectural problems, and not given a chance. The top teams wouldn't bother to test it. The feedback from well-meaning one night cups would be dismal. That really worries me about our community, and it should worry you too.

There's a contradiction that lies at the heart of the argument against Well. If you insist on complaining about maps, you have to decide if you'd rather be bored by playing the same two maps to death or be faced by the possibility of being bored through embracing and learning "other" maps. You have to choose one.

From all of this - leading the charge to get it removed from map pools, paying close attention to it throughout February - I learned that you never hear from the people who enjoy, or at least find value, in something. They're not whining on message boards. They're trying to improve their team. They're probably playing Well. They are the people we need to start listening to.

Keep that in mind when make your acquaintance with Gorge next month.