Let me be honest for a moment, the moment you choose the Market Gardener for your melee weapon and unequip your damage dealing primaries, your mindset should change too, which is rarely the case for the usual spoon boy. You are not a power-class that can delete everyone with your splash damage anymore, you can not turn the tides of a game singlehandedly as easy as a sniper can. Nevertheless, you can contribute to the game by getting kills or destroying teleporters and change the outcome of it if you play smart and your team capitalizes on it. (even if casual feels like your teammates are monkeys on typewriters, there sometimes are people that understand how to play smart-ish.... you have to trust me on this one).

The main mistake is that a regular trolldier is usually taught to try to get a kill, escape and then get a kill again and so on. The problem is, that it's highly ineffective considering that an average spoonman gets as many kills as a 2fort engineer looking at their own spawn, but disregard that.

There are a lot of things that are not shown on the leaderboard, but are just as fun to do while being effective at trolldier than just trying to get kills and that's exactly what I want to showcase in here.

You can practice your spoon skills for hours/days/months or even years and just get mediocre results compared to what you could do with other classes. That is very discouraging players from exploring trolldier outside a regular visit in hightower. Why bother learning to outperform an enemy by risking a lot, when you can pick sniper and do much more by just sitting at spawn without bothering to even use your keyboard?..

Honestly, no reason other than a chance to have some fun in a decade old game, which sounds more than reasonable to me. Or at least did years ago.

As mentioned, you'll have to accept that you will most likely never get as many kills as a skilled sniper, never get so many points as a decent spy and honestly, your game will become more of a cat-and-mouse chase gameplay where you are the mouse with a spoon, and a cat most of the time has a gun or a rocket launcher. If that is something you'd like to do and dying doesn't sound like a big deal most of the time, we can move on to learning how to kill a theoretical scout-cat with a shovel and kill not just them, but also fracture their ego.

Even though trolldier is considered to be one of the weakest (if not THE weakest) sub-classes, he can be a true nuisance to the enemy team. Comparing him to a demoknight (which is recognized as quite a threat in casual games), a trolldier has quite a few similarities:

• Both sub-classes are weak if you don't know what you are doing, but have a high theoretical damage output;
  
• Both sub-classes have self damage-free mobility options that are only outperformed by a sticky-jumper demoman or a good air strike soldier;
  
• Both sub-classes are (almost) unplayable against sentry nests, but can help destroying them indirectly;
  
• Both sub-classes are quite hard to play against good pyros'.

Now there is a catch. A theoretical high damage output does not translate well into practice, since I have yet to see a trolldier perform very well in a regular casual match, while demoknights confidently run around dominating games and nobody bats an eye.

A class that can deal 195 damage critical hits on demand, has mobility that's hardly rivaled by anything in the game at no cost to its own health, a secondary that reduces knockback and gives the class an ability to cancel fall-damage while converting it into damage to their enemy is seen as no threat mainly because there are just too few players that are willing to learn all the little things that one may need to be able to play trolldier well.

• Rocket jumping;
  
• Map knowledge - to know general map health/ammo spots, common chokepoints;
  
• Understanding the gamemodes - knowing what classes are more common, what spots are inhabited by basement dwelling engineers and cs:go 'angle holding' snipers;
  
• Understanding each classes' weaknesses, strengths and their willingness to chase you around the map;
  
• Things that do not show up on the scoreboard - learning to read the scoreboard, the time it takes each enemy to come back to the battlefield, etc.

Honestly, all of this can be summarized in two words - Skill and gamesense. Lucky for you, you can earn one of those by playing other classes, not just soldier.

With that in mind, there are a few things a trolldier does far better and easier than a demoman, such as luring enemies off position not to kill them, but rather to waste their time, taking care of teleporter entrances and coming back to the battlefield much faster. What I am trying to get to is, that people rarely recognize the amount of strengths that a trolldier has if you are willing to change how your general game idea works.

One of the trolldier's biggest strengths is his weakness. People are as likely to chase you around just to get that one extra kill on their 29 kill strange botkiller scattergun,as a pyro is likely to chase a deadringer spy around the corner into a certain death of one of them. Whether it's the theoretical cat or a mouse that dies, highly depends on how well rounded the players are and yada yada.... except in our case, who expects a spoonman to suddenly fight back?

Building up the suspense and lowering their expectations.

The surprise factor comes to play so much more than if you were playing spy. My general suggestion is to play around the parts of the map in which you can fall back to your team (if there is one) or to play around healthpacks. People will evaluate you by their first impressions and if you manage to set them as low as in your first teenage dates, you will have an easy game later on. Exactly like you will expect a spy to try their luck at trickstabs the first few times you are after them, people might still expect some fighting back from a trolldier in the first few approaches. I don't mean to pretend to play horribly and jump into sentries, but rather experiment with enemies, surf sentry rockets, try sync jumps, go behind enemies, shoot their sentries with your rocket jumper and so on. As soon as people spot you 'out of position' they might want to take care of a possible threat and that's where your real game begins.

Imagine tf2 as a math game.... (I am sorry for that)
Tf2 is a 12v12 game, by picking trolldier you are effectively making the game into 12v11. What I'd consider playing effective is if you keep one (or possibly more) enemy players dead or busy at one time to even the numbers out. Some games there will be so many people chasing you that your team might just have such numbers advantage that there is no way of loosing the game.... unless they get cocky and leave the objective unattended of course.

So, use your vulnerability as a positive thing. Remember - enemy behind their own lines is no threat to your team. It's very likely that a scout, another soldier or demo (classes with high mobility) will chase you wherever you please, so use that. Bring enemies behind their lines, bonus points if you bring multiple people making them waste their time or a heavy there and then escape him making him spend 40% of his game jogging back and forth after you instead of mowing your team down.

Overconfidence is a man's greatest killer. Exploit it.

The more you play risky and cocky around your enemies evading their damage well and outhealing their damage with health packs, the more aggressive the enemies will get. Matter of fact is that they will eventually commit mistakes which you can capitalize on. Now comes the part, where we smack the cat with a shovel.

A scout coming in a straight line up a narrow staircase up to you? Thwack with a shovel. A soldier jumping predictably towards you? Thwack. A pyro swapping to their secondary in close range? Thwack. A spy chasing you in a predictable manner? Well... you guessed it at this point.

Since you practically have the ability to choose your own playground, you can make players do those mistakes on purpose.

Generally, there will be some times where enemy team will just not chase you, either because you are no threat to their 11 sentry nests, or because they are too busy dealing with your team. In such case, you can be annoying to your enemies in other ways. Recognize your no-go zones, that generally means a sentry, long choke with a sniper looking through it, most common narrow paths where enemies might be at the end of and punish anyone for stepping out of your no go zones. Become a threat rather than a distraction, destroy teleporters, anticipate enemies coming out of spawn and kill them on their way back to the frontlines. Just like a third grader, you can always find a way to be extra annoying if you have a spoon. The only real problem arises when enemy team consists of heavies, engineers and anything with a medic up their ass. In such case, if your team can't keep some of them down for you to annoy, you might aswell become friendly and RPS at their spawn in hopes to at least kill one person by chance.

• Just damaging someone (especially heavies) when they don't see you can either be followed up by a kill, or by a century long walk back to spawn just likes snipers do after loosing their razorback.
  
• Stealing healthpacks behind enemy lines. Quite often will enemies run back to 'safe' health packs in hopes to take a breather after a fight, or to go in after a rollout. Since you are a trolldier, you can purposely take fall damage and snag such healthpacks whenever you are around enemy teritory.
  
• Stealing metal/ammo behind enemy lines. The same as with healthpacks, snagging ammo packs from enemy engineers may easily result in lower level buildings for when your team gets there. (or a sentry dedicated to you, which can be extra annoying)
  
• Peeking your head enough for sentries to see you and target you, but not enough for them to shoot and hit you. You can waste sentry ammo (extra useful if you received the dedicated sentry treatment);
  
• Camping the teleporters if you are confident enough and are not afraid of surprise heavies popping out;
  
• Capping the objective when they least expect it. If the cart is at a point and a sentry does not see it, you have a ton of mobility and you can save games that way. Jump on there and cap the cart/point.
  
• Making friends. If you do that behind enemy lines, you can keep a few players busy with your conga for much longer that it would take them to respawn.
  
• Don't hog the teleporters and don't annoy your medics every second if you can. While sometimes medics are free and there are too many teleporters, don't be a douche who is lazy to jump to the frontlines or a healthpack. You're mobile - you can access anything that may be not in your team's way.

Getting kills might require a lot of practice, but I'll just repeat some tips (which are not mentioned by every single person) that I used to give when I used to coach people for general market gardening.

• Understand the hitboxes and how to maximize the critical hit time windows - instead of landing on top of a player and trying to swing under your feet, try landing next to your target. While this may seem counter intuitive at first, landing next to them will give you a longer time to swing for the critical hit and if done right, will make you harder to dodge and much more lethal in the long run.
  
• Speed over height almost every time.
  • Jumping just above the ground makes it easier to follow up with pogo jumps in case of an emergency or need to escape;
    
  • Market garden attempts are easy to avoid if you're doing high jumps - enemies can dodge to every direction (and jump/crouch in hopes of you whiffing your attack). If you're doing low jumps and are not any higher than you need to be to hit them, enemies can only move to the sides (moving back and forward won't do anything unless you're very close to the ground)
• High jumps are for escaping from or getting into trouble - it's a fast way to do it. Once you have enemies close either jump away/ fake an escape or go for small jumps to catch others off guard - the longer you're in the air, the easier target you may become.
  
• Surf enemy explosives to get critical hits. Quite self explanatory, but if your health allows it - surf enemy rockets or stickies to get critical hits. This works especially well if playing aggressively and chasing enemy soldiers. (By getting too close you can jump and hit your market gardener as they shoot you to get a crit)
  
• Surf all kinds of damage to escape. Whether you accidentally found the enemy sentry nest or it's a heavy looking your way - every damage can be surfed. Don't let it go to waste.
  
• If in a pinch - take what you can get. Sometimes dying isn't a bad thing - if you can't get the market garden in a situation look for other things that you can do. Stealing healthpacks behind enemy lines, taking ammo from enemy engies - every small detail counts when playing a class that is thought to be an absolute meme.
  
• Learn to sync jump. It is a niche but viable skill to have as the spoon man - you can sync projectiles to escape with fancy jumps, cancel fall damage, synch enemy rockets or stickies to go flying across the map for less ammo. Especially since soldiers shoot at you all the time. Just use their rockets.
  
• Strafe breaking. While this is the main thing you want to avoid doing when you rocket jump, it can be extremely helpful when doing market gardening - breaking your strafe when doing small jumps above your enemy or pressing s to stop just above / next to them after high speed jump usually catches people off guard. (and I find it to be an easy way to connect market gardens)
  
• Bunny hops and edgebugging - I won't go in depth but there are plenty strategies and niche mechanics to learn as you jump around. Bunnyhopping can lead to market gardens even after 'landing' and edgebugging may help you survive lethal fall damage.
  
• Fake jumping away, especially if you can break line of sight from the enemy. Whether you jump down from the roof, walk behind a wall or hide behind cover to reload, it's always much better than staying out in the open. Also, that allows you to jump back at the enmy while they are walking towards you, which in most cases can result in an easy market garden. (works especially well if done from below, eg.: walking off the roof to jump back up to crit their feet. Not only it's easy to get a hit when the enemy is predictable, you can send them flying up if you hit them from below, which might be just enough to finish them off with fall damage)

Nobody stops you from going for the regular trolldier approach of just using your spoon to get kills and nothing else, I won't stop you. But, if you are ready to get mediocre results just to look impressive to others, don't mind being seen as a weak class and like the cat and mouse gameplay that trolldier allows you to get, pick your shovel up and let's get to work, soldier.