Razorback

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"Watch your back; or don't! Now it's your choice." — Razorback publicity blurb

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The Razorback is a beautiful hand-carved tribal shield, with a car battery taped to the back. It is unlockable gear for the Sniper class. While the Sniper is equipped with the Razorback, he is resistant to a single backstab from a Spy, with said Spy also receiving "a surprise to the tune of 10,000 volts". Upon a single backstab, the Razorback will break and be unusable until the player respawns or goes to a resupply cabinet.

Damage

None. The Razorback instead disables the offending Spy's Knife, rendering it useless for approximately 2 seconds and also rendering the Spy unable to switch weapons for this period, during which an alert Sniper can retaliate.

Function times

• Knife 'Lock-up': 2

All times are in seconds. Times are approximate and determined by community testing.

Trivia

• The Razorback was first announced on May 14, 2009 on the Team Fortress 2 Blog. [1]

• The Razorback resembles a mid-20th Century Queensland Rainforest tribal shield.[2]
• 'Razorback' is also the name of a minor Spiderman villain who coincidentally enough, uses electricity to ward off foes who sneak up from behind. [3]
• It is also a term for a feral pig. Feral pigs are an environmental problem in Australia, giving the word a (somewhat tenuous) connection to the Sniper. A horror film of the same name was made too, about a gigantic version of one of these boars terrorizing the local outback.
• Originally, using the Razorback slowed the Sniper down to 85% of his original speed. This effect has subsequently been removed, as lacking a secondary weapon is a rather substantial downside.
• A bug exists to do with alt-tabbing (switching from TF2 to other windows and back) that renders some people's Razorbacks invisible to the player who has alt tabbed (this can also occur when a server's connection to the steam servers is faulty or sporadic). In this situation, it becomes impossible to tell if a Sniper has the Razorback equipped unless you previously see them use Jarate or the SMG.
• The Razorback is the only item in Team Fortress 2, aside from the Sapper, that only has an effect on one class (The Spy)

See also

• Razorback strategy