I’m sure (or at least I hope) plenty of you have noticed I haven’t been too active around these parts in recent times. Fortunately I can pin some of that on Valve for not giving me much to talk about (although I did miss the update importing official Highlander mode), but the truth is that the time I have available is slipping away. I’ve recently landed a 12-month internship at IBM – which is pretty much a dream come true, and the first steps of the rest of my life – but it’s also a full-time gig, which leaves me with very little time to commit to this fine establishment. And that time that is left over… well, life moves along and new things appear.

But fear not! I don’t intend to ever shut the site down, but it’s only fair to let y’all know why it’s a little quiet. That said, I am considering packing my bags and handing over administratorship to someone else, so if you think you’ve got the ability and motivation to take this site into the future, then let me know and I’ll certainly consider it (don’t be offended if I say “no” though I’m still very attached to ol’ TF2S).

While I don’t really expect to hand it over, I HAVE however changed my primary email address from pie21@tf2strategy.com (yeah, eat it up now, spambots) to admin [at] this site. Quite simply, I’m sick to death of raking in hundreds of spam emails a day, the sorry result of leaving the previous address in text form in various parts of the site. I’ll update the contact form, but if you want to contact me, the surest way is via a forum PM, since I get an alert at my personal Hotmail account, which I should see within the day.

So that’s my story. I’ll still be hanging around the forums, but as sorry as I am, I can’t see myself throwing any new guides up onto the site, unless I’m feeling extra productive one weekend (and full-time work makes that unlikely ). By all means let me know if you’ve got something to show off, however, and I’ll see what I can do.

Cheers for all the support to date!

- Pie21

Yet more praise be hailed upon chipbuster! After a somewhat protracted review period, during which extensive modification was performed (well, I added one heading), chipbuster’s Beginner’s Guide to Choosing A Server is finally on show on TF2Strategy.com! This is a healthy addition to the list of Beginners’ Guides that make up the Beginner’s Guide, and his third submission to this end. That’s three out of three available guides. In other words, chipbuster is the man.

Don’t let the title deceive you however – veterans and beginners have to join servers the exact same way (more or less). As a guy who doesn’t really think about which server he jumps on (I’m lucky to have a solid though homogeneous list of favourites), I’ve been insulated from the need to know how to choose the right server, and as such this article is of particular interest, even after two and a half year of playing. Check it out!

Thanks again, chip!

Plenty of small but official rumblings have been occurring in the lands of TF2, which I’ve been meaning to report but keep running out of time. Full time employment does that too you.

First up, we FINALLY saw a fix for the Scout’s crazy-legs bug, where double crouch jumping would make it look like “his legs are made of raw bacon strips held up in a wind tunnel”. Of course there was an entirely reasonable and believable justification for the delay. RIP, Del.

More recently, The Administrator has deemed it important to reprimand those choosing to manipulate the outcome of the Soldier vs. Demoman WAR! by committing acts of unspeakable genocide. There was also some congratulations due for the (as yet unnamed) runners up in the WAR! propaganda contest, so we can all look forward to some more bad ass TF2 artwork soon.

There was also a sizeable update, with a smaller update fixing what that one broke. The update itself added three new aspirational, class-neutral hats to be found (or not):
the Modest Pile of Hat, Noble Amassment of Hats, and the classiest of them all, the Towering Pillar of Hats. Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want to wear those. CP_Gorge received a bit of a shake-up too to speed up the action.

All in all a good sheaf of updates, all the better that my lateness doesn’t affect them.

The good folks at CommunityFortress have had the pleasure of an interview with TF2’s #1 man, Robin Walker. Main topics of discussion, as usual, are the most recent update (WAR!), future updates, and Valve’s actions towards aiding the competitive TF2 scene, as well as some discussion of the community’s ever-increasing involvement in the development of TF2.

Robin’s guarded answers aren’t dropping any bombshells, but it’s a good read nonetheless. You can also be sure that the Engineer will be receiving a full class update (as if there was still any doubt), and look forward to a tweaking of the item drop system to be more rewarding. Always ravenous for feedback, there’s plenty of call for fans to let Valve know what they want, so if you’ve got something to say, say it!

With special thanks to RabbitsFoot for writing this guide up, The Demoman, Versus is now up for all to see! And about time to, I say, as the Demoman is truly one of the more interesting (albeit difficult) classes to play in direct combat (i.e. with support of teammates and pre-existing sticky traps). This leaves just The Heavy, Versus to complete this series, to which I am informed RabbitsFoot has already turned his attention.

So check it out, and excuse the lack of images for the time being (that’s my bad). And please note of course that the Eyelander and Targe are not being considered, as per the other Versus articles as well as per the Demoman’s true role.