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Its the run up to Christmas, So we have no update to talk about this week. But that’s fine. I’m sure something will be dropped soon….please….Valve. But in the mean time, we decided to make content of our own. What am I talking about? I’m of course talking about our interview with Makani. She is the person responsible for drawing the latest comic series that were enjoying on TF2.com. We ask a whole host of questions in our stand alone interview, which you can check out here.

However, its not just us blowing our own trumpet on how good an interview we got, We also talk about the 300 Steam machines that have now gone out for beta testing. We’re a little upset that it turned out to be a US only affair, but laws are laws. If you want to have a look first hand at somebody uncrating (yes I mean uncrating) one of these, check out this video, or to see how TF2 plays on a steam machine, take a look at this.

Have you ever wanted the heavy to wish you happy birthday? Or the demoman record your voice mail message for you? Now you can. Gary Schwartz, the voice of said 2 classes and other valve characters, is doing a kickstarter for a project to help theatre actors be better prepared. What does that have to do with me getting a custom ringtone you say. Well, if you donate $50 to his kickstarter, he will record a personal message in the voice of one of his characters. Awesome or what?

Then lastly, its all about the raffles. Bazzar.tf’s crystal raffle has now ended, but you can still go back and check out the games that were available, including a little reference to our editor Doug doing a cooking show. Plus TF2r.com are holding a Christmas raffle where you can get your hands on a pile of items to make your friends jealous.

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I wanted to call this episode “Team Fortchess 2” but Doug got his way, and frankly I’m okay with that. This is after all a lovely episode. This week’s update was a simple one, Crates 75, 76 and 77 have been added along with the 2013 Naughty and Nice winter crates. There were a few new strange parts added too, best of which was the Unusual-Wearing Player Kills, something for the poor and Irish.

Just three months after the first, there’s a new Team Fortress comic out called unhappy returns. The covers look uncannily like some classic comics. Best of all we have had an interview with Makani, the artist who draws these comics and a quite a few of those that came before.

Raffles are getting pretty common place now but bazaar.tf have set their apart with their Crystal Bazaar; if you look very closely you can even see Doug getting a mention on The BZ quiz.

Vladar, more famous for his real-life Heavy’s minigun, has created the festive sandvich which we all seem to like a lot more than the TF2 Chess for which but for the love of Doug this episode would have been named.

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It’s all about the gold this week; those who have it, those who win it and those who want it so much they are willing to do just about anything to get it. We’re joined by Majine who has the distinction of being the first person to ever get a Golden Pan. He also sold it for five and a half thousand dollars. ozfortress gets their own gold-ish (more a sort of coppery-brass) medals to distribute to winners of their various events.

The Saxxys happened and we were lucky enough to have been streaming with him when CobaltGemini realised he had won with the Lil’ Guardian Pyro SFM.

TF2Mixup.com is back! And this time it’s going all Arena. You can give your money to all the charities involved by donating to Yogcast Humble Bundle and you will walk away with a Heart of Gold.

Dreamhack, the single biggest LAN event in the world featured an MGE TF2 event in Sweden this week. Ruskeydoo and Agro were there to do their own version of commentary.

The Starfox TF2 team have themselves a developer website which you should defiantly check out.

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Just when we were starting to think it was the end of the line for Valve made additions to the game we get a huge Mann vs Machines update. The Two Cities update features two new MvM advanced maps, Mannhattan and Rottenburg. Medic gets three new MvM-only weapons in the form of the ghostbusters style Reanimator, the Shield and the Mad Milk Syringes.  A few other weapons are tweaked too to make them work better in MvM. There’s a new control point map, Snakewater, that’s been used by the comp scene for years but it’s kinda mad seeing in a game with 12-16 people on each side.

Also included in the update is a new way to flavor your ordinary or otherwise weapons into Killstreak weapons. Ruskeydoo and Heartsman do a pretty good job of explaining what that means while Agro thinks hard of questions to ask our guest this week. The RPS featured creator of the End of the Line trailer and Practical Problems entry to the Saxxys 2012, Jame McVinnie. He has news about his own TF2 update and lets slip a secret or two about what’s going to be in it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RYeKYj4vEY?list=PLMBFalydzo5_E4S3cI9hA3_3_ipvT6nzC]

Speaking of Saxxys, this year’s competition is coming to a head so they get a mention but not before we lambaste ESEA for their bitcoin farming ways. Now that they have been fined (pinky finger in the corner of the mouth) one million dollars it’s hardly surprising that AG are looking to move to CEVO.

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As we say goodbye to another year of Halloween it’s not it’s with some regret that we can’t actually tell you what Eternaween looks like. In theory it should be dark and sinister with silly hats for hours but you need a registered server and no-where we’ve tried it seems to work. What makes this doubly frustrating is that there are 13 new Merasmus voice lines including such beauties as “Happy Halloween mode!“ and our favourite “Welcome to T-G-I-Halloween, where it’s always Halloween! I’m Merasmus, your server! We have a couple of lovely specials tonight: ONE OF THEM IS YOUR OWN DEATH! The other is loaded tuscan flatbread.” Mmmm, loaded tuscan flatbread. Maybe we have to wait till the next full moon though since that’s when the Halloween spells will have their visible effects.

On the no-wait list we have the Collectors item quality. Just combine 200 of your identical unique quality item with a special chemistry set and out pops one red weapon. Totally worth it. As are voting for this year’s Saxxys, which as luck would have it has begun. Corporate Secrets and Crackpot are two examples of the level of quality we’re seeing in 2013. Be sure to keep an eye on our YouTube and Facebook pages where we’ll be highlighting some of our other favs.

Looking out to our friends at TF2maps.net they are having a 72hr Winter Mapping event in a few.. well a few months. Kick off date is Jan 17th but that’s no reason to not start getting excited now. You’ll have to maintain that excitement over Thanksgiving and Smissmass but hey, call it tantric practise. Until then Hideous joined us to chat about some of the interesting winter themed items appearing in the Steam Workshop: The Arctic Adventurer, The Chronoscarf, xmas_Ball_2 and The Puff Papa. One think you’ll not see this season, or ever again for that matter is the ID badge. This little unused item has been completely removed from the game.. aww, I would have bought one and given it to Gordon Freeman since it’s his 15th and 9th birthdays for the first and second Half Life games.

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Halloween is finally over. But that won’t stop us from talking about it and what classes got what. We chat about our impression of the event, How we would have done it differently and cover the new fixes and changes that were made to smooth it all out. Plus we laugh ourselves silly at some of the cut medic lines.

This week we’ve brought in Sir gray. One of the admins from PPM trading group, who this week hosted an event/video of a $9000 Spy crab bet. We take this chance to discuss why such things happen, how the trading community reacted to some of the new items/unusual effects

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rqTWmTxPR8?rel=0]

Valve let some of the worlds tech and game media get their first hands on look at the new steam machines. If only we were some of those people, Then we’d answer the most important question of all…..does the controller lend itself to TF2?

What do you do if TF2 Lobby goes down? You bombard TF2 Center, the Work In Progress replacement, with requested for a beta. That is exactly what happened on Sunday. As such, TF2 Center did a 1 day open beta. How much better will it be than the currently abandoned TF2lobby? Ruskeydoo, who had a chance to try it, Thinks it will be a lot better.

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The Halloween event is apon us. Which is more than can be said by the DOTA2 fans. We’re not shoving it in their faces, all I can say is that at least Swedish car manufacturer Volvo has a sense of humor.

In our evil update we get a new map, Helltower. It’s actually a revamp of Hightower with the addition of a hell mouth and spells and corpses and skeletons and yes, it as as complicated as it sounds. Maybe even more so. Alongside the map and fireballs there’s one hundred and two new items to find/buy/uncrate. I was going to list them all here then I thought.. why would I do that when you can find them all on the wiki? Along with the items is something quite interesting. The Enchantment: Eternaween which is supposed to make any map into a Halloween map.  There’s a couple of videos for you here too. The possibly leaked Valve Stream Fortress 2 vid and the removed taunts.