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A few maps received fixes this week, though none of that matters compared to the hugeness that is hud_combattext_batching_window. I know what you’re thinking, and yes we did explain what that means in the show.

On a equally dramatic note, The Guardians of Destiny are now officially on the same network as KritzKast, “thePodkast.com“, the same place you’ll find content from Reachcast, How to Murder Time and Podtacular. Go take a listen and let us know who you want us to drag on to our show.

Gabe Newell did a Reddit AMA and let slip his TF2 habits. He could be anyone! TF2maps.net drop their big Japan content pack.

In trading news, Pink Taco gets hijacked, the highest value trade (in TF2’s history) goes down and Pika decides to go on the offensive with phisher fighting.

We shall leave you with some excellent End of the Line themed cosplay to browse through while you listen to this week’s episode.

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The best websites are the ones that when they appear you think to yourself, “I’ve been waiting for this forever” but you’re not actually sure you have been until just then. This is the case with Loadout.tf and TF2Center.com. The first a dress-up site for your classes and only really in early beta, the latter a lobby-replacement which is pushing into release candidate status.

In lieu of an update Sir Grey pulls up a soapbox to give us something to think about. Mainly with regards to Premium Accounts servers, in particular how they may be breaking what’s left of TF2 community quickplay with their evil botish ways.

There’s a slew of art for your attention with Pixel Medic, TF2 Lineart, Ceramic Archimedes and an updated TF2 paint swatch.

Lastly ETF2L are recruiting. I know of at least two previous senior admins who’ve gone on to have careers in gaming, so if that’s what you’re aiming for, and you love TF2 there could be worse ways to spend your evenings while you listen to this week’s show.

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Did you hear the news. We have an interview with Gary Schwartz. The voice of the Heavy & Demoman. Click to to listen to it now…..NOW! Of course we’ll be talking about the interview, but in this episode we’ll be talking about the Thief promo items added to the game this week.

Over at facepunch, its Competition season. They’ve just finished their Arms race weapon mod contest providing the workshop with gallons of weapons for valve to look at…..and add to the game…..we hope. But they’ve started the Vehicle Prop Contest. Where people are encouraged to make props of all the possible vehicle in the TF2 univerise. Why? facepunch feels that map makers need a little more love now and again. We agree.

Then there’s the lego. All the lego. Some of the things people have been making this week are amazing. Imagine a working (minus death) scatter gun made out of lego, Or PL_upward or even a gunslinger. Also take a look at the End of the Line train Gif, the trailer for the Free to Play documentary, artwork for 1 refined Plus the VIDEO OF THE WEEK

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This week’s update was all about the fixes, baby.

Valve adds tags to their game descriptions which means we can now officially list TF2 as hats and our guest host STAR_ can list Towns as scam. 

Steam’s VAC utility seems to be tracking your domains.
==UPDATE==
After recording this week’s episode Gabe Newell, CEO of Valve, released this information to reddit explaining what what going on.

In the community we get to go “oo” and “ah” at DarkLitria’s interpretation of pyro as well as her more dystopian cyborg team fortress 2. We take a look at tophercrez‘s Pyromancer ceramic mask.

Over in ozfortress the 9th Ultiduo event was opened, closed and played out on the same day. [update: And here’s the video, thanks to ooloops] Staying on comp for a moment, ETF2L Highlander Season 6 signups have opened. You have until Feb 27th to get your team signed up.

One of our brave/reckless listeners, Voltz, had offered to compose an image of your favourite class and its loadout in SFM. Since we pushed out the message in Facebook the demand for his images was somewhat overwhelming and we were forced to lock the thread. Since then an overflow thread was opened and we’re looking for budding SFM artists to give it a go.
==UPDATE==
Looks like we’ve had a couple of artists, ?UP | Darkbluematter and >{GHS}< Princess Cherry Picklers come to our rescue and Voltz is back on form now too.

Lastly we take a look at the ZaziNombies’ LEGO syringe gun.

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The moment has come, we can finally reveal what hidden in the strongboxes. Cosmetics. Very good cosmetics, but cosmetics none the less. With the update we also gained some bioshock promo items, weapon balances and massive change to the way quickplay works. Listen now for all the details.

Also covered this week is the steam music beta, many of Gary Schwartz voice lines for fans, the winners of the 72hr mapping contest and the SA show match using one of the winners. Plus our video of the week ten thousand feet.

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Social groups collide

Moments of Winter Classic

Yellow snow… profit

#TF2Haiku

 

Our thanks go to SleepDepJoel for the use of his artwork in this week’s show notes.

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It’s amazing how little changes can make such a huge difference. Valve made their own servers the default for Quickplay causing a torrent of tears from devastated server owners.

That too is how some traders felt after SourceOp appeared to shut down their PayPal rep forums. So many well regarded traders almost lost years of work they’d put into building their reputations. While the issue may have been resolved now, at the time of recording the only information any of us had was from an interview Sir Grey did with one of their admins.

Following up on last week’s visit by Fr0z3n, we look at the maps which have emerged from the 72hr Winter Classic. We’ve played some of them but come on …. there’s over fifteen hours of gameplay there! If you want to try them out before voting ends we have a server running all the entries.

Featuring our own Ruskeydoo we give you the Reddit vs Tumblr Showmatches, but with so many matches happening will the question of which has the best TF2 players be answered here? Staying on comp for a moment, Team Awesome also had their one day HL cup  on the Sunday while we recorded.

Finally, a shout out to redditer corlore for using his intelligence to craft the only sign of intelligence you’re likely to see here for a while. And Legopie3 gets a mention too for his lego teleporter.