http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5vJAEHmiB4&feature=player_embedded

It’s basically a group of GW owners deciding to ‘donate’ their wrenches away for charity. They’ve collected nearly $2000 so far, and at least three Golden Wrenches will be destroyed. Check it out!

The independent Mini-Sentry is basically the opposite of the rather needy standard sentry, as it works best left alone while you go off to fight elsewhere, popping back to reload occasionally.

It was a happy moment, but after killing him and his disgruntled medic (who had expected better protection against enemy engineers, if nothing else), I realized something. I had to reload before firing any hand-held gun, since my pistol had been swapped for the Wrangler, and when I was finished reloading, I might want to keep those crits for situations just like the one so recently and satisfactorily concluded. What I needed was the pistol: it’s a long-range spam cannon that doubles as a close-range backup, in case I’ve just got one crit left and want to make it count on a med rather than waste it on some errant pyro, and it’s got effectively unlimited ammunition. I give up the Wrangler for this, but I’d been spending too much time on the move to make much use of that anyhow.

Nonomu: I wanna play with my new Engy toys, but not on a team of 16 Engies against a team of 16 Engies. In fact, I’m starting to realise I don’t like playing on any server with more than 16 players, whatever class they are. Got onto a great server playing only the new maps, 6v6 most of the time, and it was the most fun I’ve had in TF2 for months. So little Demo spam, Sentry nesting, and getting cut down in aimless crossfire; suddenly tactics work again.

All the changes are great. I haven’t been much of a fan of the engineer (not having perfect placement of the sentry has been a downfall of mine.)

The gunslinger is great for an offensive engie, it dies quick at the front line so if your getting kills (unlikely) or assists (quite likely) it tops up your frontier justice with revenge crits. There is nothing like lining up some poor sucker who sees your little sentry as an easy kill when you’re waiting for it to die to pop a crit into them. I’m not sure if using the wrangler with it is always a good idea, the wrangler is like having a massive sign saying sentry here, and the mini-sentry is so small it can go unnoticed in the chaos of battle and rack-up those assists.

I thought the wrangler would be great to kill people from across the map, but it’s not quite that simple. Not until they ban snipers that is. Snipers are still the kings of long range, and if your sentry is too exposed it can be rocketed to death from very far away soldiers (unless you pack it up and hide). It is great fun to take a hand in killing people and spy checking with your own sentry though.

Also, Hightower needs a time limit. I played a match that lasted an hour and a half with both carts waiting to go up the lift.

This was driving me nuts. Bot games are the only ones I can enjoy at the moment.

RIP.

Additionally, on the update page it says that the Gunslinger replaces the pistol, which it doesn’t….

I generally always use the Southern Hospitality over the regular wrench, because it’s great against spies and you shouldn’t really be going up against pyro’s anyway…

“Cannot be repaired or upgraded” is one of the key attributes of the Mini Sentry.

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2010/07/Gunslinger.jpg

To be honest, I’m struggling to justify the use of the Gunslinger. If it were the only type of Sentry with infinite range when Wrangled, or if it didn’t have the damage nerf, fine. But infinite range, healable, shieldable, movable level 3 Sentries are just way, way too good for anything else to compete, however convenient.

And yeah, the first few achievements are easy, as ever, and I reckoned there were about 10 I could do even in the chaos of Engygeddon. But it takes 15 for the Wrangler, which is what I really wanted, so I crafted for it instead.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/07/09/the-quickest-way-to-get-the-wrangler-in-tf2/

Neat side-effect of this: having the Wrangler makes it much easier to get a bunch more achievements. Had the Gunslinger in minutes.

Once we’re past the inevitable everyone wants to play an engineer post update phase, it’ll be interesting to see how this changes strategy and teamwork. For example, you can build your sentries up to level three by the supply closet and then take them through another engineer’s tele to the front line and the wrangler engie working with a traditional turtling engie seems like a strong combo.

I’m already loving that this makes offensive engineering that much more valuable. Also, as someone who played engineer sparingly, this is looking like it will make the role more fun in general.

Also, Upward is the best map that’s been released in a while. Incidentally, it’s unerringly similar to a concept I’d come up with for a map, but lacked the Hammerskill to make it happen.

A great update, for sure. I’m just sad we still don’t have Meet the Pyro.

They’re all pretty awesome, IMHO, though It’ll be interesting to see how they work in a “normal” game.

More interesting than that should be seeing whether the wrangler makes for changes in how certain maps are played. Having essentially unlimited range is a bit crazy. I don’t think it’ll unbalance things much, due to the downsides Valve added, but i’m curious to see if and how it affects the flow of maps (and which maps!).

Speaking of maps, Thunder Mountain and Upward are excellent (I love Thunder Mountain’s flourishes, both audio and final-explosion-based). Coldfront is fine (i’d allready played it quite a bit before it became official). It’s Hightower that’s the odd one out. So far, it looks like one hell of a stalematefest. That said, I found it very enjoyable, especially when sneaking around back alleys as a pyro or spy (again, hopping around corners to homewreck stuff is great fun). Surprisingly, I found demoknight to be very useful on thsi map in a few weird ways. There are a number of major pathways that have T intersections with little used sidepaths, and they seem to be perfectly set up for hiding in and then charging out, sword swinging into enemies. There’s even one part where the far side of the intersection is another side path that contains lots of health…makes for fun ambushes.

Anyways…yay Valve! (though a bit of a boo for no meet the team video)