A big thank you goes out to Control Point for featuring our little contest on their podcast, I think its really kicked things up a notch – Thanks again!

All people who participated won 1 years worth of reserve on the Newbs servers, a forum honorz (will be added tomorrow hopefully), and 1 year of !hatme access (enables you to wear any classes hat). If you participated and want the Newbs server rewards contact me on steam, most of the participants I couldn’t find in the stats db under their entry name so I don’t know their steamid :) I can be reached @ http://steamcommunity.com/id/octodhd

I would like to take this chance to announce the next Newbs Contest… (drum roll) The next contest is the – Newbs Team Fortess 2 Christmas and other Winter Celebrations Contest. All entries will be TF2 and winter solstice themed. Entries can be winter decorations, confections, other food stuffs, songs, snow sculptures, or any other creative work. I will be announcing further details very shortly. If you want to keep track of the latest Christmas contest news please join http://steamcommunity.com/groups/TF2Xmas/. I’m not certain on the prizes yet (looking for some sponsors) but I promise that it will be worth your time :)

Back to the Pumpkins…..

The participants (in alphabetical order) -

Winners:

• Gearpunk
• kitty_tiky
• LlamaMaster

Runner ups:

• binjin
• nfreak
• nil.kemorya
• odinspeed

These were the winning Pumpkins, I’ll be posting all entries in our hall of fame soon (which means by Christmas).

First off the TF2Newbs 2009 TF2 Pumpkin Carving Contest is underway, I havn’t checked if we have any submissions so far, but I’m pretty confident that we’ll have a better turn out than last year (See last years TF2 pumpkin entries). We have decided via poll to allow craft pumpkins, which is good news for those of you who hate pumpkin guts, or wish to save their pumpkin to display next year. For the rest of the Rules for 2009 TF2 Pumpkin Contest check out the link just before these words. The tl;dr basic idea is that you (using a tf2 theme) cut a pumpkin or other pumpkin like thing, take a picture, enter into contest, and get a chance to win L4D2.

As far as L4D2 boycotters go it looks like the boycott movement is sliding even more. Previously when we reported on this, the numbers were at a 2% hypocrite level. This has swelled to 3.8%! As always, be sure to check out the official L4D2 Boycott Lulz Webpage that psychonic has blessed the world with. I’d also like to remind everyone to mark down tomorrow (Oct 18th) on your calendar as Master Server Day. There will be much rejoicing and booze.

In the meantime, feel free to check out last years entries and prepare yourself for the full contest rules post which should be coming shortly.

2008 Team Fortress 2 Pumpkin Contest Results

The full contest rules for The 2009 TF2 Pumpkin Carving Contest will be on this page, its subject to change over the next day or so. But I’ll set them in stone soon enough.

Now onto the meh – Each afternoon I look at my friends list and think “oh wow, TF2 is poppin’ today” until I realize that its just a bunch of people idling for hats. So I began to think how I could save myself from this daily disappointment. After many hours, and countless reams of paper with scrawled notes and calculations I finally had achieved my goal. I had formulated a plan to make the world a better place for everyone. Well at least Newbs.

The plan is simple. Reward people who play on the servers with hats. Yup, you got it – TF2 Newbs is giving away the New Team Fortress 2 hats for free to players. But wait, theres a catch :( I know I know, you’re expecting me to say that you need to sign over power of attorney before you get the hats right? No? Oh.. Hmm. Anyways… So, the catch is that the hats ONLY work on the tf2newbs.com servers. Thats right, you can come in, hang out, borrow a hat, but when you leave you have to leave it with the coat room clerk.

I know what you’re thinking, how can I afford to give away hats to everyone? The answer is simple, I can’t. So I’m going to have to do this as a limited offer. How is this going to work you ask? After much consideration I decided that the lifeblood of the community are the players that are determined to play on a Newbs server, regardless of who is on, and even more importantly even if there aren’t other players on. Yup – I’m rewarding the true heroes of each day, the server starters!

From now until I say otherwise, the players that are on a server when the player count (on teams) reaches 6 will be rewarded with access to our new hats command ‘ !hatme ‘. So if you want hats, join an empty server, get 5 of your friends on, and BAM hats. The hats will be available to you by menu until you leave the server, or the map changes.

There are probably a few players out there that have played on other servers that do have ‘hats’ as a feature, some of them might even be available to everyone that joins, but they probably don’t have a feature that we have (Unless you’re on the nNn clan server). Our hats work on all classes. Yup, you heard that right – you can be an scout with an engineer hat, and you can be a demo with a ushka. Any combination works, and they mostly all look good :)

What you don’t believe me? Well heres some previews..

I’ll update in a couple days with some more pictures, maybe some without me taunting. Oh yeah, this offer is good on servers 3-8 + Arena currently, servers #1,2,2.5 and #10 will be added when possible.

Servers:
#3 24/7 Badwater 113.212.76.6:27015
#4 24/7 2fort (Octo-land) 69.12.98.121:27015
#5 24/7 2fort (Koans Kingdom) 69.12.37.15:27015
#6 Custom Rotation (Koans Kingdom) 69.12.37.16:27015
#7 24/7 Payload Rotation 69.12.37.14:27015
#8 Stock Rotation (Octo) 69.12.37.3:27015
Arena [Chicago] 69.12.91.12:27015

Forum Discussion: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,3745.0.html

A lot of members from Newbs have been spurned by the new item drop system (I know I have). And while the system may not be perfect, Koans decided on Sunday to give users what they wanted. No, not the new unlocks (but I’m sure he would if he could), he went one better over Valve. He threw another (in)famous Newbs Instant Contest: Win Koans’ Money!

Nothing gets people motivated more than cold. hard. cash.

What kind of depraved, whorish, insane shennanigans did Koans’ twisted mind come up with this time around? He challenged the #4 2fort server engineers to build a full setup in the other team’s sink room. Having to build a lvl 3 sentry, lvl 3 dispenser, and working teleporter (exit in sink room and entrance in the home base) proved to be quite difficult and Koans kept everyone motivated by doubling the prize.

There were a few people who got very close (Scott, Ggg, Steven and a few others) but in the end Waffle Frohman rose to the occasion and was victorious! Congratulations. I do hope everyone had a good time, keep an eye out because you never know when and where the next instant contest might be.

On a related note: I’d like to personally thank Koans for putting the time, expense and effort in keeping the community a great place to be. You dont have to be an admin to make these contributions; so if you’d like to donate money, complete something in Octo’s to-do list or anything else you can think of that benefits Newbs you’re welcome to do so.

For immediate Release

Tara Wants You To Win cool stuff!

The Newbs T-shirts have been widely coveted by all the Newbs.

See: http://www.tf2newbs.com/forum/index.php/topic,2789.msg47582.html#msg47582

So… your chance to win one has started today with Tara’s Payload Pimps’ First Official Contest.

Play on #7 (Payload Rotation) and for each 60 minutes of play, you earn one e-ticket into the drawing.

Three winners will each receive:
Custom TF2Newbs.com T-shirt
Custom TF2Newbs.com Mousepad
Reserve Slot on #7
honorz

Newly added: Mini-contests.

Chances for you to win more tickets doing specific things.

The first mini-contest is for designing a new MOTD (that’s the screen you get when you join a server). Due date is Thursday for this one.

Details here:
Contest Details are Great!!! Win Stuffs playing Payload Maps

As always, the most important things are to play nice and have fun!  Oh yeah, and join TPP here: Taras Payload Pimps Steam Group (tf2newbs)

Good luck, and happy birthday in a few days Koans.

What it is:

A contest of wits, skill, and teamwork to be taking place on Server #8 [New York]

When:
Starting February 2nd HLX Stats WITH A TWIST will start to be tabulated. The Contest will run until Saturday February 28th in which the winners will be announced.

How Does it Work?:
Rather than going strictly off of the standard ‘points earned’ from our stats, we decided to make our own NEWB Equation of what we find to be important in a solid overall player. There will be 5 or 6 stats plugged into an equation which equates to NEWB POINTS.

Newb Points? What the…:
Easssy eassy.. I know what you’re thinking. “But Jib, I’m a solid overall team player, who makes an honorable difference on my team.. But I’ll have no chance winning this versus the stat whores”

WRONG… and here’s why. Our specially formulated NEWB Equation is designed to find the best overall players, not the whores. We can’t give away the details but I can tell you uberwanking won’t save you, overall points will be considered, and time on the server is a factor. Beyond that we’ll leave it a mystery to promote solid play.

PrizES?!:
Oh yea. you know it. Top 3 places will be awarded our first run of OFFICIAL TF2 NEWBS TSHIRTS. These are a special one time design that cannot be purchased, or replicated. (Compliments of Jib)

In addition to the gear, First place will be awarded their choice of an EA game! Koans will be posting a list of donated titles to choose from.

What now?!
The only requirement for this contest is that you’re a member of our forums! Once that’s in check get your self on the server and get to work! Keep in mind the objectives of TF2, don’t be a whore and most of all have FUN.

NewbsTf2.com #8 [Octo New York]: 69.12.108.39:27015
Forum thread

JiB…

Fine print:
Admins are not allowed to win, and previous contest winners cannot take first place. Void where prohibited.