That helmet ain't gonna save you.

This one took a bit more time to do than the others, mainly because I’ve never done bendy straps like the ones holding the bars to the padding before.

As always, get it from here, or from FPSB.

Serverside version is here.

The administrator is not pleased.

As we’ve come to expect from the last few updates, there’s the first thing you see when you join a server:

Not only are there tons of scouts jumping around, even the other classes are affected. Engies will not build teleporters and heavies won’t equip their sandviches; after all, who’d want to help the enemy?

Spies had a buff in the form of being able to switch weapons, but nobody is playing that class due to the low chance of getting a kill on a speedy target.

Besides the weapons, the scout has received a ton of new voice files which are quite possibly the best in any TF2 update so far.

The Bonk drink pretty much renders you invulnerable to anything but explosions and melee attacks for a five second period. This means that you can tie up sentries during that time, and your teammates can attack them without getting shot. You don’t seem to go that faster though, and you can still be blocked by enemies, so it’s usefulness in it’s intended situation is debatable.

The force of nature is a double barreled shotgun that deals about the same amount of damage per hit as the scattergun, at twice the rate of fire, but with only two shots per clip. The effect it has on you and on enemies is interesting. No matter where you aim, you always get pushed upwards, and horizontally in the opposite direction of your shot. That’s right, you can aim straight up, and you’ll still get an extra jump! Hitting an enemy either sends them flying or punts them upwards, if they’re running towards you. This is extremely annoying when you’re playing as a pyro! The first shot sends you upwards, leaving you wide open for a follow-up shot. Even glancing blows tend to root you in place.

The sandman is the new bat, which comes with a baseball. You only get one ball, and you always launch it when you attack if you have it in your inventory. The only way to swing the bat with your ball in your hand is to get up point blank to something. After you hit the ball you can either retrieve it by running over it (which is how you can get the Beanball achievement: by picking up another scout’s ball) or just wait 10 seconds to automagically generate a new one.

Now when you hit an enemy he will get stunned and thrown into a third person animation akin to a taunt. Stun time depends on how much the ball travels, or if it’s a critical. Getting hit by a ball in the midst of a firefight pretty much guaratees your death, regardless of how long you’re stunned! However, the ball is hard to aim on moving targets and it doesn’t always stun people for some reason.

On a closing note, Natascha seems to be bugged again. That’s right, one of the greatest counters to scouts just lost it’s main advantage right when it’s needed the most. Sweet timing!

Edit: Then again, Valve decided to go ahead and post the official achievement descriptions a several hours after the leak. Looking over them, it seems that the last scout unlock will be called the “Force-A-Nature”

There is also talk about the scout unlock being a breech-loaded shotgun with kickback. The kickback sounds strong enough to allow you to triple-jump.

EDIT: It was pointed out to me somwhere else that the linked picture shows the scout holding what looks like his NEW scattergun (there is no more round holder in it). Although that doesn’t really say anything about what it will do, it is fun to note.

EDIT (2): I also just realized that the same picture depicts the scout running infront of what is definitely one of the new VALVE maps- the blurred picture in the background shows both a RED and a BLU cart- now I can say for sure that the new map type is a double-payload map.

The first part of the update reveals the new ‘BONK’ Energy Drink. By all appearances, BONK is a consumable item (like the Sandvich) which speeds up the scout for the duration of its effect, but afterwhich causes “feelings of lethargy that can last several seconds.” EVD pointed out that it may also allow someone to dodge bullets (but exactly how isn’t stated).

The second part is the icons and names of all Scout Achievements (without the details).

The VALVE server this is all hosted on appears to be rather slow, so here’s a complete copy of the names of the Achievements:

The two maps this time are arena_watchtower:

And cp_junction:

These two have been floating around the community for awhile. The first makes ample use of the Alpine terrain that, so far, we have only seen in Lumberyard (however, I’m a little disappointed that this one is another arena map). The second takes place completely inside a building (think ctf_turbine) and, from my experience, looks pretty damn cool.

So, while I’m personally waiting for any official VALVE maps, I’m already looking forward to these. They both look awesome, and sound fun to play (I’ve only seen Junction myself.)

You Scouts are gonna love this highly collectible bat that smacks baseballs at the other team, stunning the living crap outta anybody dumb, slow, drunk, mute or Australian enough to get in the way. The farther the ball flies before ricocheting offa some chucklehead’s skull, the longer he’s gonna be stunned. And guys who think they’re tough because they’re invulnerable? It works on them too. Now the bad news: You can’t double jump when you’re carrying this little beauty. On the other hand, double jumping never put anybody in a coma.

Oddly enough, I remember Valve being against degenerative gameplay, and being batted repeatedly by a fast scrawny guy is annoying enough even when you can move, but right now you can’t really tell how this is all going to play out.

Keep checking the scout update page of the TF2 blog over the next few days to find out what else Valve has in store for us.

So, the community site is launched. Go post on the forums, play on the server, use the [MnG] tag, and have fun!

Feel free to comment.