TF2 Newbs (Team Fortress 2) Blog

Hey guys, just thought i’d update you on Newbs plan to take from the rich and give to the poor. The idea is we would like to have monthly contests giving away hats, weapons, name tags etc. for your participation in the Newbs community. How will this work you may ask? Read on..

Okay so let’s face it, the forums need a little spark. Newbs should not only be the best place to play TF2 we’d like to make it one of the best online communities. I think we’re there as far as members go, we just need some participation. The last couple weeks we’ve been making small tweaks to the forums to optimize them. Deleting useless threads, and rewarding those who are contributing good content.

For example. Did you know there’s a TF2 Newbs Steam skin? Sha’.. This is the kind of stuff we’re talking about. Quality contributions are going to start to be recognized and rewarded.

INTRODUCING the ‘I Like the Cut of Your Jib’ forum incentive!

How does this work you may ask. Simple. I’ll be taking a more active role in the forums and seeking out quality posts and threads. Are you great at soldier and want to give us some tips? Do a write up! Plush sticky bombs? Do it! Hell I think we made the 10 o’ clock news with that one. You get the idea.

I made an awesome well thought out thread. Now what?

If your thread or post is deemed exceptional you’ll get one of these badboys

What does that mean exactly? 5 Karma, and 30 50 entries into our monthly drawing of items that we’ll be giving away.

How else can you get entries? POST! Every post you make counts as one entry into our monthly giveaway!

Okay so let’s recap. What’s going on?

Newbs is giving away Hats / Weapons / Name tags / Whatever every month. We’ll have a monthly drawing and the more entries you have the higher your chance of winning! You gain multiple entries by submitting awesome content to the website, and one entry per post! There’s a lot more to this, but these are the basics. Great content + great posts = TF2 items for free for you.

This month we’re starting we’re coming out strong.

1st Place this month gets their choice of Either a Voodoo JuJu or a Spine-Chilling Skull!!

2nd Place this month gets a Soldier Stout Shako hat

All Posts from Nov. 1st to Nov. 30th will count as entries! More info to come, but in the mean time get posting!

Quick Summary:
Each post = 1 entry
Great Threads / Posts (I like the cut of your Jib) = 50 entries
Winning or Submitting info for other contests = Bonus Entries
Signing up for the forums = 20 entries

Official Rules can be found here
View your entries here

JiB

Yup, we’re at it again.  We’re having the annual pumpkin carving contest, with 3 prizes (listed at bottom of post).   The contest is simple, carve a pumpkin with a TF2 theme, take a picture, send it in http://www.tf2newbs.com/contests/2010-Team-Fortress-2-Pumpkin-Carving/Pumpkin_uploads/ and wait to win excellent prizes and the respect of your peers.  So pick up a pumpkin on the cheap today or tomorrow, carve/paint/etch it to your hearts content, and submit it.  You’re a winner, now prove it.

In addition to the pumpkin carving contest we are also offering a new contest for people better at the written word.   Write a piece of fanfic involving the TF2 universe, send it in ([email protected]) and cross your fingers.  We havn’t advertised this contest very well, so theres probably a good chance that there won’t be a lot of competition, which is good for you, since it’ll be easier to win.. :)

The prizes for both contests are the same:

1st – $25 worth of games from steam

2nd – $15 worth of games from steam

3rd – $10 worth of games from steam

All entries are due by midnight pacific November 2nd.  Judging will happen on the 3rd.  Please be sure to at least include your email address in the filename, feel free to make it a text file zipped with the pictures.  If you have any additional questions about submitting please contact octo (octodhd’s steam community page)

Just a quick heads up, the new Crab Spy Calendar is up and available just in time for most peoples New Years celebrations. A big thanks goes out to NFreak and all the people that gave him a hand in helping capture great images of Crab Spies in various environments. These folks contributions are detailed in the Credits in the actual calendar release and will be added soon to the official download page.

Go ahead and check it out – http://www.tf2newbs.com/build/crab_spy_calendar_2010/

Since the calendar was incredibly popular last year, be sure to spread the word so that no one misses out on it.

Also a quick update on Newbsmas, due to me not being able to dedicate the proper time to the contest I’ve extended the deadline until Midnight Feb 14th (Pacific). Be sure to get your holiday themed entries in with this extra time I should be able to get some ‘unique’ prizes in to hand out =)

As promised I’m posting the results of the 2nd Annual TF2 Newbs Pumpkin Carving Contest – This year we had 7 entries which is down from last year, but the entries were VERY good. I spent a long time evaluating the Pumpkins trying to decide who should win. I decided that in order to reward those who put the time and the dedication into making a pumpkin and submitting them that I would expand the prizes! So instead of one copy of l4d2 I gave away 3 copies! I had Jib send one to each of the three ‘winning’ pumpkins. The final odds of winning a grand prize in this contest ended up being a 3/7 which means that 42% of the entries won a copy of l4d2! You just can’t beat TF2Newbs odds.

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).

Andy Is Great Contest – Due to low volumes of entries this contest has been extended to Midnight November 15th. The basic premise of the contest is simple – write a < 200 word short essay about why Andy is great. If you believe that you can do the vast topic justice in a couple of sentences have at it - but if you want to get real detailed you have up to an entire page to cover the topic. The prize is a TF2Newbs.com T-shirt (Scout). Remember that we are all about having fun with these contests, so even if you don't think you can win you should still enter, its a small amount of time for a great amount of fun =)

Annual TF2Newbs Pumpkin Carving Contest - This contest is set to end on November 2nd - First place is L4D2. As always with the Pumpkin contest all people who enter will receive a prize (Reserve Slot on a Newbs server of your choice for a year) so its definitely worth the effort. So far we have 4 Entries and hopefully many more to come today - but if we don't then the odds of winning are VERY good :) Last Years TF2 Pumpkin Entries. Entering is very simple, just go to this link and Enter Your Pumpkin (tf2 themed) here for prizes