New TF2 Update: That's It, It's WAR!

And now the latest TF2 update has begun. This time it's Demoman and Soldier, with the usual routine in place - we'll see three weapons for each of them, new maps, new oddities, achievements, and probably some bloody hats, revealed over the coming week. We'll be determined to wait a few days and put all the updates in one post, and Valve will do something ludicrous each day that forces us to report it anyway, and we'll curse them and their cleverness. Their first trick: there's a secret seventh weapon, and only one of the two classes is going to get it. If more Demomen kill Soldiers over the coming week, then Demoman gets the weapon, and vice versa, monitored via the WAR hub page.

This means each side in the fight is getting their own update page. You can follow the Soldier here, and the Demoman here.

So there's still much speculation. The comic book build up to this moment raises questions. Was that simply a premise to justify a conflict between the two classes? Pretend they'd become friends in order to have a narrative reason to divide them over a desire for a seventh unknown weapon? That seems too weak. I suspect there might be more to this friendship business, especially with all the new Announcer lines that have been recorded, but not deployed.

Surely this is a new game mode? Something involving alliances that either side can violate first, to some interesting cost. Or the option to make a one-to-one friendship mid-game to gain some manner of advantage.

And there's plenty more guessing to be done. What new weapons do you want/expect for either class. And what seventh weapon do you think might exist that's useful (or not, of course) to both Soldier and Demoman?