Although some of the hype for TF2 has died down a little since last year, Valve is still working wholeheartedly on the project. They just released a very spontaneous patch, and although anyone who has launched Steam recently already has it, they may not know about all of the new matchmaking features and adjustments that have been made.
Highlights:

• Tournament mode w/ team creation features and win/loss tracker
• Searchable description tags on servers
• Maximum ammo for Soldier and Demoman greatly reduced

Full release notes after the break…

Added “Custom” tab to the server browser

• Servers can now specify metatags describing the custom rules they’ve adopted
• Players can use tag filtering to find servers running the custom rules they want to play
• Added options for servers who want to become custom games: Disable critical hits (tf_weapon_criticals), eliminate respawn times (mp_disable_respawn_times), and raise maxplayers above 24

Initial release of Tournament mode (mp_tournament)

• UI for handling team naming, ready mode, and win results
• Disables team player limits, autobalancing, and intermission

Class balancing

• Reduced Soldier’s maximum rocket reserve ammo from 36 to 16
• Reduced Demoman’s maximum sticky bomb reserve ammo from 30 to 16
• Reduced Demoman’s maximum grenade launcher reserve ammo from 40 to 24

General

• Added protection against voice command spamming. Dramatic reduction in teleporters needed
• Fixed mp_timelimit ending the map during the middle of a round on maps like Dustbowl and GravelPit
• Fixed “lastdisguise” command not remembering if you were disguised as your own team
• Added “Toggle Disguise Team” binding in Options->Keyboard to toggle the disguise team for the Spy’s PDA
• Changed PDA menus to accept keys bound to “slot1″, “slot2″, etc., and “slot10″ cancels
• Fixed Spectator targetID not using team colors
• Changed team autobalance code to not balance the teams when the active round timer shows less than 60 seconds
• Fixed “-maxplayers” on the command line not correctly setting the maxplayers value for the server
• Fixed Badlands never having Sudden Death triggered
• Fixed Engineer being able to detonate buildings that are being sapped
• Changed Engineer buildings to detonate when a player disconnects instead of blinking out
• Fixed potential client crash for players being healed by a Medic or dispenser
• Made several improvements to server-side stat reporting (not related to individual player stats)