Okay, Ladies and Gentlemen, the wait is (almost) over; the Engy Update is approaching fast. Yesterday the pages for the Engy Update on the blog went live; finally making the update official.
Of course the revelation of the pages were preceded by a mystery of actual golden wrenches dropped on a small number of players, a number which slowly increased in the evening. Finally the Engy Update page shed some light into that mystery.
Over the next four days 100 people will receive a numbered version of the Golden Wrench who will craft some item. To this time it is not known if there are any further criteria influencing the chance to receive the GW or if it’s totally random for any kind of crafting. [1]
Valve promised to spread the drops to make it fair for all time-zones (a lesson they’ve learned after the protests on the Soldier’s Service Medal which was released late afternoon american time, favouring the american players.
According to the blog every 25 dropped wrenches another detail of the Engy Update will be revealed. What I can’t say so far is if that means that we’ll get only three new weapons (or items) incl. achievements and after the 100th drop the update goes live or if we will get four parts of new content (e.g. a new map) and the update will go live a day later.
Which means the Engy Update will be released either Thursday or Friday (night; for us europeans 
).
Personally I hope it will be Thursday; not because I’m impatient, but because that would give Valve another workday to fix bugs before the weekend 
So following the schedule the first new engy weapon has been revealed shortly after the 25th wrench was dropped. It’s the shotgun which we already saw in the Macupdate teaser. The shotgun is called Frontier Justice.
The Frontier Justice holds only half the count of ammo than the regular shotty and does not get regular crits.
Instead it receives what Valve calls revenge crits. For each kill of the engineer’s sentry the engy received two guaranteed crits for the FJ. If the sentry is destroyed the engy will receive bonus crits (the amount is unknown so far). Also unknown is if the scope in the FJ will actually work.
This weapon seems to be geared mostly towards the defensive engineer or – to a lesser degree – to the aggressive offensive engy. But usually it’s difficult for an offensive engy to rack up many kills with a sentry before it’s destroyed, so on offense this will be highly situational.
However, for the defensive engineer this can easily prove to be a huge buff. If the damage scheme is the same as for the regular shotgun a crit means 180 damage, which will seriously hurt medium and strong classes. Two hits can even kill an unbuffed heavy.
That will also give the engy a bit more edge against spies (at least those not using the Dead Ringer).
To be honest my first impression about the Frontier is rather mixed.
For one it does not help the offensive engy (on CP and A/D maps), which I feel needs some addressing. Hopefully one of the other items will cover that area.
But more gravely it will strengthen the defensive engy and can greatly contribute to fight off enemy attacks. This will definitely make some defensive-oriented maps like Dustbowl or Goldrush hell to attack.
The main good aspect of the weapon is that it will not scale to the number of engies, since the number of possible kills is finite and collected crits will simply be spread between multiple engies. In that regard two engies will not be twice as effective.
Still, I’m already half expecting the FJ to be slightly nerfed in the future.
Okay, looks like the second new item will be uncovered soon. Stay tuned ...
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PS: Rereading the blog it clearly states "culminating in the long-awaited Engineer Update this
Thursday", so that one’s answered.
PPS: New speculations suggest the Frontier Justice might store crits from the engy’s sentry which will only be released once the sentry is destroyed, either by the enemy or by self-destruct. That would explain the term revenge crits.
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