I've had some good luck playing Team Fortress 2 since I was kicked off one of my favorite servers the other night. On my new servers of choice I am quickly becoming known as "that guy", because I play very upfront on a server that likes to play "lets set up a camp and farm these newbs". As these screenshots show, my play style usually prevails.
A couple notes:
1. I prefer to play on 32 player servers for the map ctf_2fort. It provides more action and prevents a lot of the quick wins from occurring. On the other maps, I prefer to stick to 24 player servers. ctf_2fort is the only map that I feel comfortably holds 32 players.
2. Instant-spawn sure beats waiting twenty seconds between deaths, but it sort of defeats the purpose of capture-the-point maps.
3. I try to mix up the classes I play. I usually run as a medic for a few minutes to start a match and get a feel for where people are playing. I then focus on playing an engineer offensively, which can really piss people off, while mixing in a few rounds as the other classes.