Good time of day, Agents.
We have received our second Strike, just as planned. We still have no idea what Strikes do, but that certainly isn’t stopping us from planning!
(Also, welcome to the several “new“ Agents who are joining us after having seen the organization around our second Strike. Do feel free to look at our orientation materials.)
Bound
The Umpires appeared at election time, and spoke thusly:
JUDGMENT PASSED
A CREW CHIEF IS NAMED
THE BARD IS BOUND
THE BANDWAGON PLAYS ON
PLAY REMAINS UNDER REVIEW
The Bard Umpire was elected. As best as we know, the Bard appears to rule in favor of Scattered teams, so this might be good. Maybe. It’s completely possible its effect will be changed next week.
But the text on the election itself was different from what they said during the cutscene. To wit:
THE BARD UMPIRE IS BOUND TO THE BOOK
APPEALS HEARD
JUDGEMENTS PENDING
Surely judgment cannot be both passed and pending?
I… think we may actually have two separate speakers here. I mean, “judgment” is spelled two different ways.
Also, what the hell does “bound to the book” mean?
The Plan
Just as planned, we have received Knight Strike with 74% of the votes. Good work, Agents. The Knight Umpire has, accordingly, sent the Core Mechanics’ Chibodee Alighieri to the Shadows in exchange for Svetlana Shepard.
Hilariously, this was the only Blessing that was won by a majority this week. In fact, according to the backend data, 11 out of 15 Blessings were won by a team other than the one that put in the most votes.
Meanwhile, affecting us, the Atlantis Georgias ended up with Bard Strike via wimdy (198 votes??); Agent Scratch Deleuze now can’t lose (which rhymes) and will wander off our roster soon enough, taking their decidedly mediocre 0.530 OPS with them.
Now that we have seen Strikes that correspond to all four Umpires, there is speculation that Strike 0 was actually from the Horizon – because zero is 0, which looks like a hole…
Elsewhere in the League
A necessarily incomplete list.
- The Boston Flowers sorted their lineup, making them even scarier.
- The Moab Hellmouth Sunbeams made Guozhi Ong Learn To Defend. This hasn’t really helped, and in fact has decreased their Reach. There is now speculation about Ong having tiny T-Rex arms.
- The Chicago Firefighters received Dark Matter, which… just made their shadows larger rather than doing anything useful for them. They did get our Shadow Agent Oscar Hollywood, though.
- Baker Caster retreated from the Mexico City Wild Wings, but was (initially) mistakenly not replaced. After several minutes, they called up Shadow Agent Atma Blueberry.
- Agent Jesse Tredwell has been yote from the Kansas City Breath Mints into the Horizon, after just two seasons of active play.
- The San Francisco Lovers won a blessing that was totally ineffective, because it boosted the Magnet of Alvie Kesh… who has 0.02 Reach. T-Rex arms, part two.
- The Tokyo Lift decided to do a Rogue Strike, in hopes of unseating the Mexico City Wild Wings from their height of dominance in Chaotic Evil (a height that they don’t even have anymore; the Yellowstone Magic had a better record this season). It incinerated Johnnyboy Aster of the Ohio Worms instead. Their propaganda poster claims that should it hit the Worms, they would be “acceptable collateral damage”. I’m just surprised that a team could be so blithe while the Spies spent much of this week on spin and public relations.
- Mage Strike has been awarded to the Core Mechanics with a substantial vote percentage despite it being nowhere on their voting guide, likely because it was in their top three voted box throughout the week and thus attracted low-information voters. This Alternated… a player who was Buried underneath the Dallas Steaks.
So, Now What?
As to strategy: Spies avoided the plot for essentially the entirety of Beta, because we were always just a good election or two away from winning. Now that we are so many elections away from winning that the effort is likely not worth it, we may as well turn our attention to the plot. Who knows, we might accidentally end up Tacos-ing ourselves into a really good team along the way.
(If you think otherwise, we’ll have our voting strategy poll as usual next week, or you can drop into our Discord server.)
As to Strikes and The Plan: We’ll just have to wait to see if we are given any more Blessings that look like they do anything interesting.
As to you, yes, you, reading this: Have you taken your medication(s) yet today? According to lore I made up one day and somehow nobody else has objected to, the Spies have a staff psychologist to mitigate the otherwise very high risk of a noir/spy protagonist being an alcoholic. So yes, that’s an actual question.
Have a good offseason. We will reactivate you next week, as usual.