Good whatever-the-hell-it-is-now, Agents! Since our last correspondence, the Houston Spies have won 12 games and lost 13.
It Smells Like Umpdog In Here
filed by Agent א
We’ve been able to see the umps in action over the past day, and we’ve been able to confirm what they do. Well, most of them. The Mage Umpire calls Alternates, the Bard Umpire gives Curses, and, as we already know, the Rogue Umpire Incinerates people. The Knight Umpire has terrible aim, and keeps getting its attempts to do something to various players “parried”. Furthermore, the umps can “rule in favor” of players instead of doing anything bad to them.
Here’s all of the Ump Events I’m aware of:
- Mage: Alternated Haruta Byrd, Daniel Mendoza, and Ryuji Ngozi. Ruled in favor of Vaquita Magno.
- Knight: Swore at Letitia Drop (What did they do to deserve being cussed out?). Ruled in favor of Agan Espinoza. Parried by Winnie Hess, Badgerson Stromboli, and Yosh Carpenter.
- Rogue: Incinerated Velasquez Alstott, Chae DeShields, Beef Knight, Ramiel Jang, Baldwin Jones, and Soojin Gloom. Ruled in favor of Jana Beats.
- Bard: Cursed Jenkins Ingram with Can’t Lose. I await the giant horde of Can’t Lose players collecting and piling onto whatever team happens to be winning, like a living title belt. Ruled in favor of Jenkins Good (what does the Bard have against people named Jenkins?). Dodged by Tiana Takahashi, Anathema Elemefayo, and Tad Seeth.
Velasquez was replaced by Hana Wildebeest, Chae DeShields was replaced by Juke Gnocchi, Beef Knight was replaced by Flan Prince (a second food and royal title), Ramiel Jang was replaced by Mina Scihantha and then, due to a display bug, stepped up to bat despite being dead – arguably a new record for the necromancy any% speedrun?, and Baldwin Jones was replaced by Baker Caster. Sigh. It’s only Season Two.
It’s been speculated that the Umpires are ruling in favor of teams with their matching Modification rather than attacking them.
Past Spy and beloved double agent Donia Bailey has been re-shadowed. Donia had been in the Shadows since β6, and was spit out of the Black Hole onto the Los Angeli Unlimited Tacos. Erin Beanbag crashed into Donia last night in my time zone, anyway, sending Donia straight back to the Shadows.
Sorry, Donia.
So Yes, We Do Want To Strike Out
filed by Agent O
Our outreach poll (the one mentioned yesterday) has over 100 responses, and – filtering for Spies responses only – we have a 3/4 supermajority of support for attempting to receive more Strikes. Even if we only count Strongly Support, that’s still 57%, a clear majority.
This is about as clear-cut as any of our polling has ever been. More than, really.
So here’s The Plan. As there are two different and mutually exclusive interpretations of the Strike Blessings – either the team that votes for the Blessing will receive a Strike, or the team that votes for the Blessing will issue a Strike to another team at random – we must hedge our bets.
We will collectively vote on one of the Strike Blessings; we do not currently have a consensus on which one.
Then, if possible, we want to get other Awful Evil teams to go for the other 3 Strike Blessings, and then hope that they hit us.
This is a very dangerous plan. We are knowingly and willingly inviting the Umpires to our door. If we win this Blessing we will be hitting another team. Furthermore, the chance-based nature of the Blessings means that it is extremely likely that – even if other teams win the other Strikes – instead of Striking us, the umpires will instead Strike other teams in our Division.
Given the extremely high excitement for this plan from within the Spies, I no longer have the ability to say that we shouldn’t do it if all the other teams don’t agree – because I’m pretty sure the votes are coming in regardless. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.
We have sent out feelers to other teams in our Division; they will have the same >24 hours to respond that we give our own proposals. Not all teams are equally enthusiastic, but there are a lot of people who are willing to join us in !@#$ing around and finding out.