filed by Agent π
Welcome to Season 22- and an extra-special welcome to a new player joining the Spies in active play! Over the past unknowable unit of time, we have won 3 games and lost 5.
The Election
Once again, the ILB’s selection of Electoral Decrees consists of a handful of new Suns for players to choose from- though with 6 instead of 3 options available and 2 Decrees being ratified instead of 1 this season. Of particular interest is the return of Sun 9 and the Sum Sun, as well as the equally intriguing Equal Sun, which causes the score to become tied when a home run is hit during a game’s final out. And with the Pressure of Sun(Sun) increasing each time it splits (via mitosis, as implied by the text shown when both Sun 30 and Sun .1 were passed), will the next Election mark the meter finally reaching 100?
Many of this season’s 24 (!) different Blessings have either been seen before, and/or are relatively mundane (though not necessarily useless; the return of Darkside Flip marks another opportunity for the Spies to solve their eDensity problems), though there are a few standouts:
- 3 different blessings (Gachapon, Mass Attraction, and Under Taker) recruit players from other teams- with the first of these notably stealing from every other team’s shadows. This implicitly runs an increased risk of Consumer Attacks from the extra eDensity the winning team would pick up, which is why the Georgias seem to be pushing for it- both because the eDensity increase would be negligible in comparison to the massive eDensity decrease they specifically have from Chorby’s Soul II, and also to prevent Clove Ji-Eun, the holder of the Soul, from ending up on another team where the item could cause said team to face a bite-ridden fate not unlike Chorby Soul themselves.
- Subtractor Avoidance and Record Scratch only serve to protect from the modifications Subtractor and Skipping (the latter of which being completely new and with effects completely unknown) from being applied to a random player on the lineup of the team who wins it, unlike evidently (and similarly to Gachapon) every other team. The severity of the penalty from not winning this blessing will come down to several factors- will Reform be available as a Will next Threeson? If so, how much of a risk is there of Subtractor and Skipping from Reforming into a different, potentially worse, negative modifier? And what does Skipping even do?
- The modifications Trader and Traitor (as first seen on Megan Ito in the Pre-History of the ILB) return, though this time in the form of Crate Drops for a team’s entire active roster- so long as players have empty or broken item slots. And with the modification of course going away once a player gives an item carrying it away, Trader specifically is sure to circulate throughout the entire League in the coming seasons- or at least one Sub-League if cross-League series don’t quite line up.
Day 7
It would be a lie to suggest that Day 7 of this season was incredibly interesting compared to some of the games over the past few seasons, though there were certainly a few minor events during it that set it apart from the relative banality of this Monday:
- The Spies failed to receive an item from Glitter weather on Day 7, though Hellmouth Sunbeams batter Eugenia Bickle recieved a pair of Offworld Socks, with Offworld being a new modifier that appears to randomize the ball and strike counts every time Eugenia hits a foul.
- Newly-traded Canada Moist Talkers player PolkaDot Patterson suffered an allergic reaction from swallowing a Peanut, cutting their stats by more than 40%. Adding insult to injury, they had Partied during a Holiday Inning just 5 games prior, bumping them up from 13 stars to 13.7.
- Lastly, Blaseball had an impromptu Siesta after all of the games finished, lasting roughly 4 Material Plane minutes. If there are any tangible effects of this, they have yet to be observed.
Faxes and Voicemails
The Spies’ first game under the new Sun .1 weather led to the Atlantis Georgias beating the Spies 28-3.6. While Alexandria Rosales was Faxed out of play from a grand slam hit by Geraldine Frost in the top of the 5th inning, Alexandria quickly returned with a .6-star stat increase to boot when the Georgias broke 20 runs- Plums Blather, the Spies’ third best pitcher as of the present, also recieved 0.7 stars from the event.
And finally, the Houston Spies welcomed our Season 21 Postseason Birth, Aoife Mahle, into our Lineup, having been Voicemailed in after the team was shutout by the Atlantis Georgias on Day 1. Just 6 days later, she received a pair of Hard Sunglasses of Strength from the Community Chest- whether this was a product of random chance or the sunglasses were put there deliberately as a welcoming present is still unclear. Regardless, boasting an impressive 4.5 stars currently in Batting (0.6 of which being from the aforementioned item), Aoife is a welcome addition to the Spies roster, if not without room to grow- she would be the first player Voicemailed out of our team in the current state of the game, but once she returns to play again, she might be passed over in favor of Sihoban Chark if the stars align, both figuratively and literally.