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Debriefings

MATH MINUS

Season 23 Thursday: Thieves’ Guilds take Math and Yrjö. We set a new scoring record. Gift Shop results. Who decocted Liquid Friend?

filed by Agent O

We couldn’t predict that so many Shadow Agents were going to get assigned to undercover missions this unknowable unit of time. I mean, we won 19 games and lost 6, sure. And nothing has happened to our active roster (well… almost nothing; see below). And really, none of the players we lost were in a fax or voicemail queue, so we weren’t going to see them anytime soon anyway. But. Well.

Turnover

Dunlap Figueroa, previously of the Hades Tigers and Hellmouth Sunbeams, Super Roamed to our team thanks to the Fifth Base. I have been informed that Dunlap Figueroa and Chet Takahashi are being very — shall we say — Shakespearian with each other. I mean, by this point we’ve established that Chet does love their drama, having pitched in every single Solar Eclipse game we’ve had thus far.

Alexandria Rosales got swept Elsewhere, received a pair of Gravity Shoes from the Community Chest while still Elsewhere, and is hopefully going to return Scattered enough for their Undefined to kick in. (Fitzgerald Blackburn is also Elsewhere but did not receive any new equipment.)

…Ugh. Fine, I won’t bury the lede any further. Due to more Thieves’ Guild activations, Math Velazquez is in the shadows of the Miami Dale and Yrjö Kerfuffle is in the shadows of the Hades Tigers. I don’t know if it was by choice, by accident, or by Agency order.

“But we have so many other Shadows to take, why did we have to lose three players of sentimental value?” Before this started, almost half our Shadows had already seen active play and thus had some manner of sentimental value. It would honestly have been even more surprising, probabilistically speaking, if all three had been players we didn’t care about. And my suspicion is that the idea for the Guild was concocted before Wills, fax, and voicemail made the Shadows feel so close to the surface – back before the Shadows were where we put every single player who wasn’t quite good enough to keep up with our all-star roster.

Spies fans have been seen sitting and staring blankly at each other in black-and-white sketches.

I do have to say, though, if the Miami Dale teach Math to loosen up a bit, and the Hades Tigers use being fireproof to make sure that Yrjö’s charge Norris Firestar Jr. gets to grow up properly this time…

What Even Are Numbers Anymore

Scoring in Blaseball is increasingly losing its meaning.

Math was “borrowed” after a game where the Spies scored 43.9 runs – setting both the record for most runs scored by one team in one game (that), and most runs scored by both teams in one game (46.4). I suppose it doesn’t matter that our team’s pitchers’ ERA is above 6 when the team can bat in that many runs. There’s been rumors that Math went to the Dale specifically to investigate the pitcher of that game, the Magnified Caleb Novak.

Also, there was a game where the Yellowstone Magic managed to stuff the Kansas City Breath Mints’ flagship pitcher and prize destrier Winnie Hess into the fax machine, by scoring 11 runs in 1 inning. They then lost this game.

Then there’s the game the Kansas City Breath Mints won over the Baltimore Crabs due to a floating point error, with a score of 20.300000000000001 to 20.3.

Flames Rising

The Debted Silvaire Roadhouse, two and a half seasons after having Flinch rerolled to Debt, has claimed her first two lives: Helga Washington and Jon Halifax of the Kansas City Breath Mints. One of them will be dearly missed. The other is Jon Halifax.

“PAYMENT PENDING”, announced the Commissioner’s Twitter account, just like with Jaylen Hotdogfingers’ original Debt. “BALANCE: OUTSTANDING”. (To which the Anchor responded “Just stop, please”. What does he know that we don’t?)

Agent Pudge Nakamoto, at the time undercover with the Ohio Worms, was incinerated for the second time. Rumor has it that they’re smuggling some notes and operational supplies back to the Hall of Flame for our Agents there. Jomgy Rolsenthal had some ideas on how to improve the radio that Miki Santana made out of two wristwatches and an electric piano.

Just As What Again?

The wordplay in the function of the “Stables” stadium modification that we built, and that was then promptly ratified, is exquisite: if a team scores 25 or more runs, “any Instability in the ballpark will be Stabled”. (Though it’s not certain what this means quite yet, the Spies have had enough absurdly high-scoring games this season that it could actually happen.) We also added more Glitter weather to our ballpark (Glitter weather comes with a chance of item drops), and the Fax Machines were also ratified. Being ratified means the Fax Machine has officially been removed from the Oven. Stick a fork in it, it’s done.

Meanwhile, our gifts were aDense Infusion (a good number of our players’ held items are now buoyant), and Late to the Party (we overperform during the lateseason).

I observed something strange about our gift wishlist, though. It contained both Early to the Party and Late to the Party. Why, you might ask? We performed well at the beginning of the season, and then utterly crashed in the middle, which meant that it would have been difficult to estimate whether or not we could even make an overbracket run. Without a clear favorite like the Mints were, though, it might be worth the gamble to get into the postseason. And given how many supernumerary wins have been thrown around by the various Suns this season, we might not even have been able to make it to party time at all, no matter how much assistance we got.

Speaking of our plans, we have also borrowed a rather clever obfuscation technique from the Yellowstone Magic: if a message contains spoiler content, such as Forbidden Knowledge, react to it with a black square (instead of a more expressive emoji that might reveal whether the thing under the spoiler is to be feared, celebrated, or otherwise). There have been many black squares, as our weather forecast for this lateseason includes the prospect of seven solar eclipses.

Technically Correct, Entirely Unhelpful

There were a handful of other latesiesta results of note.

Several teams received, and took advantage of, the opportunity to build “Night+”, a stadium renovation that would increase the incidence of Night weather. Night weather has been mentioned in the Library a handful of times, but we have never actually seen it in play before.

However, the Night Vision Goggles available through the Gift Shop grant the same exact buff as the old Night Vision blessing: they still greatly increase performance in Solar Eclipses… and have nothing to do with Night weather.

Two Fliickerrriiing Potions were introduced to the League: Haruta Byrd of the Philly Pies, and Spears Rogers of the Breckenridge Jazz Hands. For reference, Fliickerrriiing is a version of Flickering that is drastically more likely to proc. Remember what I said about how trades create alliances that bring the league together? I suspect this issue is being forced.

There are Squiddish Eggs, too, which grant (of course) Squiddish, which replaces an incinerated player with a player from the Hall of Flame. Given how the Hall of Flame is now quite crowded with Pre-History deceased players as well as deceased players from our version of the ILB, that should be interesting.

Steel Chairs grant “Steeled”, a modification with the description “This Player has Steeled themselves against incoming attacks.” The Kansas City Breath Mints petitioned the league to “give one to Leach”, after memes about Leach Ingram with a steel chair. Which they did. …To Leach Herman of the Dallas Steaks.

The Canada Moist Talkers received Ambitious for one player. Unfortunately, the player they received Ambitious for is Lucien Patchwork. Who is currently Shelled.

Raise Your Phones Like Lighters At A Concert

The Seattle Garages received by accident a Condensed Floor Plan to make their stadium heavier, by accident bonus eDensity for their items, and then also by accident the superheavy version of Chorby’s Soul from the Bargain Bin. Meanwhile, the New York Millenials bolstered the buoyancy of their already negatively eDense roster further by flipping their stadium’s Light Switch.

The Millenials are already at the top of the chart, and the Garages are rapidly plummeting.

Given the very brief appearance of the glowing purple text this Earlseason, which said things like “hook and ladder” and “trick play”, having teams playing the flootball field depth chart could be very useful.

Then there was that one other thing Glowy Purple said at the same time… What was it again? Let me get the record…

Ah.

game over

!@#$.

Keeping The Pressure On

Sun(Sun) is now at greater than 70% pressure. It started this season somewhere around 55%. Suspicion is growing that it will explode at about the same time as the exhibition match.

Speaking of the exhibition match, the Squid has said that all of the Rising Stars will be playing. Every. Single. One. So in case you had any idol board shenanigans planned…

As to redactions, aside from the existence of the Canberra Drop Bears leading to memes about a Shadows player they have called “Prince Belair”, the biggest reveal today has been four mystery messages in Liquid Friend’s Special feed:

Liquid Friend was Taken.
Liquid Friend’s Soul was Decocted by the Baristas.
Liquid Friend’s Soul was Served.
Liquid Friend’s Soul was Placed on the Bar.

The Commissioner’s response to this was a rare capitalized “WHAT”.

…I think we might need Avila back on the case.

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