filed by O
audio version
Good time of day, fellow Agents. The Spies are presently doing exceptionally well: in the past unknowable unit of time we have won 16 games and lost 2. Meanwhile, during the Earlsiesta, we found out that the Tarot Reader may, in fact, be an ally…
Spies Win!
Our 23-6 non-losses-to-losses record is only rivaled by the Philly Pies’ 25-4… and two of the games the Pies lost, in those four, were against us. And Nerd Pacheco just got Unshelled after more than six seasons… on the Pies’ pitching rotation. Thus making it so that their best pitcher no longer pitches half the games.
At the moment, Yrjö Kerfuffle is Elsewhere, temporarily further trimming our lineup. If anything, this makes us better: Yrjö is the weakest player we have.
Meanwhile, the Worms and Dale set the record for longest game (in linear time, anyway): the game they played on day 12 lasted almost 68 Material Plane minutes in 24 innings.
Seasonal Reading
The seasonal reading was Temperance (the Chicago Firefighters), Chariot (the LA Unlimited Tacos), and Justice (the Seattle Garages), with this proclamation:
out from under
take the over
It is at this point that the Coin interrupted the reading with a passive-aggressive “Okay thank you.” and an announcement. Apparently, the Seasonal Reading has abruptly been suspended indefinitely. She then introduced the gift shop, which I will explain later.
Justice Spoon and Lotus Mango have both received the Negative modifier. So far it seems to have two effects: their Soulscreams show up upside down, and their eDensity is inverted so that these players become buoyant. Meanwhile, in the flavor text, the Reader tells Justice and Lotus to “TRUST ME”.
So, do we trust the reader?
Some of us think that we should be friends with the Reader because Spies are also purple. Others of us will point out that “out from under/take the over” sounds like a call to action. To revolution? Yet others point out that the Reader was passing on Wyatt Mason’s messages when it turned Moses Mason and Wyatt Quitter into Receivers.
And even if the Reader isn’t on our side… well, it’s definitely against the Coin.
A Bigger Ballot
There is a new Decree, and several new Blessings, given in the same glowing purple text as the seasonal reading.
The Decree is called Trust Fall. Its description is “turn the tables. winning will be losing. trust me.” Three Decrees can pass this season. This is good because Trust Fall is the obvious plot decree, and thus is clearly going to pass. Everything else is going to be in a race for 2nd or 3rd place.
As to the new blessings, none of them look amazing for us. (Some look serviceable or mildly helpful, but none are transformative.) But the presence of Cape of Containment is weird: Containment prevents Unstable from chaining to players on the opposite team. Why would we want, or need, Containment? Are we going to see more Unstable?
Finally, the text of the Alternate Trust will has also been turned purple. (The wording has not changed.) I have seen speculation that, between “TRUST ME” and Alternate Trust becoming the same color, we’re supposed to Alternate Trust the two relevant players. Asking two teams to use their Wills on this is a tall order, though, given the very high opportunity cost of using a Will. I’d like to request that we leave the question to the teams who will actually have to spend their votes for this. Please don’t lobby or pressure them.
Renovations
Our renovations for this season look slightly better than the ones that we got last time. Hotel Motel is popular; there’s also Birds+ and Inconvenience-. If you really want somewhere to sink your coins, that’s where to put them. I’d suggest saving for votes, though.
Gift Shop
The way gifts work is a little confusing: gifts can have coins put into them in two different directions. First, you put your coins into your own team’s wishlist in order to prioritize the Gifts that you want to receive. (The coins you put in this way do not contribute towards actually getting them.) Then, you can give coins to other teams to buy them gifts from their wishlist, until latesiesta.
Everyone has received the same list of possible gifts to put on our wishlists. This list includes, um, “replicas” of York Silk, Nagomi McDaniel, and Chorby Soul. Apparently people are calling them “Legendary Player Funko Pops”. Though I think they might be temporarily actual players? The description mentions them being put onto people’s lineups.
Strategy-wise, we are not too concerned about getting, or not getting, gifts. There’s no point spending money on our wishlist, since pouring more money into the wishlist doesn’t get us anything more. If you want to spend money on gifts for other teams, go right ahead! But as for what we receive, we’ll let the chips fall where they may.