Special Event: Blaseball Season 11
October 19, 2020 7:55 AM - Subscribe
Season 11 of Blaseball is kicking off and, geez, where to start! The Crabs won their third championship, and thus (after immmmeadiately losing their fight with The Shelled One's Pods) have ascended out of the ILB, to be replaced by newcomer team Tokyo Lift. Also the squid ate? the Peanut, and then The Boss, who presents as an ancient Roman coin bearing a sigil of justice, ushered in the age of Peace & Prosperity. All the new blessings are Tarot Major Arcana, all the new decrees are about destroying the Forbidden Book, and none of them have any explanatory text. Here comes some Blaseball.
For continuity, here is the Season 10 thread.
For continuity, here is the Season 10 thread.
Looking at the standings, I have no idea how the game is handling the extra wins teams can get now. It doesn't seem to be going by percentage or the games-back method MLB uses.
posted by Ampersand692 at 9:39 AM on October 19, 2020
posted by Ampersand692 at 9:39 AM on October 19, 2020
Yeah, the fact that a team can get an extra win mid-game by scoring 10 runs during the right sort of weather has got all sorts of weird implications!
Like, what about Party Time? If you get mathematically eliminated from the playoffs before the end of the season, your team goes into Party Time, but what if you then pick up some extra mid-game wins by having a big scoring run? Do you stay in Party Time, or are you kicked back out until/unless you manage to lose your way back into mathematical elimination?
posted by cortex at 10:46 AM on October 19, 2020
Like, what about Party Time? If you get mathematically eliminated from the playoffs before the end of the season, your team goes into Party Time, but what if you then pick up some extra mid-game wins by having a big scoring run? Do you stay in Party Time, or are you kicked back out until/unless you manage to lose your way back into mathematical elimination?
posted by cortex at 10:46 AM on October 19, 2020
I am gladder than ever that I am a fan of a solidly middle-of-the-road team that may or may not be affected by this season's shenanigans but is completely unable to disappoint me either way. (Look, that Wild Wings championship was a total fluke caused largely by Jaylen's bloodbath and it's not likely to happen again any time soon.)
posted by restless_nomad at 10:59 AM on October 19, 2020
posted by restless_nomad at 10:59 AM on October 19, 2020
So there's Black Holes now and one of them just swallowed a Shoe Thieves win, which means we're undefeated in the first three games of the season with a record of...2-0.
posted by cortex at 11:36 AM on October 19, 2020
posted by cortex at 11:36 AM on October 19, 2020
SIBR has pointed out that the standings seem to be based on raw number of wins, then the secret tiebreaker. Losses and percentage seem be ignored.
posted by Ampersand692 at 11:42 AM on October 19, 2020
posted by Ampersand692 at 11:42 AM on October 19, 2020
The Tacos won one and lost two, for a total record of 3-2. I am profoundly amused.
posted by restless_nomad at 11:43 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by restless_nomad at 11:43 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Tacos are now 5-3 after five games. Shoe Thieves are now undefeated in five games and 4-0. Hrm. HRRMMMM.
posted by cortex at 1:35 PM on October 19, 2020
posted by cortex at 1:35 PM on October 19, 2020
I'm excited that there's a new team!
Do we know what Sun 2 weather portends, yet?
posted by kaibutsu at 6:35 PM on October 19, 2020
Do we know what Sun 2 weather portends, yet?
posted by kaibutsu at 6:35 PM on October 19, 2020
(BTW, looks like there's a Grand Siesta planned for after this season. So enjoy the blaseball to it's fullest, while you can!)
posted by kaibutsu at 6:40 PM on October 19, 2020
posted by kaibutsu at 6:40 PM on October 19, 2020
In Sun 2 weather, if a team scores 10 runs, the runs disappear and a win is added to their record. In Black Hole weather, 10 runs means the runs disappear and a win is *removed* from the opponent. This is why the standings make considerably less sense than previous, and no one has any idea how this is going to affect Party Time. (It also tends to mean that scoring 10 runs gets you a win and a loss, or your opponent a loss and a win, unless you do it early enough that you can catch back up.)
posted by restless_nomad at 6:35 AM on October 20, 2020
posted by restless_nomad at 6:35 AM on October 20, 2020
Man, game day 36 was pretty goofy.
Shoes vs. Breath Mints went long and was topsy-turvy because of the weather: I ended up livetweeting some of it, but the summary is we were up 9-1 and so were deeply hoping we would stop scoring runs, but then we got three more runs and ended up 2-1 with a win scored; then the Mints managed to get themselves some points and it was 2-6 and looking bad for us; in the 9th it was 4-9 with the Mints in the lead and our pitcher Fitz Wanderlust surgically let Jessica Telephone single, and then she stole second, and then Fitz threw a 40 mph underhander to Mints batter Pudge who batted JT home and made the score 4-0, Shoe Thieves. So we got a win and also a win, and Mints got a win and also a loss. Whew.
But bigger than that, the Tacos v Dale game was still going on, ending finally in the 12th inning 6-5 Dale. So Dale got the win! But the Tacos had already flipped the odometer three times, with an actual run total of 35, so they got three wins, and then also lost to the Dale. So. Tacos broke the runs in a game record with that; the game broke the total runs record as well. It was certainly the first time any team won three times in a single game, and if they'd managed just two more runs the Tacos would have one four times and the Dale would have lost.
The take I heard re: Party Time is that it will be calculated on "true" records rather than the strange Sun/Hole W-L standings we can see, while playoff seeding will be based on the visible W-L records? Maybe? Like I think this is canon but also I'm operating on second and third hand reports, so you shouldn't quote me.
posted by cortex at 10:11 PM on October 20, 2020
Shoes vs. Breath Mints went long and was topsy-turvy because of the weather: I ended up livetweeting some of it, but the summary is we were up 9-1 and so were deeply hoping we would stop scoring runs, but then we got three more runs and ended up 2-1 with a win scored; then the Mints managed to get themselves some points and it was 2-6 and looking bad for us; in the 9th it was 4-9 with the Mints in the lead and our pitcher Fitz Wanderlust surgically let Jessica Telephone single, and then she stole second, and then Fitz threw a 40 mph underhander to Mints batter Pudge who batted JT home and made the score 4-0, Shoe Thieves. So we got a win and also a win, and Mints got a win and also a loss. Whew.
But bigger than that, the Tacos v Dale game was still going on, ending finally in the 12th inning 6-5 Dale. So Dale got the win! But the Tacos had already flipped the odometer three times, with an actual run total of 35, so they got three wins, and then also lost to the Dale. So. Tacos broke the runs in a game record with that; the game broke the total runs record as well. It was certainly the first time any team won three times in a single game, and if they'd managed just two more runs the Tacos would have one four times and the Dale would have lost.
The take I heard re: Party Time is that it will be calculated on "true" records rather than the strange Sun/Hole W-L standings we can see, while playoff seeding will be based on the visible W-L records? Maybe? Like I think this is canon but also I'm operating on second and third hand reports, so you shouldn't quote me.
posted by cortex at 10:11 PM on October 20, 2020
It just occurred to me that it's not possible to be mathematically eliminated from (or clinch) a playoff spot before the end of the season, because there's no actual limit to the number of wins or losses one might get during a single game. So Party Time would have to be based on something else.
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:20 AM on October 21, 2020
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:20 AM on October 21, 2020
Someone on Twitter pointed out that the weather only affects wins (at least directly), so it's possible that the various Party Time (and possibly seeding?) decisions will be based on total losses, instead. (In that case, the Wild Wings are in the lead with 30 losses, two up from the next-lowest-wins team, the Pies, and four up from the Lift.)
posted by restless_nomad at 7:36 AM on October 21, 2020
posted by restless_nomad at 7:36 AM on October 21, 2020
The weird thing there (which hardly disqualifies it from being the truth) is that while Sun 2 and Black Hole don't directly modify Loss counts, they do generate losses that wouldn't have been there for teams with the higher run count and 10+ runs. So it's indirect but not very indirect; the weather is producing paradoxical losses in a pretty direct way, while also messing even more actively with wins.
I genuinely love that we have no idea how it's going to work.
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on October 21, 2020
I genuinely love that we have no idea how it's going to work.
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on October 21, 2020
So I haven't seen the spies get too many extra wins, which makes sense because we were always fairly defensive. When you get an extra win, do you get the win gold for it as well?
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:26 AM on October 21, 2020
posted by DynamiteToast at 10:26 AM on October 21, 2020
see aside from all the edge-case-testing aspects of the new system here in the age of peace and prosperity, i just really like that “games per game” is sort of a meaningful team stat now.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:06 PM on October 23, 2020
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:06 PM on October 23, 2020
Shoe Thieves have both Cornelius Games and Richardson Games on our team, so there's also a possible Games per games per game metric.
posted by cortex at 9:03 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by cortex at 9:03 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
I was only half-watching this season and so was super confused when I tuned in this morning and we were already at the semi-finals.
posted by curious nu at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2020
posted by curious nu at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2020
Yeah! They did the wildcard AND the quarters yesterday in succession after the post-season, which may be part of a long-term bid to carve out a little more rest in the weekend for the dev team. Really curious to see how they've reworked the weekly flow after the Grand Siesta, which I hope for basically everybody's sake won't end until at least the second week of November. I will miss blaseball during the peak stress of the election but I certainly don't mind not contaminating it with all that either and don't like to think of the dev team having to spin plates while also living through that.
Semifinals today saw a Black Hole win by the Sunbeams with 9 runs to Tigers' 10, which means the Sunbeams got a win but also lost a win and the Tigers got a loss, so that game didn't do *anything* to their series. It's odd to me that the Tigers aren't at 0 and -1 on the scoreboard, though it doesn't really matter since losses don't count for anything, only total wins.
posted by cortex at 9:57 AM on October 24, 2020
Semifinals today saw a Black Hole win by the Sunbeams with 9 runs to Tigers' 10, which means the Sunbeams got a win but also lost a win and the Tigers got a loss, so that game didn't do *anything* to their series. It's odd to me that the Tigers aren't at 0 and -1 on the scoreboard, though it doesn't really matter since losses don't count for anything, only total wins.
posted by cortex at 9:57 AM on October 24, 2020
Yeah I'm really hoping they take two weeks off (it's a Grand Siesta, so here's hoping) and for some kind of major reset, which feels like it'd make sense what with ~something~ happening to the Book.
posted by curious nu at 10:00 AM on October 24, 2020
posted by curious nu at 10:00 AM on October 24, 2020
I'm out. I'm deeply uncomfortable with "burn the book" being simply one of nine options, with both the dev team and the vast majority of the fans seemingly unconcerned with historical parallels. Attempts to raise those concerns by myself and a few others early in the week apparently fell on deaf ears. I have no desire to play a game or associate with a group where book burning is treated so casually.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:21 AM on October 24, 2020
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:21 AM on October 24, 2020
Garages advance to the finals, now we're just waiting on Tigers-or-Sunbeams
posted by curious nu at 1:03 PM on October 24, 2020
posted by curious nu at 1:03 PM on October 24, 2020
And the Tigers and Sunbeams may be a while if this keeps up: they just started game six of a five game series and if the games continue to be just the right sort of lopsided (team A scores n runs where n > 10 but n % 10 < m where m is team B's runs) it'll be game 7, and game 8, and by induction will take infinitely long.
posted by cortex at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2020
posted by cortex at 2:04 PM on October 24, 2020
Garages v Sunbeams keeps going. Sunbeams loop around, Garages eke out a win. Beams have been at 2-1 for a few hours now.
posted by curious nu at 8:01 PM on October 24, 2020
posted by curious nu at 8:01 PM on October 24, 2020
Sunbeams manage to score less than ten runs and win game five and hence their first championship! The Boss showed up in her coiny way and talked about how we're all winners and we'll write the future, together, starting tomorrow, and it was ominous because everything is kind of ominous when a faceless god is talking but honestly it wasn't scenery-chewing ominous and maybe things won't be Terrible? I don't know.
posted by cortex at 8:38 PM on October 24, 2020
posted by cortex at 8:38 PM on October 24, 2020
I was really hoping we were going to see what happened if finals went into Sunday, but also I get to go to bed at a normal time so either way is a win. That was emotionally exhilarating and exhausting. I want to see what all the cards do tomorrow and then glorious siesta.
posted by curious nu at 8:42 PM on October 24, 2020
posted by curious nu at 8:42 PM on October 24, 2020
Don't miss the concert. Turns out you can't fit 27,600 people into one non-partnered Discord voice channel at once, but you can get X,000 people bursting into tears at "Mike Townsend (Knows What He Has To Do)" at once.
posted by CrystalDave at 10:16 PM on October 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by CrystalDave at 10:16 PM on October 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
Yeah, I was hopeful the garages would turn it around once getting past the two bad pitchers, basically saved by the black hole, but alas.
The meme filled sing along in discord is hilarious.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:54 PM on October 24, 2020
The meme filled sing along in discord is hilarious.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:54 PM on October 24, 2020
I made it to the third game or so and then passed out, only to discover the results when I got up to pee in the middle of the night. The Sunbeams were definitely the most thematically appropriate team to win this season and I am pleased.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:26 AM on October 25, 2020
posted by restless_nomad at 7:26 AM on October 25, 2020
Well, that was a lovely finale. So happy for the Beams.
posted by Urtylug at 10:09 AM on October 25, 2020
posted by Urtylug at 10:09 AM on October 25, 2020
With today's election (and an appearance by the squid), we're done with Season 11 and Blaseball is officially on Grand Siesta, which the website's Bulletin page says will be at least a month. There may be Blaseball related things of some sort happening in the interim? Not clear? But play presumably won't resume until late November. So this will probably be the last thread for a while and would work as a roundup of tidbits.
The election itself did what was expected with Blessings: gave each team exactly one. Shoe Thieves won the Wheel of Fortune, which is what we'd hoped for for variously thematically punny reasons; many of the blessings were apparently long-odds upsets, and some of the results there made not really any sense as reported (e.g. the Wild Wings winning "XVIIII The Sun" with 0% of the votes and being the highest bidders). My guess is they were the highest bidders among those teams whose bids hadn't been removed for having already received a blessing, but the site does not make this clear, heh.
No idea what the cards do yet, though.
The decrees on the other hand, all of which looked like ways to harm or destroy the Forbidden Book, turns out to be votes for subsections of the Book's new second page of heavily-redacted text. The three decrees that got the most votes were apparently "Close", "Deface", and "Eat", which it turns out means we'll get per-team ballparks, some sort of Will in elections, and Concessions. Nobody knows what any of this means yet either!
posted by cortex at 2:51 PM on October 25, 2020
The election itself did what was expected with Blessings: gave each team exactly one. Shoe Thieves won the Wheel of Fortune, which is what we'd hoped for for variously thematically punny reasons; many of the blessings were apparently long-odds upsets, and some of the results there made not really any sense as reported (e.g. the Wild Wings winning "XVIIII The Sun" with 0% of the votes and being the highest bidders). My guess is they were the highest bidders among those teams whose bids hadn't been removed for having already received a blessing, but the site does not make this clear, heh.
No idea what the cards do yet, though.
The decrees on the other hand, all of which looked like ways to harm or destroy the Forbidden Book, turns out to be votes for subsections of the Book's new second page of heavily-redacted text. The three decrees that got the most votes were apparently "Close", "Deface", and "Eat", which it turns out means we'll get per-team ballparks, some sort of Will in elections, and Concessions. Nobody knows what any of this means yet either!
posted by cortex at 2:51 PM on October 25, 2020
So did people actually vote for things this season? I saved my votes just because while it was possible to speculate based on knowledge of the Tarot, no one actually knows what anything does. That said, while I don't think voting made sense from a strategic perspective, voting for what would be most fun or flavorful would also be extremely valid. And I admit it gives me great joy that my team is now at least unofficially The Death Mints.
posted by valrus at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by valrus at 8:31 AM on October 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
I voted for Justice for the Wild Wings, for obvious reasons, and I am sad we didn't get it. When flavor's what you have, double down on flavor!
(I also voted for Close the Book, because I figured the wackier options would be well-represented, and was delighted by the bait-and-switch.)
posted by restless_nomad at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2020
(I also voted for Close the Book, because I figured the wackier options would be well-represented, and was delighted by the bait-and-switch.)
posted by restless_nomad at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2020
I don't think I voted on any of the decrees, but went in for Death and Justice. My vote count hasn't been very high, though -- I've pretty much stopped betting and just ride the passive idol income to whatever it gets to be, somewhere between 80k and 100k. I get to feel like I'm ~helping~ =D
posted by curious nu at 9:05 AM on October 28, 2020
posted by curious nu at 9:05 AM on October 28, 2020
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Also, the new Boss declared among other things that from now on every team would get exactly one blessing, because it would be Fair, which, this being blaseball, nobody really believed would be a good thing even though plenty of blessings-denied teams had been asking for it, so that's a real classic monkey's paw situation playing out for us with these new arcana-themed mysteries. Big season for tarot nerds and numismaticians, all told.
For a much more thorough accounting of specific season incomes, check out this Season 10 breakdown.
posted by cortex at 8:01 AM on October 19, 2020