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Elections and Strategy

Blaseball is complicated, and its elections are deliberately broken. Here are some of the main things that affect elections in non-obvious ways.

Some parts of this page refer to player attributes, which can be seen on the site with an Apple. An Apple will also let you see what percent of our Will votes are for each Will when you select the Will and open the voting dialog for it. Alternately, SIBR has made tools that will let you view player attributes and Will vote standings without an Apple, though if you aren’t careful around SIBR’s stuff you may also see spoilers.

Stars lie

There are players with few stars who are actually quite good, and players with lots of stars who aren’t that great. Better ways to learn how good a player is include looking at their record on Blaseball Reference, looking at their hidden player attributes, and asking in Discord.

Also, players with the Attractor mod have fake stars. Most players’ stars are based on their attributes, but give too much weight to attributes that don’t affect performance much. Attractors have extra stars that have nothing to do with their attributes at all. Their performance matches their attributes, not their stars.

Examples

Betsy Trombone

Betsy Trombone had three stars in pitching in season 14. She also had the second highest strike percentage in the league.

Beck Whitney

In season 14, Beck Whitney had six stars in batting and a batting average of 0.234. This means she got on base 23.4% of the times she batted, which is pretty low. For comparison, her teammate Francisca Sasquatch had four batting stars and a batting average of 0.304, which is much better.

Brisket Friendo

Thanks to the Attractor mod, Brisket Friendo has 3.8 batting stars. If they weren’t an Attractor, they’d have 1.9 batting stars. As of day 62 of season 17, their batting average is 0.144, which is far more typical of a 1.9 star batter than a 3.8 star batter.

Rerolls are very risky

The stats of randomized or alternated players are generally similar to those of newly-hatched players. All our players are already better than most newly-hatched players.

Examples

Wyatt Glover

Wyatt Glover has been randomized four times. None of those randomizations made them any better.

James Mora

In the season 7 elections, James Mora was rerolled 3 times, and gained only half a star in pitching.

Plunder is very risky

Most of our players are quite good, so when plunder sends back a random player it’s likely to lose us a good player. Also plunder can interact with player statuses like [REDACTED] in weird ways.

We also like most of our players a lot, and losing a player to plunder unexpectedly is likely to upset at least a few people.

Examples

York Silk, season 14

The Crabs plundered York and lost Enid Marlow.

Enid had slightly fewer batting stars, slightly more defense stars, and substantially more baserunning stars. Strategically, Enid was better for their team.

Also York was dead when he was plundered, so he got the Returned mod, which could have returned him to the Hall of Flames at the end of any season.

Chorby Short and Nagomi Mcdaniels, season 15

Plundering these [REDACTED] players didn’t work, but it did give them the Unstable mod, which made it much more likely that they won’t survive the [REDACTED] plot arc.

Sutton Picklestein, season 13

The Flowers plundered Picklestein from the Hall of Flames in the season 13 election. This gave Picklestein the Returned mod, which dragged them back into the hall nine seconds later.

Early voting is very risky

Blaseball is dangerous. Players who seem like good targets early in the week could be much worse, much better, on a different team, or incinerated by the end of the week.

If you need to vote early for logistics reasons, things that help the whole team are generally safer. For example, the High Pressure blessing in season 13 gave us a permanent boost that’s tied to the team rather than to players.

Examples

Joshua Butt

Joshua Butt was incinerated by a rogue umpire on day 77 of season 12. In the election at the end of season 12, they were infused.

Nagomi Mcdaniel

Nagomi Mcdaniel was plundered by the Boston Flowers in the season 15 election. 4% of their Will votes were for plundering her.

Very late in the season, Nagomi was attacked by Consumers repeatedly, reducing her stats and eventually causing her to be [REDACTED].

It seems likely that the plunder votes were submitted early, since she looked like a much safer plunder target early in the week.

Wills can clash

Often, two different Wills or blessing can affect the same player. Combining them in unplanned ways can lead to bad results.

Checking in on the discord’s plans can help you avoid clashing with a big group of voters. And if you join the discord election planning discussions and polls, you can help shape those discord plans.

Examples

Ohio Worms, season 15

In season 15, many Ohio Worms fans organized to trade Luis Acevedo for Crabs pitcher Jacoby Podcast. This won with 27% of the Worms’ Will votes.

A few Worms fans voted to Infuse Luis Acevedo’s pitching. This won with 0% of the Worms’ Will votes.

Acevedo was improved by the transfuse, but the improvement didn’t benefit the Worms at all, since Acevedo had just been sent to the Crabs.

Boston Flowers, season 12

In season 12, a few Boston Flowers fans voted to swap Alaynabella Hollywood with shadows player Zesty Yaboi using the Foreshadow Will. This succeeded with 1% of the Flowers’ Will votes.

Other Flowers fans voted to swap Alaynabella Hollywood with then-Garages player Nagomi Mcdaniel using the Exchange Will. This succeeded with 0% of the Flowers’ Will votes.

The combination of these two Wills left Nagomi, a much better batter than either Alaynabella or Zesty, in the Flowers’ shadows rather than on their lineup.

OPERATION SPLASHDOWN

OPERATION SPLASHDOWN is a two phase plan that guides many of our stadium renovation choices.

Phase one of OPERATION SPLASHDOWN was to vote for the High Pressure blessing in the season 13 election. This was successful, and we now have the High Pressure team mod, which reads as follows:

This team will play 25% better in Flooding weather when runners are on base.

Although the wording is a bit unclear, we now know that High Pressure only works when we’re batting, not when our opponents are batting. It’s still very good.

Phase two of OPERATION SPLASHDOWN is to keep the High Pressure mod active as often as possible. This is ongoing.

Flooding+ is the most useful stadium renovation for taking advantage of High Pressure. Renovations that make it easier for players to get on base are also helpful. So are renovations that make it harder to hit home runs, because home runs clear the bases, which turns off High Pressure.

A side effect of making it harder to hit home runs is that renovations that take advantage of home runs, like Big Buckets and Hoops, are not as helpful as they would be in other stadiums.