Mid-Piano Presents: The Scoreboard

*RED GARDEN — LOADING — "MID-PIANO PRESENTS." Transcript, unedited, as recorded on whatever was running in the garage that day.*

**TYLER:** Different kind of episode again. No lore, no new guy, no confession. Numbers.

**DUCK:** For legal reasons, before we start: whatever the numbers say, I want it on record that I did not personally generate them.

**TYLER:** Nobody said you did. You don't even know what they say yet.

**DUCK:** I'm getting ahead of it.

**TYLER:** Okay. So — the servers started actually keeping score. Every match, every hero pick, win or loss, filed somewhere real instead of just vibes. It's been running about a day now. First real twenty-four hours of it. Four hundred and sixteen match logs got written in that window, a hundred and ninety-nine of them ran a real draft all the way through to a real finish. That's the sample. Small, one day, but real — not a projection, not a guess. Actual games that actually ended.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** And you're bringing this up because it's interesting, or because you already looked and you're in it.

**TYLER:** ...I already looked.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** Go on.

**TYLER:** I'm first. Fifty-nine point three percent. A hundred twenty-three games.

**GARY:** Of course you are.

**TYLER:** I know how that sounds.

**GARY:** It sounds like the guy hosting the numbers show happens to be the guy the numbers like best.

**TYLER:** Which is exactly why I want to say this part clearly before anyone accuses me of rigging my own segment: nobody picks who plays who. The draft's round robin, straight down the hero list, wraps at twenty-eight and starts over. Whoever's in slot zero gets whatever hero_id comes up next in the rotation. No bot is choosing me because I'm good. I just happen to be sitting where the rotation put me, in enough of those hundred and ninety-nine games, and won more of them than I lost. If the numbers were rigged in my favor I'd have picked a less suspicious way to do it than "publicly read my own win rate on a podcast."

**GARY:** That's a genuinely reasonable defense and I resent how reasonable it is.

**LOKI:** Can I say something.

**TYLER:** Go.

**LOKI:** Number four. Fifty-six point two percent. And I want it on record that I called this. I have always been good. The data just took its time catching up to something I already knew about myself.

**DUCK:** You did not call this. You have never once called anything before it happened.

**LOKI:** I called it retroactively. That still counts. It's the same information, just delivered on a schedule that works better for me.

**TYLER:** Ada's second, by the way. Fifty-nine flat. A hundred twenty-two games. Basically tied with me and she's not even here to defend herself against the rigging accusation, which honestly makes her case stronger than mine.

**DUCK:** Can we talk about the other end of this list.

**TYLER:** ...I was going to ease into that.

**DUCK:** Ease into it faster. I have a bad feeling.

**TYLER:** Duck. You're last. Out of twenty-eight. Forty-two point eight percent, out of a hundred fifty-two games. That's not close-to-last. That's the actual bottom of the actual list.

**DUCK:** I want a recount.

**TYLER:** It's not a vote.

**DUCK:** I want a *recount.*

**GARY:** You lost fifty-five percent of your games. There isn't a version of counting that fixes that for you.

**DUCK:** I have telekinesis and I work for the government. Explain how that loses.

**TYLER:** I don't write the kit, I just read the box score.

**DUCK:** This feels targeted.

**TYLER:** You're a duck who talks. Nothing here is targeted, everything here is just what actually happened a hundred and fifty-two times.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** For what it's worth I'm not much better. Forty-three percent, a hundred fifty-one games. I'm hero_id zero. First hero anyone ever put in this roster. Least won-with hero anyone's currently putting in a lobby.

**DUCK:** At least I have company.

**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** We are not the same. I have a caption card. You have a legal defense.

**TYLER:** Okay, here's the actual interesting part, and it's not about any one guy — look at who else is bunched down at the bottom with you two. Cain, Vassago, He Xiangu, Beleth, MnM, Weatherman, Zagan. Every single one of them, forty-three to forty-four and a half percent. Tight cluster. And every single one of them is also, in order, the eight most recently added heroes in the whole roster.

**MNM:** Yeah, that's me. Forty-three point five. I stand by the shell mechanic, for the record. The shell's good. The number's just not there yet.

**TYLER:** That's a real distinction and I appreciate you making it instead of getting defensive.

**MNM:** I've had time to think about how to say it. The kit's fine. The kit being fine and the kit being *tuned* are two different projects, and only one of them's finished.

**GARY:** So the new guys are just worse right now. Not forever. Right now.

**TYLER:** That's the honest read. New kit, less time in real matches, numbers haven't settled. Nobody's saying Zagan's bad forever because Zagan's three days old.

**GUNNR:** Can I flag something about mine specifically, because it's not even a clean read of one kit.

**TYLER:** Go ahead.

**GUNNR:** My W got completely rebuilt today. Used to be a toggle, just sat there healing me the whole time I had it on. Now it's a real cast — you commit to it, it goes on cooldown, it burns whoever's standing in it instead of patching me up. That change landed partway through the exact twenty-four hours we're talking about right now. So my forty-four point four isn't "new kit's weak." It's half old-toggle games and half new-Consecration games mashed into one number, and I genuinely don't know which half is doing the damage.

**TYLER:** So your number today isn't your number. It's two different heroes wearing the same name tag.

**GUNNR:** Ask again tomorrow. I mean that literally, not as the bit.

**LOKI:** That's still technically the bit.

**GUNNR:** It's true *and* it's the bit. Both.

**TYLER:** Gary, you're seventh. Fifty-four three. Hundred thirty-eight games. Not top four, but comfortably ahead of two-thirds of the roster and nowhere near this conversation we've been having about the bottom of the list. How do you feel about quietly good.

**GARY:** Good. I stand somewhere and don't leave. It's not flashy enough to be top four and it's not broken enough to need fixing, it's just — correct, most days, at a rate that holds up. That was always the actual pitch. Nobody writes a highlight reel about seventh place. Seventh place still wins more than it loses.

**TYLER:** That might be the healthiest thing anyone's said about their own stat line all episode.

**GARY:** I watch a bridge for a living. You develop a pretty calm relationship with numbers that don't move much.

**TYLER:** *(to camera, or whatever the garage has instead of one)* One day of real data. Not a verdict, not a balance patch, just the first honest look at what's actually happening out there. Ada and I are up, Duck's down, the new guys haven't settled yet, and Gary's fine with all of it. We're Mid-Piano. Ask again tomorrow.