Heist Expert

Heist Expert
Description	Player: This Player is adept at using a Ballpark's Tunnels. Team: This Team is adept at using a Ballpark's Tunnels.
Duration	Permanent
Target(s)	Player or Team
Cause(s)	Blessing, Vault Legends

Heist Expert is a Player or Team Modification, first seen in the Season β21 Elections and given out by the Play to Find Out Blessing.

Effect

Pitchers with the Heist Expert Modification steal using a Ballpark's Tunnels more often. They are still able to get caught in a grand heist and flee Elsewhere.

Teams with the Heist Expert Modification can approach, collect, and recruit a player from the opposing team, adding the recruited player to the end of their rotation. The team cannot be caught, and will not flee Elsewhere if unsuccessful. This version of the modification has only been seen on the Vault Legends.

A graph of tunnels steals by team in Season β22, adjusted for when Runs were available to be stolen

History

Debut

Heist Expert was introduced as a part of the Play to Find Out Blessing which was advertised with the tagline "All Players in your Team's Rotation will become Heist Experts."

During the Season 21 Elections, Play to Find Out blessed the Baltimore Crabs.

• Crabs' entire Rotation gained the permanent mod Heist Expert.
• Lorcan Smaht gained the Heist Expert mod.
  • +  Heist ExpertPlayer: This Player is adept at using a Ballpark's Tunnels.
    Team: This Team is adept at using a Ballpark's Tunnels.
• Montgomery Bullock gained the Heist Expert mod.
  • +  Heist Expert
• Silvaire Roadhouse gained the Heist Expert mod.
  • +  Heist Expert
• Finn James gained the Heist Expert mod.
  • +  Heist Expert
• The Crabs had 10% of the Votes
  Highest Bidder - The Shoe Thieves with 18%
  19,770,304 votes were cast.

Vault Legends

See the main article on this topic: ILB_Semi-Centennial#Heists

The Legends completing another successful heist in the Semi-Centennial.

The Vault Legends had a Team variation of Heist Expert with a drastically different effect - instead of stealing Runs or Items, the team itself would attempt a Heist, in which players from the opposing team would be approached, collected, and recruited. Unlike a normal heist, failure would not result in the Heist Expert getting caught or fleeing Elsewhere, and the in-game response to avoiding being collected was to "evade capture" (seen only by Rat Mason, who successfully evaded capture three times.)

Trivia

• Despite the in-game description of the Team modification, no reference to Tunnels were made when the Vault Legends completed their heists/collection of opposing players.
  • One Tunnel-based heist did take place during the Semi-Centennial, however - inning 18, when Vault Legend Clare Ballard entered the tunnels and stole a run from the Rising Stars.
• The capacity of a Team to operate as an entity independent of its individual players (whether that be as a truly separate entity or some manner of gestalt being), utilising the same modification with drastically different effects, raises troubling implications for the nature of seemingly-abstract concepts within blaseball, and the Immaterial Plane at large.