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If Season 15 was a heist, Season 17 was an ascent into the sun. The Piano Tuners, drunk on their own inexplicable success, played recklessly. They were no longer just out to win it, they were looking to push the simulator to the limits of functionality, hunting for exploits that they could use to get a leg up.

Salt in the Wound

The Season 17 LDS rematch between the Ft. Worth Piano Tuners and the Long Beach Flightless Birds was less a series and more a bullying session. The Birds, still psychologically scarred from the Season 15 Two-Point Eye Poke, tried to play conservatively. The Tuners responded by intentionally mimicking the Birds' own oscillation patterns, but playing them slightly off-key. It drove the Long Beach collective insane. The 3-0 sweep was a mercy killing; the Birds spent most of the series trying to debug their own sensors rather than playing the game.

Season 17 Cold League Division Series Results Table
Ft. Worth Piano Tuners vs. Long Beach Flightless Birds
	Winner	W Score	Margin	L Score	Loser	Generations	Link
Game 1	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	251	45.02%	138	Long Beach Flightless Birds	1,542	cb7bcade-eb31-48de-b886-f4778d782163
Game 2	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	179	13.41%	155	Long Beach Flightless Birds	1,984	e15ca0c6-aa98-467c-941c-505c934d8e18
Game 3	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	142	21.13%	112	Long Beach Flightless Birds	3,858	2b2c435b-e1a5-4a36-b004-1bbc7d44cae8

The Reactor Leak Gambit

In the Cold League Championship Series, the Ft. Worth Piano Tuners faced off against the Jersey OSHA Violations . The Piano Tuners gained a quick 2 games to none lead, and saw a chance to put their foot to the gas. They executed a maneuver called the Reactor Leak Gambit - a dangerous maneuver that intentionally destabilized their own core formation, creating cascading failures that filled the grid with debris and destabilized the simulator. It was statistical suicide - even the OSHA Violations, who are famous for flagrant safety violations and insane risk taking, and whose motto is "Safety Third," were quoted afterwards as saying it was a "totally insane and reckless risk that we would never have taken." The Piano Tuners executed the maneuver perfectly, bombarded the Violations, and clawed their way back from the dead, securing a 4-point victory and a sweep. The OSHA Violations were left traumatized and wondering whether they had just lost their title of biggest risk-takers in Golly.

Season 17 Cold League Championship Series Results Table
Ft. Worth Piano Tuners vs. Jersey OSHA Violations
	Winner	W Score	Margin	L Score	Loser	Generations	Link
Game 1	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	141	64.54%	50	Jersey OSHA Violations	1,955	6039b1b0-d5d1-4be8-b45a-61b54b9e37de
Game 2	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	74	35.14%	48	Jersey OSHA Violations	1,045	dd556fc5-6d8d-425e-a687-e89f3314119a
Game 3	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	123	3.25%	119	Jersey OSHA Violations	3,036	26e3992e-7108-43d9-bc11-c472b6fb03d7

The Hostile Takeover

The Season 17 Hellmouth Cup series between the Ft. Worth Piano Tuners and the Orlando Business Majors was a clash of dissonant, musical chaos versus market-driven, mass-psychology chaos. The Business Majors, whose behavior was difficult to predict but considered ruthlessly efficient, carefully outmaneuvered the Piano Tuners to build up a 3-1 lead in the series. Just like Season 11, the Piano Tuners, facing elimination, turned nasty and fought like rats, including a narrow 8-point margin of victory in a chaotic Game 6.

In Game 7, to the massive relief of the entire league, the Business Majors implemented a formation called the Hostile Takeover, a risky and very expensive maneuver that was tailor-made for this type of end-of-the-line, Game 7 situation. They isolated the Tuners' frequencies, filtered them out, packaged them up, and sold them off. The Tuners quickly fell behind, and had no more tricks up their sleeve, no more last-minute gambits. The 177-111 victory by the Business Majors was considered a triumph for the entire league. And in some sense, it led the Piano Tuners to their downfall - the loss forced the Piano Tuners collective to consider "alternative victory techniques" by rigging random number generators in collusion with the Corporate Shells, which would set in motion the entire sordid affair of the Piano Tuners Hacking Scandal, the Cancel Texas Memo, and the Baltimore Diaspora.

Season 17 - Hellmouth Cup Results Table
Orlando Business Majors vs. Ft. Worth Piano Tuners
	Winner	W Score	Margin	L Score	Loser	Generations	Link
Game 1	Orlando Business Majors	144	7.64%	133	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	1,105	4b906527-a96c-4de4-82a0-e00fe05bf43d
Game 2	Orlando Business Majors	281	96.44%	10	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	1,188	2dcc8524-5445-4c96-b470-a22df05f0aca
Game 3	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	185	55.14%	83	Orlando Business Majors	1,563	c22c53b8-dd0d-4867-9590-920e21a099c4
Game 4	Orlando Business Majors	240	73.75%	63	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	3,231	fd362da4-1788-4b1d-a863-1f5daa2792a9
Game 5	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	202	35.15%	131	Orlando Business Majors	2,519	9d05420c-edf2-4d1e-97b5-691d77d0791e
Game 6	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	165	4.85%	157	Orlando Business Majors	1,575	a379aaca-6653-4224-988b-3319d8af2baa
Game 7	Orlando Business Majors	177	37.29%	111	Ft. Worth Piano Tuners	1,613	8b1ac131-091f-4842-8250-1b0ed5302f2b