Well this has been a quite the game...
But let's get back to why we are all here tonight.
Hi there!
I know you must expect the most arrogant and cocky speech ever and I'm gonna try to deliver on that within reasonable limits. But my main purpose here tonight is to show you how I played this game. I will strictly look at it from a gameplay perspective. For this I'm going to refer to:
Chapter 7: How to deal with Allstars
I went into the game with a villain reputation from Venezuela, and every one of the other 4 Venezuelans knew this and were very aware of me. Then it so happens I get stuck on a tribe with some really hardcore players and Gina, who I knew was already thinking how she will boot me later because she plays safe and doesn't like threats and random variables in her games. Here with me was also Brenda, who I was really excited to play with/against but she decided making day 1 alliances was a bad idea. Dummy.
All the "Legends" had some sort of history and relationship between them, I was the only one that didn't really play with anybody in the game, except Sean for a few days after which he voted me out.
Meanwhile I was navigating the Masilaca tribe with great care and attention, and I made the first big alliance this game: me, Ami, Gina and Teresa. Unfortunately the whole tribe had this irrational fear of Brenda like she was some Stranded deity and she got booted first.
The alliance I had felt more and more like a fake alliance. I played too careful, and didn't make any double deals but the people that were supposedly on the outs of the alliance seemed somehow sure they are in control. They gave too much away in the way they talked. I knew it was me or Gina, so as per usual I had my back-up fake idols. How to make a fake idol believable when one hasn't been announced? Get the leader position, which I did, without making too much of a big deal out of it.
So I bluffed the idol, knowing about the exile twist and seeing that even if it fails, I probably would get picked by another tribe. The main idea was that if I stay in that tribe, I make it obvious I'm a free agent because someone in that other group must be plotting something and be in need of a vote. I even vote for Erica to make a point that I vote how my allies told me, even though I could've helped my odds by voting Gina And the vote is a tie. In comes Sean to break it and I quickly make my case to him and that was that.
Because of this, Katie came to me with her own plan and Taj was also trying to use me in her advantage. I voted with Katie for Teresa cause that's what she wanted, but surprise, surprise there were real idols in the game, and Teresa had one. So they sent Katie home because she was the one with the plan against them.
Masilaca was not easy, it was the first time I've ever been really "on the outs", and it was quite a new experience. That was the craziest, most fun tribe ever encountered that early in a game.
Chapter 17: Partner twists
Having won the immunity at the first reshuffle I had to pick a partner. And I picked one that I knew was going to get herself voted out. Mia That's what you should always look for in the partner twist, you don't want to be more of a target than you need to.
Through getting messages to the other tribe I slowly pointed Mia towards the plank and she walked on it. She tried to throw me under the bus for her bad decisions so I don't regret that one bit. So I told her she should split the votes between Teresa and Naonka and sent a message to Teresa to vote Mia out. Her split obviously failed as the loyalty and coordination just wasn't there and Teresa was a way better player, so she went off having little idea what happened.
Chapter 1: Tribal domination
Meanwhile at Turukawa we dominated all challenges as Degei slowly broke down. Every single person on NuTurukawa was coming to me, Gina and Brenda with deals and we were in the middle of everything. But we never actually lost.
Reshuffle comes again and I get lucky being placed with 4 other people that were fairly allied with me and each other. I used this time to build relationships and place myself in a nice cozy position within the alliance to be ready for the merge.
Chapter 5: Solving the merge
Merge hits. 12 people. All chaos. Or is it? The 7 NunuTurukawa's had this tribe unity PM that I thought was really adorable, meanwhile I was hanging back and waiting for the fishes to bite. And they did, through my ally Paloma I found out Naonka was recruiting for an alliance, that contained Teresa, Rudy, Taj and apparently Willard. Paloma was the key to controlling the original Turukawa group, so I kept her close, and I guess you could say it payed off. Later that day Willard came to one of my other allies, Brenda with the information on this "other alliance". So the fishes were hooked.
At this point I made the boot order. As I told Cirie and Paloma that I wanted them and Gina to be F4 with me. Why? Let's analyse it, and I'll come back later to explain what changed.
Taj first - It demolishes that "other alliance" from the ground up, and she's really hard to read.
Gregg- I save Teresa and she's a huge threat that people will always want to vote out. So I can keep her around as a shield/distraction/Plan B. I preferred taking him out over Rudy as he was a bigger threat
Naonka - She tends to piss people off so she could be an easy sell to save Teresa another day
Willard - Everyone suspected he had an idol and he was close to Brenda, it's best to get him first
Teresa/Brenda - Big threats, could never get them to the end cause nobody else would let me
Sarah - She's bound to do something crazy and make herself a target. Which she did.
That leaves a Final 5 of Me, Paloma, Cirie, Gina and Rudy. Even if they want me out, I can beat them in challenges. I made them target all the challenge threats before me because they made more sense. I can't possibly be a problem for them, can I?
Chapter 6: Execution
No use making all these plans if you execute them poorly. The plan has to work in a way where things fall down like dominoes. You can't give people the option of voting you out, you have to put the pieces in order and wait for them to knock them down one by one. i tried to make it as less obvious as I could that I was pushing for the votes, but I may have pushed too hard in some cases. My bad.
Let's look at each boot and how it went down:
First up, I quietly let Brenda know that people would be more comfortable if we voted for Taj, and watched the chain reaction go from that. I didn't have to push for her to be voted out and I still got my way.
Next up: partners. Here i begun to take a Teresa that was being left on the outs under my wing. I pointed the targets from the Sarah-Teresa pair to the Rudy-Gregg pair and people started fighting over which one of the two gets to go home and totally forgot about Teresa. I preferred Gregg went home as he was more unpredictable, however it was a hard sell to allies I was trying to keep happy. Fortunately Brenda decides she wants Gregg out so I told Cirie and Paloma mid tribal to switch their votes, while Brenda took all the negative attention for it.
Here's where things changed. It was supposed to be a Naonka boot but Brenda got so much negative attention people just went out of their way (Sarah) to vote her out. Naonka did go home soon after.
Sarah instead took the next boot as Willard didn't appear to have the idol and her crazy irrational moves just got too much to deal with. No Brenda, no immediate need for Willard to go, but he was still a good challenge competitor.
F7, people weren't giving me good vibes about what was gonna happen once Teresa went home. I realized that once Teresa was gone I was gonna become a target, people weren't hiding it very well. Gina wouldn't bother lying to me about what is gonna happen in the end, Cirie would dance around the idea of me going to the end with her and not respond to PMs very much so she doesn't give anything off. Stuff like that.
But once Teresa couldn't win the challenge and I did, I knew I had to make a run for it. So I voted Teresa off with the others, improving my chances of winning immunity.
At F6 you could smell Gina was gonna try to make a move and I was probably gonna be the target for it. Seriously, do these people know how to blindside? You have to lie to the other person all freaking day and act natural, not ignore PMs and leak out that you wanna blindside someone with your idol LOL. I asked Paloma to use her idol on me but it wasn't necessary as I won another challenge.
At F5 I tried to give Paloma a slot in the end but the "exiles" we're not budging. Why would they, they are obsessed with who they can beat and they clearly didn't want me here.
Chapter 6: Execution
No use making all these plans if you execute them poorly. The plan has to work in a way where things fall down like dominoes. You can't give people the option of voting you out, you have to put the pieces in order and wait for them to knock them down one by one. i tried to make it as less obvious as I could that I was pushing for the votes, but I may have pushed too hard in some cases. My bad.
Let's look at each boot and how it went down:
First up, I quietly let Brenda know that people would be more comfortable if we voted for Taj, and watched the chain reaction go from that. I didn't have to push for her to be voted out and I still got my way.
Next up: partners. Here i begun to take a Teresa that was being left on the outs under my wing. I pointed the targets from the Sarah-Teresa pair to the Rudy-Gregg pair and people started fighting over which one of the two gets to go home and totally forgot about Teresa. I preferred Gregg went home as he was more unpredictable, however it was a hard sell to allies I was trying to keep happy. Fortunately Brenda decides she wants Gregg out so I told Cirie and Paloma mid tribal to switch their votes, while Brenda took all the negative attention for it.
Here's where things changed. It was supposed to be a Naonka boot but Brenda got so much negative attention people just went out of their way (Sarah) to vote her out. Naonka did go home soon after.
Sarah instead took the next boot as Willard didn't appear to have the idol and her crazy irrational moves just got too much to deal with. No Brenda, no immediate need for Willard to go, but he was still a good challenge competitor.
F7, people weren't giving me good vibes about what was gonna happen once Teresa went home. I realized that once Teresa was gone I was gonna become a target, people weren't hiding it very well. Gina wouldn't bother lying to me about what is gonna happen in the end, Cirie would dance around the idea of me going to the end with her and not respond to PMs very much so she doesn't give anything off. Stuff like that.
But once Teresa couldn't win the challenge and I did, I knew I had to make a run for it. So I voted Teresa off with the others, improving my chances of winning immunity.
At F6 you could smell Gina was gonna try to make a move and I was probably gonna be the target for it. Seriously, do these people know how to blindside? You have to lie to the other person all freaking day and act natural, not ignore PMs and leak out that you wanna blindside someone with your idol LOL. I asked Paloma to use her idol on me but it wasn't necessary as I won another challenge.
At F5 I tried to give Paloma a slot in the end but the "exiles" we're not budging. Why would they, they are obsessed with who they can beat and they clearly didn't want me here.