Hey all! First and foremost, congratulations to myself, Bradley, and Tiago for making it to this point. In addition, congratulations to you all for making it to the jury stage of the game.
To start off, I really want to emphasis the route I had in this season. With that, there’s no better place to begin than the Original Danan.
Headlined by Sam in the immunity portion, our tribe wasn’t threatened by tribal council for four straight rounds! With strong immunity players on hand, I had the flexibility to get to know players like Elizabeth, Charlie, Tiago, Gabe, etc in our “off time”. I knew that with immunity granted in coming weeks, the only threats I had would be Sam in the individual portion of the game, as well as a potential swap fuck.
Insert swap fuck: Bradley/AJ/Aston vs myself/Gabe with Tom/Trey in the middle. For those who didn’t know, Trey had duped me in a previous season before, so the numbers were essentially 5 vs 2 on paper.
While Tom and Trey played the middle, I found myself in the early minority when Gabe was blindsided.
This marked the first of many inconsistencies from Bradley. For instance, the VERY NEXT ROUND, Bradley used his heart instead of his head, and called for the vote off of AJ; a player he could have easily pursued in a later round.
Keep in mind, even with AJ gone, Bradley/Aston still had the route to take myself, Trey, or Tom out. At this stage, it was my social game with Bradley that allowed for me to breathe one more round, as Trey was taken out just before the merge.
Imagine that: Coming into a swap with 5 people gunning for Danan, and being able to survive three straight tribals....Not saying that alone was “game-winning worthy”, but those are the overlooked aspects I fought through.
Here comes the merge, as I’m reunited with multiple Danan members, and get to meet new players such as Nicole and Rexxy. This also was my first time seeing Jake, a player who I knew would eventually target me based on a previous ORG.
Once again, I found myself in the same position. Anyone who was not part of Danan wanted Danan out, and I needed to realize that after Sam was voted out in a 6-5 vote. This pushed me to try and connect with Nicole, Jake, and anyone else I wasn’t initially comfortable talking to. If I didn’t, I knew the other side would gain momentum, and I needed to give them a reason not to target me.
The following round, Jake desired for me to throw my vote on Liz, while Bradley assured me that Charlie was the target. Considering Jake and I’s history, I had the incentive to believe Bradley, a player who was aiming to play in the middle.
I knew that if I voted for Charlie, people would ask how I knew what was going on, threatening Bradley’s overall game. In addition, Danan was incapable of finding fragments, and playing dumb that round would perhaps allow Jake to have a sense of “trust” in me (he can speak more on that hopefully).
At this point, I have now lost two original Danan members, making it obvious that Danan is the easy vote. When loose cannons like Bradley elected to flip once again, I had the opportunity to strike against “the other side”.
With that, players like Nicole, Jake, and Rexxy were talked about as targets. While Jake and Nicole were larger threats, idols were talked about, and I figured no one would expect for Rexxy to be the vote. It worked out perfectly, and I finally saw cracks beginning to form.
After that, Bradley/Aston flipped AGAIN, which made me lose count of how many times this guy wanted to flip. They wanted to vote out Liz, really for no solid reasoning, and I sorta had to play it cool and let it play its course. Had enough fragments been around, I would have played an idol for Liz and gotten a larger threat out of the game.
When Nicole left, I was actually bummed. I thought Jake was the bigger threat, but Nicole is probably the most strategic female player I’ve come across since joining Facebook ORGs.
Then comes Aston, Bradley’s #2 throughout the game. I was SHOCKED when he agreed to vote out Aston, simply because he had his back the whole time without second guesses. My assumption is that he viewed you as a jury vote at this stage, and it would be difficult to argue anything else from his defense.
I hope Jake realizes that although we never say eye to eye on some cases, we can still respect one another’s game. He was competitive, and I would have laughed if anyone else thought there was a more deserving player than him to win. Truly, I appreciate the competition, and wanted to get that out of the way.
Finally, there’s Tom. He’s a guy that tried to get me out with Trey, but we never had issues by any means! I wish we could have worked well together, and I hope you can respect the game I played. I never BS’ed you, and we handed each other plenty of chances to work together. Guess it just wasn’t in the cards.
REALLY QUICKLY, let’s talk about what separates myself from the other two:
Tiago: He mentioned me abstaining from challenges, so I’ll give him that. While his exaggeration of “abstained from most challenges means lack of effort” is somewhat ridiculous, I did need to abstain due to working two jobs over the summer for 40+ hours per week.
My counter to him would be how is it that even I’m not playing select comps, I never felt in jeopardy in this game? Bradley was FORCED to win immunities, simply because he was a threat to some people in the jury. You on the other hand weren’t FORCED to win because you weren’t a threat to a single player, and it wasn’t due to your gameplay. For me, I was a threat to some people, but sincerely, I believe people wanted/needed to work with me in order to advance in the game.
This held true with Bradley, Aston, Liz, Tiago, Charlie, Gabe, and even Trey to an extent. If people from the jury want me to emphasis this more, I will gladly do so.
Why shouldn’t Tiago win? Well, what did he do to separate himself from myself or Bradley? He never gave a solid opinion on a vote, never called a single shot, and the reason his vote count was so low was because everyone knew they could beat him in the end.
Bradley: I’ll give him respect for winning a few immunities and playing the middle, but selecting to vote out Tom instead of forcing a tie against me could be one of the worst moves I’ve ever seen. Bradley KNEW the game I played, and KNEW that Tom would be someone he could beat, and still deferred.
Why shouldn’t Bradley win? There’s a few reasons:
1: When Bradley needed numbers, he relied on me in every single occasion outside of the Gabe, Liz, and Charlie votes. He needed me when it came to AJ, Trey, Rexxy, Nicole, Jake, Aston, and Jake.
2: He didn’t make the connections I did. At the merge, he admitted that he didn’t have strong connections with Liz and Tiago. If it weren’t for MY connections with those two, his success wouldn’t be present.
In addition, he burnt so many bridges in this game, and didn’t care whatsoever about who he was voting out. Playing aggressive is one thing, but jury management needs to play a role in who wins this season.
3: He was practically spoon fed numbers when AJ and Aston were on his tribe at the swap, and Trey had an incentive to get me out again after our previous encounter. That made it 5 versus 2 (as mentioned previously). I feel like if just AJ was there at the swap, he would have been a boot prejury.
In conclusion, only two winners have gone on to win this series without a SINGLE idol OR individual immunity win: Tyler and Ben.
With that being said, I hope to become #3, and I look forward to answering any and all questions regarding my game this season.