I'd like to start by thanking the hosts for putting on such a fun season. I am thrilled that my first Survivor ORG was Survivor Canadienne.
My game may be a little misunderstood, so I am honored that I have the chance to share with everyone my thought process behind my moves and actions.
Liberte 1.0
My gameplan going in was to stay flexible and create as many different pathways for myself as possible. In the pre-merge, I wanted to give myself just enough space to survive until any potential swaps. I quickly formed an alliance that consisted of myself, Benj, Blake and Gilad. What this meant was even if we lost a couple immunities early on, I would be protected. I tried to get to know Ella and Hunter enough in case of swap that would leave us stranded together. I think I made a good connection with Ella much more so than Hunter, but maybe Hunter was aware that I was targeting him. Because we didn't go to tribal, not much happened at Liberte 1.0. The pre swap consisted of me getting really close with Blake, and forming a good bond with Benj.
SWAP
Revolution 1.0
I was fairly pleased with how the swap worked out. I still had an alliance member in Benj, and Hunter was with us so we could stay Liberte strong. When Dalton first approached me I knew that he was good at the game. But more importantly, I could tell the Dalton thought he was GREAT at the game. I decided to bond with him right then and there. We talked a lot about video games that we both liked and our strong allegiance started right there. This is where my gameplan started coming into effect. I had created 2 different options for myself. I could stick with original Liberte or go with Dalton and Benj to eliminate Hunter. Once again not much happened as we didn't go to any tribals
SWAP 2
Liberte 3.0
Reunited with Blake and Benj (The Purple Vest Alliance), I felt very secure after this swap. Because I had become close with Dalton, I knew we had the majority. The Purple Vest Alliance decided we wanted to use Dalton as much as possible. We let him decided who we voted for during this phase in the game. This worked out very well for me because I believe Dalton started to really trust me in during this time. I feel as though I also solidified the trust of Blake and Benj here by just going with the flow. The John and Scott votes happened because Blake was spreading the rumor of a pregame alliance. I didn't fully buy into this rumor, but it didn't matter if it was true or not. If I beleived everything Blake told me, he would trust me more.
MERGE
My gameplan for the Merge stayed similar to what I had been doing. Create many different pathways to end. We went into the merge as a very loose Liberte 3.0 Alliance. As a huge Survivor fan, I know how important it is to be in the majority for the merge boot. I wanted to stamp my name on this boot and own it. The gameplan was to target Dean at the first merge tribal. I didn't want that AT ALL. I wanted Eva out because I had said some rude things to her after she ousted me from a previous org. I knew she would never vote for me if she was on the jury. This was the last tribal before the jury phase started so it was super important for me to get her out. On top of all that, I knew Eva was a really strong player. There were just so many reasons for me to get her out. I brought in Ella into the Liberte 3.0 alliance, because I knew she also wanted Eva out. I pushed the alliance in the direction I wanted and it worked, Eva was the merge boot.
Nifty wanting to quit sucked for my game. I really thought I could work with him moving forward. The other reason was I wanted either Conor and Dean voted out in this double tribal. Nifty quitting meant Conor could save his idol for the second vote without worry. Because of that I lost an ally in Ella. I insured that I wouldn't be voted out here by agreeing to voting out Ella with Conor. So was well aware of this idol play and was not surprised by it. Lying to Conor here could have saved my butt, even tho I believe I was never his target.
Dean self voting saved conor once again. I was planning on turning the tables on the revote to get Conor eliminated.
Blake's boot was a surprise to me. I had been using my alliance with Blake and my alliance with Dalton was a 2 layer meat shield. They both were gunning for each other and I did my best to keep them both as far into the game as possible. At this Tribal I knew Dalton was going to try to flip it on Blake. But I didn't know that Conor would have another idol.
With one of my meat shields gone, it sucked, but I knew I still had my meatiest shield left (Dalton). That is why I started to "call out" Conor about the game being rigged. Similar to the pregame alliance rumors, It didn't matter to me if the rigging rumors were true or not. All that mattered is if people thought that I thought it was rigged. By calling out Conor, my intended effect was that some more quiet players (Miles, Hieu, Benj) would know I was not targeting them. And I think it worked to an extent. The Hieu boot showed me that Hunter was playing a strong game and was doing everything he could to get into a winning position. I was never actually mad at you Hunter for that tribal. The reason why I tried to instigate something with you publicly was to "lose your jury vote." with Blake on the Jury, People were seeing me as a jury threat. I hadn't made a strong connection with you Hunter so I decided to sacrifice your jury vote to try and lessen the Jury Threat label that I might have started to gain.
Voting out Hunter was fairly straight forward. I knew him and Conor were trying to get me out, but they underestimated my allegiance to Miles, Benj and Dalton individually. Dalton threw away his vote, And Benj used his vote remover, which I knew he didn't need to use. With Dalton throwing his vote, and I knew I could count on Miles, 3 votes were enough to eliminate Hunter.
Miles was voted off because I thought Dalton or Conor would be 100% willing to take Miles to the end. I believe they both thought they could beat Miles. Because Conor was Immune again, And I wanted to leave Dalton in 1 more round as a meat shield, Miles was the only one left to vote out. I'm Sorry for lying to you Miles. But there weren't a ton of people left.
Dalton was eliminated due to the weird F4 twist. But I felt pretty secure that even if it was a normal F4 vote, between Dalton or Benj, I could at very worst, still get a tiebreaker after a 2-2 vote.
I wanted to take Benj to FTC from about final 8 on. My reasoning behind that was we ad been together from the start, but I had felt I had played a much more active game. Benj striking out at F3 kinda sucked, but who knows who would've won the final challenge and what would have happened.
Now here we are, the final battle of the Conor vs. Tate war lol. Comparing our 2 games inn my opinion boils down to this. I received 3 votes to his whopping 22. That tells me that Conor failed at minimizing his threat level and was consistently targeted. Sure he survived until FTC, but if it wasn't for a Nifty quit or a Dean self vote long ago, he probably isn't sitting here. We both were strong challenge threats especially after the first couple merge tribals, so I would call us even in that department. As far as social games go, I made strong bond and connections with people throughout this game. My connections for the most part meant I knew what was going to happen at most tribals, and I knew when I was being targeted at the Hunter boot. Heck, I even had Conor consistently telling me how he was voting or if he would play an idol.
I tried to sum up my game the best as I can. I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you jurors for being a part of this fun season.