Hey guys.
Those of you that have spoken to me for an extended period of time (basically everyone that made F8) knows how I can ramble on, and it is LONG. But, for those of you that (as Christy directly mentioned once) prefer the "too long, didn't read" option, I CERTAINLY DON’T EXPECT ANYONE TO READ THIS WHOLE THING, so there are summaries of each section in bold, and you can pick and choose if you care a lot about a given topic to come back later and read the whole section while we’re not busy doing TC Q&A. This is simply designed to give you insight into my thought process in how I made decisions throughout the game for anyone that is interested. I'm not asking anything more of people than to just go through the bold summaries unless you're interested in a given point because I know that I’m verbose.
The Challenges
tl;dr: I was a leader pre-merge, identified as a threat, and won four-consecutive post-merge challenges, demonstrating knowledge, preparation, and dedication
At the beginning of the game, I didn't plan on coming on strong in challenges. But, after stepping up to do the puzzle in the first IC, that plan fell through very, very quickly, because I realized that my goal of keeping our tribe of Helios strong, large, and intact was far more important. I decided that doing whatever I could to try to make sure we weren't at a numbers disadvantage at the merge was far more beneficial to my game than keeping my strengths a secret.
Others identified me as a "leader" of sorts because of that, having completed the puzzle in IC1, coming up with an innovating strategy to out-think the seven sins game in IC2 (which ended up not panning out, since Jeff told us that we weren't allowed to answer with our pre-prepared answers alphabetically :-P), being an asset for both solving (and attention to detail) with the word search in IC3, before finally solving the "bonus phrase" at the end of IC6 which got us the win and kept the Helios 4 intact to the merge---a pivotal point.
Making myself that big of a challenge presence is what caused people like Erin to decide (and tell others) that I needed to be targeted before we reached a Helios F4 or F5, since I would be too big of a threat. Preventing that from happening was a key part of my strategy that dictated some of my moves post-merge to pre-empt other groups from getting a majority that could take me out in the future.
Finally, winning the last four individual Immunity Challenges speaks for itself and truly sets me apart from Brian and Penny---as those challenges tested key skills of being able to read the mentality of the tribe, preparedness and knowledge of the game (as my OCD self has kept a voting history and challenge tracker to keep track of number of votes, number of clues taken, etc.), thinking fast and, most importantly, how dedicated I was to making it to this seat in the final by staying up all night long to secure my position here.
The Social Element:
tr;dr: people that I didn't have a relationship needed to go, I'm really long winded, and wanted to keep the lines of communication open with everyone as much as I could, I didn't start fights since there would be nothing to gain but bad blood, and after I got Helios the numbers advantage, I stopped the lying since it would just be unnecessary and rude
We all realize that keeping the line of communication open with others is a key component to this game. I did my best to ensure that. Of the (now) ~3200 messages exchanged at Kronos, I was privy to nearly 1300 of them (either sending or receiving those). That's 40% of the total messages here.
When we all first got to Kronos, I already had connections with Helios (including Ted), and through Rob, got to know Christy and Joanna, as well. The only people left were Daniel and Shawna---you guys, I talked to by and far the least. It was for that reason that I knew I had to target you early because I didn't have a relationship with you (like the others) and it would be much harder for me to play the game with you or work with you.
Even after blindsides, I made sure to talk to the people on the other side (like Christy and Joanna or Rob) to try to explain my reasoning (even if I couldn't explain the full story at the time) and more importantly, make sure that they still felt comfortable talking to me, even if they didn't trust me. Just keeping the line of communication open. After the first three merge boots, my game became a lot more straightforward with the Helios 4 looking for a run to the end. I didn't need to (and more importantly, didn't want to) keep lying to the Asterias after so much of it. I genuinely liked them, wanted to continue talking to them, and even if it wasn't fully about the game (or revealing important secrets about past, present, or future). At least to myself, I can justify the lies that I made earlier in the game as necessary to get to a comfortable position, but at F7 there was nothing to gain by being deceitful, and I had no intentions of lying if it was unnecessary.
Equally as detrimental as not talking to someone would be being deliberately argumentative, and stepping on people's toes. I did my best to avoid this, particularly with the Penny/Rob turned tribal rivalry. I tried to keep lighthearted, avoided the fighting at all costs, and behaved like I've always tried to with everyone---and that's just trying to be genuinely kind, no matter what has happened in the game, if I've screwed you or if you've screwed me---because there was nothing to gain but animosity by being unnecessarily rude.
Early Pre-Merge
tl;dr: Brian, Penny, and I worked together from Day 01 to get a majority, I proposed a "Nash equilibrium" solution to avoid getting challenge disadvantages, and we targeted weak performers
The very first night or two of the game, Penny, Brian, and I formed an alliance since, based on first impressions, our conversations with one another seemed to be the most natural and come with the most substance. We collaboratively agreed that we should branch out to a fourth and fifth person so that we'd be guaranteed a majority. Brian/Penny aligned with Erin, and Brian aligned with Jake (who then unforeseeably wanted to add Ted as their third instead of me). So together, we agreed that by appeasing Erin or Jake's wishes for the first round or two, we'd soon have complete control.
One important strategy that I shared with the tribe before the second immunity challenge was a plan to keep our tribe strong by not taking the clues. If everyone agreed not to take a clue, people would have an individual advantage to gain by taking it, and some would, so our tribe would be disadvantaged by one or more clue-takers, and that plan wouldn't work because people are fundamentally selfish. I proposed what some may call a "Nash equilibrium" solution: we all elect one person that we trust to take the clue for the group. That person will ask for the clue and share it with the whole tribe. This way, people won't have anything to gain by taking the clue (as long as we elect someone that we all mutually agree on) and we don't needlessly disadvantage the tribe. We would just end up with one clue disadvantage instead of multiple, and would stand to potentially have an advantage (or a greater advantage) over Asteria. Unfortunately, Ken spoke up that he wasn't in favor of the plan, so it fell through. And because of that, there DID end up being more than one clue-taker. Because of that, we DID lose the challenge. And Ken paid for that by being voted out.
After Ted's mutiny with his idol, we were mainly acting in self-preservation mode. We needed to trim the fat to keep our heads above water over Asteria, so the challenge liabilities were dropped. Penny didn't perform that well, and partially or wholly caused more than one of our losses, but Jan and Jake's aloofness needed to be addressed sooner.
Late Pre-Merge
tl;dr: align with Rob so that we'd have contingency plans post-merge if we were to get pagonged, and because him leaving on good terms and thinking that his friends were in jeopardy would prevent him from taking a clue to disadvantage Helios in IC6 and would also stand a chance at having his allies Joanna/Christy to throw the challenge for our safety
A game theoretical approach. You may agree with it, or you may not; it's totally up to you. But let me at least give you some more insight into what I mean.
You have to expect everyone to make decisions that are in their own best interests. I based my moves on preventing other people from having the opportunity to join up and take me out.
Rob joined Helios and we had no idea what to do. But I reached out and we had a great conversation, which was used as a foundation for an "F6/F4" agreement at the merge. But, in the back of my mind, Rob's best move would still be to axe us off when he had the chance, especially if he had complete control of Asteria like he claimed. However, Brian and I used this agreement as an opportunity to get the Helios 4 safely to the merge and then have good footing once we got there. This is when Erin's fabricated idol came into play, since if Rob truly liked Brian and I like he claimed to, Erin potentially working with Penny and having an idol would be cause for Rob to think that Brian and I would be at risk if we lost, and as such, needed to get him to get his allies on Asteria to throw the challenge. It worked.
Early Post-Merge
tl;dr: Shawna was targeted to prevent Asteria from having the numbers to eliminate Helios; Dan was targeted to prevent Erin/Penny/Daniel/Joanna from joining together after Rob was gone to target me/Brian/Ted; Ted was targeted to prevent Ted+Asteria from picking off Helios and taking a guaranteed idol out of the hands of the other side
At this point, I continued the game theoretical approach. If I saw a group of people that would have reason to band together against me, I needed to strike before they could---even if they claimed they weren’t going to, I put my trust in the numbers and anticipating their best move, because if I give people the power to take me out, it’s my own fault.
At F10, if Rob and Asteria took out Penny like they planned to, Asteria would potentially have a 6-3 majority and we'd face a potential pagonging without anything to do about it. The theory of my game was to put trust in numbers, not people, since people can lie. So, knowing that an Asteria advantage was imminent, we had to prevent it. I reached out to Ted so that we could 5-5 it. Penny got Daniel on board, getting us a 6-4. But, in the event that Daniel was lying about his allegiance, it was important to still be in good with Rob so that we'd know Asteria's target in case it was expected to be 5-5 so that we could potentially use Ted's idol to win the round. Shawna was chosen as the target since Ted wanted Shawna on the bubble, I agreed since I didn't talk to her much, and she was the least likely to have an idol played on.
At F9, now that Daniel proved his loyalty, Penny wanted to go forward with a 3-3-3 plan. I didn't like that idea since we had no idea of what the tiebreaker would be, including if there would be a re-vote, but she didn’t skip a beat at my arguments. Furthermore, I had actually talked to Christy/Rob (the targets) but not-so-much Daniel, who singlehandedly took me out of the challenge. Also, if Rob went as Penny had planned, Joanna could flock to Daniel, and Joanna/Daniel/Erin/Penny could form a majority to eliminate me/Brian/Ted (with Christy, finding us to be liars, probably joining Joanna). Thus, Rob could not go home. Ted wanted Daniel gone, and I agreed, but just to make sure something weird didn't happen with the vote since things were up in the air (and our game would be screwed) Brian and I joined in voting out Daniel.
At F8, Ted took initiative again to target Erin/Penny. However, it became aware to me through Rob that Ted had initiated two plans to eliminate Daniel and now the girls, by approaching Rob with them, and never telling me/Brian about proposing those plans, who Ted claimed to have an F3 with. Now, for the record, I actually do believe that Ted would've gone to F3 with us given the chance (though I'm not 100%); however, him jumping back and forth and him not telling us about his plans meant he was a brilliant game player and dangerous to us. If we let Erin/Penny go this round, Ted could rejoin Asteria and take out Helios one-by-one. I honestly did think that Ted would've gone with us to the end, but the path he wanted to take there left too much up to the decisions of other people, and would have been too dangerous for us. Voting him out is the vote that I've felt worst about, without a doubt. Now, after this vote, Helios needed to expect a 4-3 and needed to avoid any existing HIIs. We knew Ted had one, and were unsure about Rob. So we had to target Ted to prevent a 4-3 situation with the other side having TWO HIIs to wreak havoc on us. Also, since we only had four votes, we needed the other four votes to be split somehow (and I knew to expect Ted potentially voting against the plan, and for his intended target of Erin even if he was assigned to vote Penny), so luckily Ted’s proposed setup that Brian and I had to play along with to split votes was used against him and allowed our four votes to be a majority.
Late Post-Merge
tl;dr: voted survey answers of "most threatening" and "most deserving" to put a target on my head, continued to foster Helios unity and loyalty along with immunity wins to survive as a majority until the end now that we eliminated our ally’s other options where they could turn on us; Brian has my utmost trust and loyalty, we inform the other about everything we do and hear, and I'd have stuck beside him not matter what, hoping that he would do the same, if anything came up, to protect me as I've done for him, but of the two of us, I did more of the personal interaction with others to implement plans
At this point, the group voted me "most threatening to win" and "most deserving of winning" so I knew there was a target on my head. Up until this point, I had done my best with Brian to position ourselves into an alliance that didn't have any external assets that they could work with to turn on us and take us out. Erin and Penny NEEDED to work with us at F7 to prevent Asteria from threatening a tie at F6 or majority at F5 to proceed to take THEM out. Same would apply if one of them got eliminated. That was the goal all along of the first few merge rounds---establish a group as best as I could that couldn’t afford to turn on me early (like Erin had planned to, to eliminate a threat, if given the chance).
At F7, Penny insisted on taking control, like she did in many situations. Even though it would have been in our best interests to not hint to Asteria who our target was at all, so they'd have a flat 1/3 chance of playing the idol on the right person, Penny went through with a plan to try to fulfill her personal vendetta against Rob, and completely ignored anyone else's suggestions. In the process, she ignored reasoning that it wouldn't make ANY sense for Joanna/Christy to vote against their ally when they can, all the same, vote together to put three votes on our of our guys. She believed them anyways (after they’d already lied to her about voting for Rob once before). Her plan revealed too much to the Asterias allowing Christy to very intelligently play the idol on herself and take out one of our own.
From here on out, I knew that I needed to continue to foster Helios unity, loyalty, and trust to get to the end with the group that I’d worked so hard to solidify, and win immunity when I could to avoid the target on my head for what others perceived as being a jury threat.
I've talked to Brian at length ever since the beginning of the game. Much of the decisions that we made were joint decisions and joint plans, particularly in the first few rounds of the merge. I candidly shared with him practically everything that happened and all of my ideas for consultation, and to the best of my knowledge, he has done the same with me. He has my utmost loyalty, and I believe that I have his, as well. And through extensive conversations, our bonding meant that, regardless of immunity, at the F4, the worst that either of us could do was being in a tie against either Penny or Joanna, and that was because of the trust and relationship that grew more every night over the course of the past four weeks. The main difference between our games is that I was the one keeping in contact with our allies more frequently, be it Rob/Christy/Joanna, or Ted, or Penny, to implement plans and make sure things went swimmingly.
The End
Thank you for reading! Even if it was just the bold parts. It's been amazing playing this game with all of you; it's been enjoyable, exciting, and I hope that you all feel the same. I do apologize for the lies and the deceit and the victims that it took, but fundamentally, my strategy was just game theory, and pre-empting people from attacking me. I did my best to never make it personal. If there is any ill will, I absolutely accept and deserve that. Regardless, on my end, there are no hard feelings towards anyone, and I'm looking forward to hearing and answering your questions to give you more insight into my game and the game's of others, so that you can made an educated decision and vote for whomever it is that you think should win.
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