Board Thread:Season 27 - Alsace-Lorraine/@comment-6884918-20150726124517

Vote for Max!



 Hello, members of the jury. Today, I’ll try and convince you to vote for me to become the Sole Survivor. If you have any questions, please shoot. So, here we go.



 Before I start, one thing: I’m not saying that the other two sitting next to me also didn’t play good games. On the contrary, nobody gets to the final 3 without playing a decent game at least. I will try and convince you that I played the best game of the three of us.



 I came into this game with one goal: make the jury. Anything beyond that would be nice, but getting to the jury was my goal. And I hit that goal. And I was so happy. After that, my goal was to be the pest person to one from my original wiki, having to beat James Fitz and getting at least 7th place. Then I got that. Then my goal was to break my 5th Place Curse, and I did that. Then, I wanted to get to the Final 3. And now here we are. I’m here, and I’m already so proud of myself. Winning would definitely crown the game for me.



 Initially, I entered this game as a late shoe-in. Someone had to drop out so I came into the picture. I was super excited, since I was just late on applying for Java, so getting in this season was great for me. When we entered the game, I saw there were 2 other Dutchies on the tribe, Amber and Jesper. To make one thing clear, I didn’t know they’d be playing too when I first signed up. Jesper I knew since he’d hosted me for a game over on another community, but Amber I never met before. The three of us hit it off, which was very surprising to me, since we pretty much were 3 very different people, and so we decided to make a Final 3 deal: “Cheese, Cows and Clogs ‘n Roll”.



 First, I’ll talk you through my experiences of the game, after that I’ll give some thoughts about why you should vote for me.



 We first started in the Anarchy phase. Now, this had one big plus and one big minus for me. And they’re actually the same: Being able to talk to everyone and talk game with everyone. On the one hand, this made it so that I could build relationships with most of the people in the cast. On the other hand however, I think I had alliences with about 14 different people at one point. I was playing way too hard the first couple of days. When the first vote rolled around, I was just glad to see it wasn’t me. In hindsight, I would’ve preferred to take Oliver way further, but that’s how it goes. Next time I won immunity and NJ went home.



 We went into the tribal phase at 18 and, like many people said, went into 3 tribes of 6. I went to the Anthoine tribe, and was very pleased to see my group. I initiated an alliance of me, Danny, Joshua and Yannick, and we practically ruled that tribe. We won 3 immunities in a row, and when we did go to tribal we voted out our outlier Samm. We were sitting very pretty.



<p class="MsoNormal"> Then the tribe swap came. I remained in Anthoine, and to my delight Jesper was there with me too, bringing along some allies. However, this was also the first great turning point in the game for me: Danny’s vote-off. I won’t lie when I say I consider myself and Danny to be great friends, or at least we were when the game started. We’d played in an ORG before, and had a tight alliance and a Final 2 deal. So when his name got put up, and it was pretty obvious he was going home, I was pissed. At that point, I started to doubt the Final 3 alliance I had with Jesper and Amber, and started planning. Next to go home was Joshua, who I really would’ve loved to take far, but was deemed too large a threat. TO not bring attention to myself, I voted along with the majority. After that I thought I was on the chopping block, but luckily for me Kevin had become a target due to some of his comments and overall attitude.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> That’s when the merge rolled around. I didn’t manage to win first immunity and was very scared I’d be going home, but fortunately Gaston seemed to be the target. Since he’d been an outlier of our original Anthoine tribe, we’d unfortunately never really bonded very well. After that, Yannick and I decided we, as the last remaining Anthoine members, should stick together and try to stay low, and be the swing votes in setting Duchêne and Fayolle against each other. Unfortunately, this all go truined when Yannick became the next target, also deemed too big a threat. I tried to rally votes to secure Yannick would stay in the game, but there were at least 5 people that were certainly voting Yannick, and so there was little I could do. I agreed, and we voted out Yannick.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> However, I wasn’t going to let that slide, no sir. Immediately after we knew Yannick would be going home, I approached Jack and told him that the “power duo” wanted to take him out next. That wasn’t completely a lie, since I had been told Jack would be the next target. Jack seemed very surprised, but we agreed that we were going to work to blindside one of the people in this “power duo”. I also approached Jimmy, and told him roughly the same thing, that there was a “power duo” that was calling all the shots and should be taken out.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> Now this “power duo” of course was Jesper and Amber. The thing I did, I made it seem that I was at the bottom of the pretty big and shifting alliance in our camp. Through that, I was able to make it look like Jesper and Amber ALONE were calling all the shots, and kept myself out of it. In truth, I did consider them more of the duo, with me being the odd one out. In hindsight, maybe that was different, I don’t know. Nevertheless, I was able to create some chaos, and make another alliance of me, Jimmy and Jack, the so-called Anti Power Duo Power Trio. At that point, we had 9 people left in our tribe. To make all of that a success, we’d need to get majority in the tribe, and really pull out a blindside. In my mind, Jesper and Mantis were great friends, and Amber and Joy were. That left us with only one option: Simon and Navneet. I really thought that we would be able to at least sway Navneet, and very likely Simon. Before that, amber and Jesper had told me that they both held an idol, and I kept that silent to my new alliance. I wanted to use that as a last resort, if everything blew up in my face and the “power duo” would start targeting me, I’d still have a bomb to drop to divert attention.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> Then something happened that I never thought would happen and, again in hindsight, should’ve seen coming: Jack went up to Amber and started talking about blindsiding Jesper. She was talking about it in our alliance chat, and all the while I was super nervous. I quickly tried to Jack and get him out of that situation, but that was when the bomb dropped. Jack told Amber that I was the one coming up with the plan. Suffice to say, Amber and Jesper were not amused. I quickly had to talk to them, but they were shocked, and upset. To my surprise, they weren’t super mad, only disappointed. In the end, I did try and talk to them and make sure we still had a Final 3 deal. After that blowout, I voted Jack, because, while Mantis had quit, it would still be at least a tie, and voting Jesper would only bring the target to me. Going along with the plan of Jack and Jimmy would only bring a target to my back, and I knew Amber was a very good social player. After Jack got voted out, I decided to keep low and play under the radar again.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> We then started to vote out the biggest threats. Jimmy was first, for being a good social player, but he won immunity, so we went with Simon instead. We decided to make a Final 5 of me, Jesper, Amber, Navneet and Joy. We did that because we were pretty sure we could beat them in the final challenges. After Simon went home, we voted out Jimmy.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> Then, Jesper approached me and told me Amber wanted to vote me out. It shouldn’t surprise me but it did anyway. He was willing to play his idol on me, and that was just an amazing thing to me. That is the reason I am sitting here, I don’t deny it.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> So, that was my game. Again, I’m not saying that the other two here didn’t also play good games, I’m just trying to convince you I played the best game. Besides the strategy aspect, I also was very good in the other 2 main aspects of Survivor. Physically, I did win 2 individual immunities, and was very close to winning Final Immunity. I worked my butt off in those challenges, stayed up late, played jigsaw puzzles for hours and didn’t sleep enough because of it. Socially, I was way better than I have ever been. Aside from a few exceptions, I think I talked to everyone on my tribe every few days, at least. I kept up with what people wanted to vote, how they were doing, et cetera et cetera.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> So, in short, I do believe I have the Brains, the Brawns and the Beauty. I think I played a very solid all-round game, and it got me to this point, something I never would’ve expected. So, I would absolutely love your vote for Sole Survivor.

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<p class="MsoNormal"> If you have any questions, please shoot them here or in your jury speeches. Thank you for playing with us. <ac_metadata title="Vote for Max!"> </ac_metadata>