Board Thread:Season 21 - Salvation/@comment-5241311-20141203055245

Hey everybody! Nice weather we're having right? Well anyways the last few months have been long and exhausting and the stress that it puts on you doing challenges almost every day, stragetizing, and voting out people you've come to know and like was hard but still worth it. I love this game and enjoyed every day of it.

When this season started and all 25 of us were placed into the chat and the conversations started flowing rapidly, I was overwhelmed since everyone seemed to know everyone and I only knew a handful of you so I just sat there and read what everyone else was saying until Tyler noticed me lurking and asked me what I was doing. I replied I was sitting in the shadows waiting and watching, this jumpstarted me to finally join in on the conversations and foreshadowed how I was going to play the game this season.

With such a large cast I decided the best way for me to play would be by playing stealthy, staying back and not making myself a target. Since I knew in a season filled with experienced players who were all out to make a big move that the people most likely to be targeted were the ones who tried to control the game. I mean trying to be the ringleader might work in a newbie season where the game is filled with people who don’t care or just want to get as far as possible but in a returnee season you know everyone here came to play and will do anything to win. So setting yourself up as the leader early in the game just gets yourself half a dozen sniper rifles trained on you, ready to take you out.

As the season progressed it became clearer and clearer to me that due to the style of which I played people didn’t think I knew as much about what was going on as it appeared. They would come to me and try saying things that made no sense and only someone who wasn’t paying attention would believe. In order to show how much I knew about what was going in the game this season I’ve will now break down my entire game from the start. Before the first challenge I made a short list of people who I already knew or bonded with since meeting them that I wanted to work with which included Mitchell, George, Ivan, and Ian. At the first vote I went along with the majority and voted Brian since it seemed like the safest vote but then Ted came to me after and asked me to me help vote off James who he felt was overplaying. I agreed with Ted and wanted to switch my vote to James then but I wasn’t allowed, thou it would have made no difference since Brian went home with a 16-7-1-1 vote. We were then separated into our tribes and I was super happy that one of the people on my list of potential allies, Mitchell ended with up me on Súlur, along with Jino and Matthew who neither of which I had talked to yet. But after talking to Jino for only a little while I immediately took a liking to him and added him to my list. Súlur dominated the first few challenges as we ended up being the only tribe that didn’t lose a challenge or member and I was feeling good. But then the tribe dissolve happened and in the schoolyard pick I was the last person chosen and ended up on the New Súlur. I’ll admit this placed me into a state of paranoia that lasted till the merge where I took any little thing someone said as a sign they wanted me out or were coming for me. Thou I did end up on my preferred tribe as I was still with Jino and Mitchell and that another person from my list George was now a tribemate. However the entire tribe except for a few (or just me?) took part in what seemed like nightly Skype chats, which led me to become fearful this might make people want to take me out because I’m wasn’t “bonding” with you guys which was fueled by the paranoia was I feeling that I mentioned earlier. This led me to bond more with Jino and join with Mitchell to form an alliance “The Súlur 3” But due to the fact we won most of our challenges I didn’t have much need to strategize early in the game but when we did lose our first challenge and only challenge, it seemed pretty obvious Nathan was going to be the target. However Mitchell told me that Perry was trying to a form an alliance between him, Mitchell, Ted, Eden, Tyler, and George and that Perry had told to Nathan to vote me. Mitchell then came up with a plan to for The Súlur 3 along with Nathan and Zane to take out Perry. I went to Nathan and asked him to help me take out Perry and he said he liked the idea and could get Zane. However seconds later Perry came to me and asked me about Nathan as apparently he had told him everything I said. I played it off by saying that Nathan told me that Perry told him to vote me and that I was just humoring Nathan, which Perry “seemed” to buy. This betrayal by Nathan and Jino thinking it’s too early to make a move like this led us to sticking with the majority and voting off Nathan. The tribe switched then occurred where I was once again not chosen for a tribe, this time thou since Eden and Isaac were doing all the picking it didn’t affect me as much as the first time and I spent the first challenge on Exile Island. However the “switched Súlur” lost the challenge which meant I would be joining that tribe to replace whoever they voted off. The tribe included the four New Súlur members I was the least close with; Perry, Eden, Zane, and Ted. I did NOT want to be on the bottom of this tribe so I told the remaining Askja members who were apart of the “Switched Súlur” Mikey and Trace that I would work with them to cause a tie at the next vote and risk going to rocks, all we would need is some help from my old allies on the other tribe. I asked Mitchell if he could do me a favor and convince the rest of his tribe to send either Eden or Zane to exile, but instead he somehow got apparently everyone in on a plan to blindside Ted. It was during this moment that I realized how dangerous a player Mitchell really was and that there was no way I could sit next to him at the final tribal council and say I outplayed him. After Ted’s blindside, Tyler came to me and asked me to get my tribe to throw the challenge so we could blindside Perry. He’s also asked if I wanted to make an alliance with him. I agreed to both but didn’t have any intentions on following through on throwing the challenge. I hate throwing challenges, it doesn’t matter if I’m almost certainly safe I do not like putting myself at risk on purpose. But talking to me Trace and Mikey I learned they already knew about the plan and seemed up for it, which I didn’t get since keeping Perry a bigger target around would a better move for them since they are in the minority and it would turn the attention of the majority off of them. Luckily the survivor auction saved me from it all and I bought myself a tripe to Exile Island a guaranteed spot in the merge and I finally stopped being paranoid, which will be evident when you read my confessionals when they are released once this season is done and over with.

Perry proceed to be voted and we finally merged with ten players remaining; 7 from New Súlur and 3 from Askja. At the first vote after the merge Eden who seemed like he knew he was the bottom tried to rally the 7 from New Súlur together and vote out T.J, however we vetoed him and decided Mikey would be a better choice. Thou after a conversation with T.J I talked to some of my fellow members about changing the vote to Eden but the idea didn’t gain much and ground so Mikey got voted out 7-3.

A new alliance was then formed between me, T.J, George, Mitchell, and Jino, named “The Five” along with a sub-alliance between me, Jino, and T.J known as “The Shield”. Our first target was obviously Trace since he was a physical threat in challenges and if we let him get to the end he could easily play up the role of underdog and certainly win the jury’s vote. However at the vote Trace played an idol and Tyler was voted off since Mitchell had changed his vote as well. This caused to me to become highly suspicious of Mitchell since I knew he had found one idol already and was very close to finding the other.

After this shocking move Trace seemed to have become convinced that Mitchell was with him along with T.J and Jino, he tried to talk me into joining them by saying that voting out either Eden or Zane would be a huge move. Now that was just an insult to my game and so I planned to go along with everyone else and vote out Trace. But before the vote I talked with George who told you me that Mitchell had made an alliance with him and T.J, I don’t know if it was true or not but it gave me more motivation to take out Mitchell who was also now dominating every challenge and T.J who if he made it to the end would be able to play up the same underdog story that Trace could have. But before we could vote Zane made a shocking announcement, he wanted to quit the game! This meant Trace was safe another tribal council but luckily Zane changed his mind and we voted Trace out 7-1.

The hosts then surprised I think everyone and announced that Trace would decide who got immunity in the next vote. After T.J received immunity he told me and Jino his plan of splitting the vote along with help from Eden and Zane between Mitchell and George. I warned George about this plan right before T.J purposely leaked info into “The Five” alliance chat (without warning me) that we were trying to take out George and Mitchell, in order to panic Mitchell into playing his idol. Not wanting to vote out George, I made plans with him on what do about the vote. We decided to get Jino and Zane with us to form a new alliance that ended up being named “The Corre” and vote off Eden. Zane attempted to get me to replace Jino with Eden since he said George and Eden were tight but I knew this wasn't true and refused to budge and eventually he agreed to the plan.

With Eden gone and only six of us left, the four of us put all our effort into beating Mitchell in the immunity challenges so we could finally vote him out. Our first attempt failed so we took out the only other non-alliance member T.J. before we finally managed beat Mitchell in the next challenge officially slaying the challenge beast.

Moving on during the middle of the final immunity challenge George came to me and said that Jino told him that he didn’t want me to win the challenge because he wanted to take me out, I didn’t know whether to believe this is or not since me and Jino had been together nearly the whole game. After George won immunity I had to decide whether I actually believed Jino was gunning for me or if it was just a rouge. I decided put my trust in Jino as I did the entire game and voted Zane like we had discussed. However as it turns out Jino did want me out and by writing my name down he basically voted himself out of the game leaving the final three you see before you.

Now with all of that out of the way, I think I should be the Sole Survivor because this game is about surviving and I think I did that to the best of my abilities. I was able to play this game without ever really making myself a target or having any enemies, by keeping my long-term goals to myself and telling people what they wanted to hear. I knew when it was the right time to make big moves and pull the trigger on some of my closes allies before they realized I was against them and when to just sit back and wait, allowing the others to put targets on their backs. Every move I made was done after much thought and deliberation in order to put myself in the best possible position I could manage to win this game. I made some mistakes that could have possibly put me in a better spot but what is done is done. So now I leave up to you the jury to decide how well you think I played and I'm ready answer your questions as well as I can.

P.S Vote Steve because I'm the only choice...whose named Steve... 