Board Thread:Season 50 - Kingdoms Collide/@comment-10584014-20181221235822/@comment-25624731-20181223172346

Hey Audrey! You’re legendary.

My best social move in this game was my relationship with Cali. This was something that began pre-merge but was relevant for me throughout the game. When she voted me at the Plague Tribal, I was hurt because I thought we had gotten along really well and I wanted to work together long term. Even though at first we argued about what happened, I later decided to try and turn things around and consider Cali as an option rather than an enemy, as I did understand her reasoning for voting for me and didn’t feel it eliminated the possibility for us aligning. Once the merge hit, we weren’t exactly allies, but we weren’t fully enemies either and expressed a mutual desire to work together, or at least not vote against each other. F11 saw us vote together and form that new alliance with you, Chelsea, and Jake. But our relationship really proved its worth at the F10 tribal council. I thought we were totally screwed by that twist, and had Szymon shown up I know without a doubt one of us would have gone home seeing as Jamie, our initial target, won immunity. But despite that, despite the fact that I knew I had to fight for my life at that moment, I refused to sell Cali out. I knew one or both of us would be getting votes, but no matter what I was not going to vote for her or bad mouth her to keep myself in the game. I was willing to talk about the merits of keeping myself but I refused to leak her secrets (like the fact she had the idol grid, or that we were working together to find the merge idol, or that she didn’t have the Galamis idol). I pretended that I was afraid she’d play an idol and that I wanted votes on Szymon in case she did, but really I just did not want to vote for her as I felt there was no merit to doing that. Jamie/Jared already expressed wanting to keep me but even if they were lying, me voting for Cali didn’t do anything to benefit my position in the game. I think my unwillingness to sell her out helped because as far as I know, Cali wasn’t targeting me or planning on voting for me but that might have changed if I’d been really adamantly against her. She had so much dirt on me and easily could have sold me out to Jamie and Jared but my relationship with her was what prevented that. It ended up working out even better than I thought, since Szymon self voted and I ended up keeping my ally in the game despite fully expecting that she was going to leave. I didn’t vote Szymon to get Cali’s jury vote if she left, I did it because I wasn’t going to turn on her if I didn’t have to, and it paid off immensely as Cali was essential to my game.

My best strategic move? My major Big Move ™, flipping the vote at F11, was something that you, myself, and Chelsea decided equally in my opinion, thought I do think my relationship with Jake was what made that flip so easy. But I would say my smartest strategic move was the F8 vote for Jenna. Chelsea didn’t show up at all that round, from before results were posed until after tribal, she didn’t message anyone and this was a huge disadvantage for me. Sydney had set herself up well after she voted you out because it left her open to work with Jared/Jamie or to form a new alliance with Dani/Jenna. My assumption was that Sydney isolated Dani because she knew Jenna had an advantage that could be used to save herself and together they were planning to shake up the game. Whether or not this was her thought process, I don’t know, but to me it made the most sense with the information I had. Originally, I planned to talk to Chelsea and Cali to see what move they thought made the most sense (I definitely wanted votes to go on Jamie in the event Jenna played an idol), but due to Chelsea not showing up, I realized it would be easier to use her assumed self-vote to make Jenna feel comfortable so she avoided playing advantages altogether, making her the target least likely to play an idol but the most likely to have one. I went to Jenna and told her Chelsea was likely self voting and asked if she wanted to vote Chelsea, telling her that Cali and myself were doing it too. To minimize the chances of something bad happening, Cali and I decided she should vote for Chelsea so that there were 2 votes for Chels (Cali/Chelsea) in the event Jenna played an idol and she teamed up with Sydney to vote Cali or myself. Jamie has mentioned she didn’t understand why she didn’t receive votes that round -- for me, I felt like I was unable to make that move without Chelsea there to vote with me and I was suspicious of Jamie or Jared having the merge idol (Cali/myself/Jake shared guesses/clues and due to the process of elimination, Cali and I knew it had likely been found). Had Chelsea shown up, it would have been a different story, but I didn’t trust Jenna or Sydney enough to try and work with them against Jamie and I was fearful that even if we did, a merge idol could take me out of the game. This round really tested my ability to plan for every scenario and I managed to not only get my intended target out but keep my closest allies safe and continuing to hide my alliance with Cali from everyone else that I was working with.