Talk:TheHickman/@comment-4190137-20140122040135

lol

"Going to go with Alfons, he was amazing but his strategy was extremly cheap. It was effective though so props to him."

While I respect that you can have an opinion and I understand why you might think my gameplay was easy, but trust me.. it was far from that. Very very difficult it was. Feels like I need to repeat my Final Tribal Council speech again, haha.

As you said, 'twas was effective... Besides, my strategy wasn't as cheap as it looked. It was far, far, far, far, faaaar from easy. I didn't just form an alliance and simply dictated every vote from start to finish without competition, throughout the game I had to make big moves to keep my hierarchy:


 * Sole's boot - having an alliance of 5 in a tribe of 10 called for some big manipulation (starting an idol rumour) against the other 5 so that they would mess up their vote. And of course Adam forgot that we were voting for Sole instead of Cesar.
 * Surviving Mod Interference - Ian (who was constantly trying to turn my alliance against me) was a major threat (trying to turning my allies against me, feeding my enemies info), I had to play some kind of 'social game' against him to stop him from interfering - like telling him I was on the bottom all the time, etc. Sad, but very true.
 * Forcing Jastine to work with me - When the switch happened, I told Jastine that I would target Duy and Kesh ahead of him if he worked with me, despite being hesitant, he eventually shook my hand thinking we would merge at 12. Then of course we didn't merge at 12 and the Jastine/Ian/Adam controversy came in. Oh dear! haha..
 * JCTY - Having to deal with JCTY was difficult, at the Final 12 I think I made an alliance of 7, I had a hard time convincing Max and Zac to join, but they eventually came along. Luckily my alliance still had majority at the merge.
 * Keeping alliance together - This was very very difficult. Had it been 100% my way I would have voted out Taylor and Jeremy first, but to keep some of them happy I kept Taylor around for a little longer and took out Yaniv instead, who they were fine with. Then I had a really hard time with the Jeremy vote, Brian and Max were close to flipping, I had to have a huge conversation with them to sooth their minds and to not flip for now at least. I also had to constantly scream out who I was targeting to indicate I was going behind their backs.
 * Cesar's boot - At the Final 8 I was in a really sticky situation, Brian and Max had finally flipped, but as Taylor/Cesar also tried to pull in a stubborn Noah, he came to me and told me everything. My first instinct was to simply play my idol, but I wasn't exactly willing to do that and keep myself vulnerable. Brian had already voted, I eventually got the truth out of him that he voted for me, when I did I pretty much bullied him (in a game-sorta-way, by threatening to boot him with my idol) into getting Max to vote for Zachary so it would be 4-3-1 against Cesar, my plan worked, but Taylor also voted for Zachary, which was a bonus!

After that I must say my gameplay relied on challenge wins, Brian, Zac, Zachary eventually wanted me out as my target was simply too big - but throughout the game I only missed 1 Tribal Council, I only had to rely on immunity wins after my gameplay's 'expiry date'. Nonetheless I wouldn't categorise my win as 'cheap'. Even if, still after reading this, you're opinion hasn't changed/changed little, does that still put... Kyle Gober ahead of me? Haha.