Board Thread:Season 49 - Newfoundland/@comment-35919983-20181016204209

Introduction:

Hello jurors! I would like to start off my speech by saying that although this game had an intial slow start, I really feel as though the tempo of the season picked up as the game, or at least, the merge progressed. I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with each and everyone of you and one of my favourite aspects of this ORG was getting to know new people outside of the community I typically stay within. I’m assuming that the majority of you have something to say to me, whether it be good or bad (hopefully good lol). Whatever you have to say, I am here to listen to whatever statements you may have and I will try to answer any questions you may have for me to the best of my knowledge. What I’m basically going to do is take you chronologically through my thoughts as the season went on. I understand that everyone isn’t a fan of chronological speeches but I think its best I do it, otherwise I’ll get too scatter-brained!

Pre-swap:

To be honest, this game was pretty chill for me right up until around two votes before the merge so I’ll briefly take you through what happened up until. For the Anarchy tribal, my strategy was to basically talk to everyone. I knew we’d be put into tribes after the Anarchy tribal so I wanted to be in everyone’s good graces, so no matter what tribe I ended up on I wouldn’t be in any trouble. After we were assigned our tribes and my tribe lost the first immunity challenge, Nam was an easy first out. To be honest, I would’ve preferred Simon at the time because he seemed a little more sneaky than Nam, but I wasn’t willing to rock to boat for him because he was pretty inactive. One of the most important things to come from losing the first immunity challenge was the formation of the “Challenge 5”, which was an alliance that consisted on me, Tom, Yuujin, Jordan and Jenna, who were essentially the people that participated in the 99 bottles challenge.

From there, it was pretty much smooth sailing. As the days went on, I continuted to form deeper connections with the individuals of the Challenge 5, as well as checking in Mason and Simon. Tom, Elsa and I were a tight trio and I developed a great relationship with Jordan as the game went on, so I really felt as though if I had lots of options of who to go with if our tribe continued to be decimated in the immunity challenges. Through my relationships with Tom and Jordan I became aware that exile was basically just exile, with no immunity idols.

Post swap:

After the swap, our tribe stayed the same. I was a little mad that Jordan hadn’t thought of bringing over two others from the other tribe to our tribe so we could vote them out, but I was still pretty satisifed with the tribe swap because of my relationships with everyone. After we lost the first challenge, I brought up the idea of taking out Jenna to Elsa, despite her being in our alliance, because Jenna was super busy irl and not giving the challenges enough time and I believed keeping Mason would help us win the next challenge so we would go into the merge with even numbers. Elsa initially pushed backed at the idea of keeping Mason over Jenna, but I was able to get Tom on my side for that vote so Elsa gave in (Jordan was at exile btw so his vote didn’t matter). After we lost the next immunity challenge post swap, we all pretty much agreed to take out Mason because he wasn’t social whatsoever and I knew it’d be a great benefit for us, especiallly going into the merge down 4-6, to have our most social players around to try and flip someone.

F10 – F8:

Honestly, since my tribe was down 4-6 going into the merge, my strategy was to lay low for the first few rounds. From previous experience, I knew that the people who were plotting and scheming the most to try and get someone to flip from the majority would be immediately targetted, like Jordan and Elsa. My main goal for the early stages of the merge was reconnecting with certain people I had initally clicked with during the Anarchy twist like Matt, Vilma and Alex. It was through my relationship with Matt that I was able figure out I wasn’t being targetted for the first merge tribal council. I was sad to lose a great ally in Jordan but continuted to work on my relationships with people from the majority, as well as maintaining my current ones with Elsa and Tom.

Ain was medevaced at F9. Although I really enjoyed her presence, this was a nice break for me in the game as it reduced my alliance’s deficit to 5-3 from 6-3.

At the F8, I was told by people such as Matt, Vilma and Elsa that the vote was flipping on to Edvin. I really didn’t like how Matt and Vilma were dictating things at the time, so I suggested to Tom and Elsa that we leak to Edvin that we were being told that his alliance was going to vote him out and try and get him to tie it up 4-4, which would then give us room to try get another flipper on the revote. When I approached Edvin, he didn’t really seem interested in working with us despite us telling him that his alliance was throwing his name out. We were drawing dead with everyone else so decided to just go along with the Edvin plan and hope for the best. Unfortunately, a vote was split on Tom and Elsa during that tribal council instead and Elsa was voted out. Despite this, I believe it is a credit to my relationships with people that I was not one of the recipients of the split vote.

F7 and F6:

Around final 7, there was major speculation of where the merge idol was. Honestly, I had no idea who had it until a chat with Vilma where she reminded me that Rob had announced that the idol had been found using a specific name that he announced in the tribe chat. A few days prior, before the F8 vote, Elsa put a list of names into an alliance chat of me, Tom and her of who the answer for the idol could be. We picked names from the list and guessed. All my guesess, and Elsa’s, were incorrect. However, I noticed one of the names Tom  had guessed was the answer for the idol that Rob had announced in the tribe chat. From this I basically figured out that Tom had the idol, which was great for my game as I was able to move forward fearlessly, as I knew I could take shots at powerhouses like Matt and Vilma. I would later confront him around F6 about the idol, where he would initially deny having it, but ultimately admitted it to me.

At the F7, I was able to get Alex to come on board with me and Tom by harping on about how Matt and Vilma were running the game and how we wouldn’t be able to beat them in the end. Before even getting Alex to flip, I had talked to him and decent amount and built a relationship with him to make this flip possible.

You may ask why I voted Edvin out over Vilma at F7 despite Vilma being a bigger threat? To be honest, I had heard from numerous people that Edvin was feeding people false information about certain aspects of the game. For example, I was told he was telling people that Tom (my closest ally) was throwing Matt under the bus at F8, when in fact it was Elsa (who I didn’t care if he threw under the bus at the stage because she was voted out by F7). I didn’t appreciate the lies he was telling people about my closest ally because that could have effected my game. I couldn’t trust Edvin anymore and felt getting Edvin out would get Alex to trust me more. As well as this, I didn’t believe there was much certainty for the future of my game if I voted with Edvin and Rob, as Rob was one of the most erratic and illogical players in the game, so I decided to vote him out along with Vilma, Tom and Alex.

Matt returned from his temporary exile at F6. I had Matt locked in as my msin target because at F8 he had told me I was “acting shady” and continued to bullshit me about minor things, like pretending to not know that Elsa was getting voted out on the revote at F8 when it was clear he knew and was running the show. Despite myself really liking Matt during the Anarchy stage of the game, I knew I could never trust him after the F8, even after we promised to not bullshit each other anyone. As well as this, I knew that he was playing a better game than me and thus taking him out was also to improve my shot at winning the game! So, at F7 I approached Alex with a plan where he would pretend to be with Matt and Vilma to split the votes on Tom and I, but that he would flip to make it 3-2-1, which meant he would have to vote Tom with Rob since Matt and Vilma were voting me. Since the F7, I gradually had grown closer to Rob and formed a good relationship because I knew what Rob liked in a gameplayer: someone that wasn’t completely full of shit and I was able to use this to my advantage. It was from this relationship I was able to determine he’d definitely be voting Tom at F6 because Tom had “attacked him” (he actually told me it was between Tom and Alex for who he was voting at F6 but lez-be-real, we all know he wasn’t gonna do that)

END GAME:

At F5, I wanted to keep Rob over Vilma simply because, after Matt, Vilma was probably the biggest jury threat because she is an incredibly likable and chill girl. Vilma also would have been tougher to beat in the final immunity challenge than Rob, so I voted her out because I felt keeping Rob would maximise my odds of winning final immunity. Rob also had a vendetta against Alex so I knew by keeping him we’d be able to vote Alex out at F4 if he didn’t win immunity. I was also able to persuade Tom to play his idol on me at F5 to ensure my safety, incase Alex tried to pull a fast one on us.

My ideal situation at the F4 was to vote off Alex, however he won immunity. I believe through my strong relationships with Rob and Alex that I was able to survive the final 4 vote over Tom. As well as this, voting Tom out wasn’t necessarily the end of the world for me, because I was fully aware we had played similar enough games and felt campaining to get him out over Rob would increase my odds for the FTC.

Bye-bye!:

So yeah, jurors, this is my opening state and speech. I hope you enjoyed the read and I’m eager to answer any questions you may have. I would greatly appreciate your vote because I believe out of all the finalists, especially for someone coming into the merge down in numbers, that I had an extremely effective strategy of laying low initially and forming relationships and then becoming more bold in my moves as the game moved forward! Thanks for reading and please gimme your vote! 