Board Thread:Season 50 - Kingdoms Collide/@comment-17738489-20181222011522/@comment-25624731-20181223184706

Hey Szymon! You’re adorable and the best. This is another long answer, hopefully the jury doesn't mind reading my essays.

For the first merge vote, I wanted someone out of the game who  had an idea of how I was playing but also wouldn’t work with me down the road. I knew whoever left first wasn’t going to get a huge insight on my game due to the strategy I was using so I wanted to make sure we’d had some good conversations so they left with a positive impression of me. That target was Jamie. We had just met, so I knew it was unlikely she’d work with me over other alliances she’d had longer. Jamie and I connected in the couple days we’d been together but I had no alliance with her. She knew I was at least thinking about how things worked and my hope was that if I voted her out, she wouldn’t feel betrayed and later jurors would confirm her initial impressions that I was actively involved in the game. Originally, I had conversations with Jake, Audrey, Cali, and Chelsea about making this move and I felt that due to the Fyvie 3 alliance, I’d be able to get Bryce on board, though I didn’t bring it up to him at that point. My hope was this would create an alliance where Audrey and Chelsea thought the three of us were on top, but really Jake and I would be the secret duo. More than wanting Jamie out, I wanted to create a unified alliance that would last for a couple of rounds at the merge. Unfortunately, Jake and Chelsea started panicking and targeted each other in the eleventh hour. I believe this happened because a lot of secrets got leaked that round as people were fearful of being caught withholding information, and Chelsea ended up telling Jamie that Jake had been targeting her (fun fact: I also knew Chelsea had been leaking mine and Audrey’s info, as a lot of it got back to Jake and therefore got back to me, so I was starting to grow distrustful out Jamie plan would work out). When the plan fell apart, I was really just concerned with finding an alliance and didn’t care so much about who was voted out so long as it wasn’t myself or Jake. When our group of 7 came together, I had no working relationship with Sydney or Jamie, but I trusted the rest of you and figured it was a better offer than I’d gotten from anyone else that day. When Bryce’s name got thrown out, I was fearful of having a first juror where I hadn’t really had a strong connection with them but my hope was that what I had shown Bryce would be enough for him to at least not root against me on jury and that later jurors would fill him in on the more impressive details of my game.

For the second merge vote, I wanted Jenna out. What I’d seen from her had really impressed me and I got the sense she was well connected with not only her minority alliance but also with yourself and Sydney. Jenna was in the best position to play the game I wanted to play, one where you can align with everyone and really control what moves are made. I didn’t want anyone else to have an opportunity to be in that role if I could help it. Cali, Tyler, and Dani were also telling Jake quite a bit of information and therefore were still useful to me. Jenna wasn’t doing this as much and since I didn’t want to turn on the alliance of 7, it made her the ideal target. However, it didn’t seem like anyone was really biting onto this and when you suggested Tyler as a target I wasn’t totally against it as I didn’t feel like he was very interested in working with me and I’d rather he leave than Jake or Cali. But when Jenna’s vote steal came into play, things really started shaking up. Jake told me about it an hour before tribal and I told him I was going to get permission to throw my vote so that whoever his alliance voted would go home, allowing me to betray our group of 7 without any of you knowing. I knew Jake wouldn’t vote me, so I wasn’t really worried about this backfiring and sending me home. I ended up having to vote quite early due to my phone dying, so I didn’t throw on Jake as I didn’t want our whole alliance voting him (it seemed too risky and I wanted him to be able to save his idol). Then I found out that they were voting for you… and I was significantly less happy. You were the only person in the alliance who’d really spoken to me at that point about future plans beyond the 7 so I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of losing you. Unfortunately, when I figured all this out you had already voted, and I figured it was better to look like I didn’t know all of this had happened rather than give you a heads up and out myself as someone who was getting info from the other side. Tyler leaving was not ideal for me as, like Bryce, he didn’t have a great sense of my game, but he did like me quite a bit and I knew no matter what, I was going to make sure the third juror was someone who had a little more insight to how I was thinking about the game.

Also, I have to comment on Jamie’s response as I feel there are a few assumptions about what I was thinking and I would like to correct them, I hope this is okay. Obviously, there were moments I was lucky (you self voting being one of them) and it is arguable that had I attended more pre-merge tribals, I may have gone home. But like I also said earlier, social game and alliances are what decrease your need for luck in this game and increase your ability to safely protect yourself and to rely on challenges is a very risky way to play, especially when you’re keeping people like myself in the game who had a high chance of also winning. For Jamie to comment on the Plague tribal, which is one she did not attend, seems a little outrageous as she has no idea how any of us played that round. I also don’t think she fully realizes how close she was to losing a couple of those last challenges. Had Dani shared her F6 immunity answers with me 5 minutes earlier than she did, I would have beaten Jamie in that challenge and we WOULD have voted her out despite what she believes. I had already spoken to Sydney that round about working against Jamie if she lost, and my plan was to propose a 2-2 split and let Sydney know voting Jamie out would be her only way to survive. I may not have personally voted for Jamie at that round but make no mistake, we were targeting her. The main reason I avoided voting her most of the merge was I suspected she had an idol (which she did, which she was also lucky to find as she wasn’t the only one working with others to try and figure out where to guess) or she was immune, and while she may argue she had relationships to protect her, the unprompted idol play at F8 says to me she didn’t think they were quite strong enough. It’s interesting that she assumes if the F7 vote went her way that Cali, Chelsea, and myself would have been the next 3 voted out because both Jared and Sydney had talked with me about wanting to work against Jamie, something I’m not sure she was fully aware of. Jared was aware he was being perceived as Jamie’s second in command and I know he wanted to work to change that. Those plans never game to fruition as there wasn’t an opportunity for us to enact them from F7 onwards but to assume that the rest of us were not planning to take her out to prevent an immunity streak is quite an understatement.