I had such a fun time playing this game, it is the first game I have played on Tengaged in a very long time in which I put in any amount of effort.
I just wanted to give some insight into my game because I put a good amount of effort in and would like to win, and because I want to explain a few of the decisions I made.
EARLY GAME
I did not have high hopes for the game early on and I mostly just sent funny messages to people hoping they would respond and maybe I could skate by long enough to actually have a chance at winning. There were a lot of rumors about a premade (not the clowingtons as far as I can tell) so I thought I would've just been taken out by them quickly. However, I got quite lucky with immunity wins and managed to get to top 50 fairly easily.
MID GAME
I had a bit of a speed bump while I was on a tribe with CocoaBeanDarkTyphoon23BBDamianCruelSummer and Matte. At this point I still wasn't paying attention to the game, but CocoaBean for some reason pm'd me on day 35 trying to get me to try and pick someone else to vote because people were voting for me. Luckily, I survived a 4-4 vote all thanks to them, and probably thanks to BBDamian. On day 37 I survived yet another close 4-5 vote. IDK who else voted for me, but funny enough the person I brought to final 2 DarkTyphoon23 voted against me both of those times.
At this point I basically told CocoaBean I would be a simp for them because they were pretty much the main reason I was still in the game. I was so sad when they did not make merge, and I kinda felt obligated to try hard to win because they had saved my ass earlier.
The last tribe swap before merge I got pretty much the dream team tribe for me, with BBDamian, hwest and Milkisgood. We pretty much dictated the votes for that tribe, which made it pretty much smooth sailing for the merge.
On day 44, the last vote before the merge, the four of us had a mail discussing who to vote for. Milkisgood wanted Cruelsummer out, and I really pushed for Matte to go out. I felt like Matte would be a threat later in the game because it appeared to me that he would promise every person his vote, which can be dangerous if you ever have to rely on his vote later. The vote did eventually land on CruelSummer, but I was particularly unhappy about that.
MERGE
After we finally made it to merge I realized that there were a lot of people from the Clowingtons, which was my old friend group from like 3/4 years ago. I feel like I might get lumped into that group as the 'premade' but I really was not very close to many of them. The closest person I had was Milkisgood, but even then I did not expect him to work very close with me for long. The Clowingtons group all voted for cfff to go first, but I really did not want to do that because I heard most of the Clowingtons had a second group chat with AlexaVonTrayne and Koolness without me (Ben leaked to me btw) which reinforced my fears that I was going to be voted out around 9th place. Ben seemed like he was willing to flip in order to vote out Koolness, and I was obviously very okay with that.
However, the votes were not there to flip (but I did vote for koolness that round because I wanted to possibly work with cfff and sjsoccer and koolness never directly asked for my vote that round). I voted for koolness again on the second merge vote, and I thought it was either going to be a tie or a 6-5 for koolness to go. Apparently Ben lied to me and voted Scott out. I don't know why he did that personally, but good for him and it didn't really affect his game much.
At final 10, I got EXTREMELY lucky with the un-merge because brookie_cookie got really screwed by our tribe and houston winning immunity. Ben, Jon, and Jan all seemed eager to flip on brookie because they wanted to split up her and Zeptis. Ben and Jan also told me Zeptis wanted them to vote me out so I was definitely okay with this. I could have easily been screwed by this twist and I was so happy with the outcome.
Before brookie was voted out, I started to see a path to the final 2 by working with Jon, Ben, and Jan. We managed to solidify a final 4 deal. At this point, I realized if this final 4 deal makes it to final 6, we could cut one of our own with a final 3 deal. So, I promised Jan I would take him to final 2 because I felt Jon and Ben would beat both of us. I didn't ask him to promise the same, but I wanted to guarantee at least one person who wouldn't turn on me until final 3, because I felt like the only way I would make finals is by winning final immunity anyway.
After brookie left, Zeptis was understandably upset with Ben and Jan. But then he tried rally the troops to vote me out. I feel like if my final 4 deal with Ben Jon and Jan wasn't formed by now, I would've been voted out. I think I was lucky that Matte had tried to vote out Hwest several votes earlier, because that made it easy to get Hwest to vote Matte instead of me. I assume Zeptis and Koolness decided not to vote for me because they realized I wasn't going, or because Ben asked them not to, I'm not sure.
With Matte gone, it was going to be easy to vote out either Houston or Koolness because our final 4 had majority. I wanted Houston to go because I felt if I had saved koolness he might have been more inclined to not vote me for final 6, and I thought that was going to be the hardest vote. Admittedly, Ben and I discussed it and we could've gone either way, but we eventually agreed not to risk pissing off Jon/Jan who seemed to prefer if koolness left.
FINALE
Last night, Ben Jan and I solidified a final 3 deal. We just had to get past the final 6 vote, but honestly with Houston still in the game that was going to be easy because I don't think he cared too much about the game. At this point, I also made the biggest mistake of my game: going to work on a Friday Night. Because of this terrible error, I did not have the luxury of being able to talk to people during the final votes or be able to plead my case, so I basically had to play the last four rounds of voting the night before, and I still made finals.
My plan pretty much relied on Ben and Jan committing to go to final 3. I knew Ben and Jan were probably the two people who were most likely to take me to final 2, but I was also pretty sure even they didn't want to take me to the end.
At the end of the day, I was the person on the fringe of the "premade" but had to work with them because Alexa/Matte/Cfff/Scott/Koolness and myself were not able to work together during the first two merge votes. So, I made the best of a bad situation and figured I probably had a 1/3 chance of making it to finals if everything went according to plan.
Unfortunately, Ben wanted to increase his odds of making finals and tried voting me at final 4 because both Jan and Zeptis would probably take him to the end. However, I got lucky with three things: Jan deciding not to vote me out at final 4 (either for loyalty or because I promised him final 2, I'm not sure), me winning a second tie-breaker, and then me winning final immunity. Ben and Jan have both confirmed to me that they would have given me 3rd if I had not won final immunity.
So yes, I have been extremely lucky this game. However, given the cards I was dealt at merge I feel like I made the best decisions I could have made to make it to the end without backstabbing anyone besides Jon (who tried voting me out the same round I voted him out so I guess that one is an eye for an eye and I don't feel bad about it). I've played a loyal game, sticking with Ben because I felt he was best positioned in the game with ties with almost everyone, and cutting him at final 3 for that same reason.
The three people I've tried to work with but couldn't: Koolness, Cff, and Scott, I'm sorry it didn't work out but I promise I meant every word I said to y'all. Matte and Alexa, I'm sorry I didn't talk to you much but I didn't want to burn bridges with you guys because I felt the Clowingtons were going to vote you out shortly after sjsoccer left.
This game was a blast!
If you have any questions, feel free to mail me or comment here.
Thank you Aquamarine for a great game, and good luck Jan!
