Hello members of the jury.
I'd like to preach some humility and say that with this final 3, quite obviously, none of us were the single driving force in the game. No one was omniscient and no single strategy was flawless. What I hope to articulate is why I am, of the 3, the standout in terms of social awareness and social ability.
I believe that Andrew is here for lots of reasons, but a proportion of which was because of the information I would siphon and filter to him based on my game and my relations and not his own. And Snails? WELL HE'S A PISSING CHEAT SO WHAT MORE DO I SAY ON THAT FRONT SO FIGHT ME. But more than anything, the pure man hours that I put into this game, which most of you have been a witness to, and the social relationships that I dug away at were all part of the dedication and respect that I paid in homage to Carl's final season and to you all as players.
I checked in and talked to everyone almost every day and neither of Alex and Andrew can claim that. They did not put in the workload, for better of for worse, into this experience and I hope that’s evident from the way that you’ve seen me play.
I won't go through the minutiae of my game. I went to a lot of pre-merge tribals, and unfortunately that manifested itself into too much distrust between Erik and Brady and Mearl in Saboga. I lost my closest allies, and at the same time, although my relations kept me aware and unsurprised by each vote, I lacked any significant influence in changing this. To be in such a numbers deficit so early on and to be someone, like most of you, who has had so much prior group game success, I seemingly should not been allowed to have made it so far. Mearl, Jayson, Gaia, Brady and the lot of you honestly have larger than life reputations, and some of the reasons that you left were purely based on that reputation. Mearl is “never to be trusted.” Jayson is “always a social threat.” For someone like me who carries a similar weight, I had to underplay my game and oversell my weaknesses.
To get to this point, being seen as weak was imperative. I was without immunities (often intentionally). I was totally exposed. Both sides through ballistas at one another and the strongest were picked off. I recognised this and altered peoples perceptions of me, and made myself, through social play, an attractive and workable partner. I played up my “mis-votes” as an indicator of being without an alliance. I played, largely, excluding Andrew, as a free-agent and an agent of chaos.
At the Jayson vote I was a key factor, after Austin and Wyatt, in getting the non-Mogo, or "the rock solid" alliance to feel together. I gave us cool nicknames and I tied in the loose ends. As Austin, Austin and Wyatt were setting up a flip, Andrew was ready to flip to Mogo himself. He was moments away from doing so, which would have devastated both his and my own game. But fortunately our friendship allowed him to trust in my decision not to do that.
And again, another hugely significant vote fell when I got rid of Chris. I needed Chris gone. He had a great relationship with every single person but me. In one day I formed a fabulous relationship with Jordan and he was able to convince Alex to turn on his closest strategic alliance, despite it being against him own best interests. Andrew, as he’s stated, was lied to and bamboozled in these moments, and even as it tied I was able to use the trust we had to leverage his pivotal vote. Again, he got rid of Chris despite his own best interests. I did that.
Other than that I was able to flip against Jordon, who’d just proved himself to be an immensely savvy player, and then flip it back against Christian and Spinner, the real two people I personally saw at the final 5 as being the biggest players left.
