In almost every past Survivor group game I’ve played in, I’ve tried to play a rather passive game. My strategy was always to get myself into the majority and stick with it. I’ve tried to play more of a social game and not ruffle so many feathers, so that, if I’m sitting in the F3, people would want to vote for me because they liked me. However, that strategy has never worked for me. That strategy got me close to winning in Link’s Second Chances, but I ultimately didn’t win and went home in fourth place. I knew, coming into this game, I had to try something different. My passive strategy in the past had always failed, so I needed to play a much more aggressive game. I wanted to be sat here with a résumé of moves that I could talk about if I was ever sitting in this position, and I feel like I did that.
I really feel like my aggressive game came into play at the point when the Jury phase started. After Chip left, on the Heroes tribe, I was not in a good position. I had people sending me messages telling me whom to vote for, rather than asking me. At the Final 12, I knew it was time to make a move and take out the person who had been running our tribe up until that point - Andrea. I knew that she had connections with other Villains and that she would be huge threat after the Merge. In order to do this, a majority alliance of Bingo, Chastain, Gerard and me was set-up. We had the majority at this point, so we could easily get Andrea out. Shortly before the votes were revealed, Sim asked me whom we were all voting for. I told him that the plan was take Andrea out, so we now had a fifth person who was part of the plan.
I would say that my biggest move was made at the Final 10, when I chose to flip from the Heroes to the Villains. I know that that move was ridiculed by a small portion of you, but I still think that it was the right move for me to make. Many of you may have thought that my main reasoning for flipping was my aversion to drawing rocks. However, that wasn’t my main reason at all, even though a 50/50 chance of getting Pagonged isn’t exactly the best thing. The Heroes tribe was a very orderly and methodical tribe, which was the complete opposite of the Villains tribe. I knew that the Villains were extremely dysfunctional and that there were cracks within them that I could utilise to get myself further in the game. Within my five-person Hero alliance, there were two people whom I had never spoken to one-on-one at all. I had no idea where either of them stood in terms of what would happen once we got down to the Final 5 of Heroes. That was definitely something that worried me a bit.
At the next Tribal Council, I was forced to make another tough decision that could drastically affect the game once again. I was offered the chance to flip back to the Heroes. I was told that there was a Villain who was willing to flip to vote out one of the Villains if I was. This decision definitely was not anywhere near as difficult to make as my last decision was, but I still needed a bit of time to think about it. After semi-considering it, I decided that my best move was to just stick with the Villains. I knew that I had a greater chance of making it to the end if I stuck with them. I had no idea what the dynamics of this new Heroes alliance would be like, and I knew that none of the Heroes would trust me after what I had done at the last Tribal. Some may not consider this to be a “big move”, but I think that this does kind of count because I was presented with a choice and I had to decide what I was going to do. There’s a difference between not making a “big move” because you are afraid to make one and not making a “big move” because you know it would benefit you not to make it.
I’m not going to lie; the next vote did come as a shock to me. I really had no idea that Amanda was going home. One of the Heroes had briefly asked me to make a “big move”, but I told them honestly that I was not ready to make one.
