Post by parvati on Jul 21, 2013 14:47:45 GMT -5
Hey everyone!
I'd like to start off by saying that I'm not gonna apologize for the moves I made in this game, because they allowed me to get to this spot. I have much love and respect for all of you. It was never anything personal, it was just a game and I hope you can put your personal feelings aside and give your vote to the person you thought played the best game - whether that's me or Pete.
My strategy right off the bat was to form a tight alliance with someone and gather enough people around us to form the majority. I wanted to have a some kind of relationship with every player on my tribe, so that I would always have options in case things didn't go as planned. I wanted to keep portions of my game hidden from most people, because I didn't want to come across as the biggest threat in the game. I assumed everyone would have little side deals here and there that I would not be aware of, so I had to make sure I had more connections than anyone else and that would keep me safe in the game no matter what twists and turns the game would throw at me. I wanted to be 2 steps ahead all the time and didn't make moves unless I knew and was prepared for what would happen next.
I lied and I deceived people to ensure safety for myself and my #1 ally in this game. There was one person in the game I was loyal to the whole time and I was never going to turn my back on him.
From the outside looking in it may have looked like Magnetic was a cohesive unit, but people were looking to turn against each other at every turn and I had to do a lot of work and convincing to keep our dysfunctional group together long enough for me to make it to the end. Pete is an amazing player and I don't want to take anything away from him, but I believe I was the glue that kept us all together.
I'm gonna go round by round, vote by vote, so you guys have a better understanding of what happened behind the scenes and what I did to make sure Pete and I would be sitting here.
The beginning / pre-swap
The ORG world isn't that big. You're bound to run into people you've played with before. It's just inevitable. I saw two familiar faces during the sign ups: Pete and Stephen. I was familiar with their gameplay and I planned to use it to my advantage. I didn't tell either one that we knew each other, because I wanted to have the upper hand. I knew Stephen was someone I'd have to keep my eye on and I wanted him out early if I couldn't find a way to control him, so I started planting seeds early on by telling people he wasn't someone they could trust. Pete was someone that I knew if I could get him to trust me, he would be my extra pair of eyes and ears and that I could count on him to do what I asked.
I started working on him immediately and we were on the same wavelength so the power alliance of Petevati was born almost instantly. We agreed that we would be the most loyal to each other and it would be us two sitting at the final 2. We made the decision to keep our relationship on the down low, so no one would suspect us two being together. I think we succeeded in that, because no one seemed to piece it all together except for Colby and we were able to deflect the attention away from that pretty well.
I had my #1 ally in the game and it became time to gather the troops. We knew who we wanted in our alliance and what we had to do to make it happen. Brenda, Malcolm and Naonka were the people we were going to approach. Brenda and I had made a connection already, Malcolm seemed like a solid ally and Naonka cracked me up and I wanted to use her as a shield. We had to carefully orchestrate the forming of the alliance, because I didn't want anyone to feel like they were at the bottom and I didn't want my alliance to Pete exposed too early. I aligned with Brenda and Pete was sent to bond with Malcolm and to bring us all together. Brenda and I were at the one side of the alliance, Pete and Malcolm were at the other side. Meanwhile, Pete and I were at the center of it all and if either side was talking about the people on the other side, we knew about it. Naonka was the 5th person in our alliance, but we were planning on using her to get rid of Malcolm and Brenda and to bring her all the way to Final 3 with us.
Stephen, Cochran and Brett were left on the outside at this point, but I wasn't gonna ignore them because I didn't want to give them a reason to flip if they were presented with the opportunity to do so. So I still talked and tried to maintain a relationship with all of them.
Natalie B was someone I was working on making a secret alliance with and she could have been a powerful tool for me to use later in the game. Unfortunately, her inactivity made her exit the game very early. Everyone felt she was solely responsible for our loss at the challenge (and she was). The game had really only just started, so I wasn't going to stick my neck out for her and try to save her because that could have made people question me.
During rounds 3 and 4 is when Stephen and I really got to talking and he wanted me to be his final 2 and for us to create an alliance of 5 (me, him, Cochran, Brett and Brenda). Of course I played along and acted like I thought it was a great idea. Rule #1 of Survivor: don't ever turn down an alliance. This gave me an opportunity to find out who that side of the tribe wanted to target. They wanted to go after Naonka first, then Pete and then Malcolm and I didn't like the sound of that at all.
I discussed our options with Pete if we were to lose another challenge. I also did the same with Brenda so that she would continue to feel like I was her closest ally. Fortunately we never lost another challenge before the swap, so everything was still well under wraps and I had managed to make everyone in our tribe feel like they were safe and in the majority alliance.
This is what our tribe looked pre-swap. From most safe to the first person to leave.
Me, Pete
Naonka
Brenda/Malcolm
Cochran
Brett
Stephen
I should also probably mention that Chelsea tried to talk to me on numerous occasions. I saw it as an opportunity to get information out of her and find out what the tribe dynamics were on Lindquist. I made a point to never reveal anything concrete about our tribe to her in case she was just sent out to gather information. Pete had same kind of talks with Abi and we were able to compare notes. Apparently Abi had the other idol and we decided to keep that information to ourselves for the time being.
The Swap
I ended up on a tribe with 5 of my original tribe mates and only two people from Lindquist. I also had Pete with me, which made me feel safer. I immediately got to work and contacted each of my new old tribe mates and made sure we were cool and the plan was to vote out Penner and Colby. I tried to make Stephen feel as good as possible, made a secret side deal with Brett and told Naonka how much I love her. A lot of my work during the swap contained me just maintaining relationships and making sure we were united.
This was also the time I was sent to Exile where I found my Hidden Immunity Idol. The only person I told about it was Pete, because I knew I would have to play it eventually and I didn't want him to have a reason to distrust me.
We lost the first challenge and shit hit the fan. Stephen told me he wants to take out Pete over Penner and Colby. Pete was my #1 and I was always going to stay loyal to him, so I wasn't having any of this and I didn't want the Lindquists to have a chance to get back into the game. Stephen wanted to use Penner, Colby and Naonka to vote Pete out of the game. I spent a good hour talking him out of it. I think I succeeded at it, but I wasn't going to take any chances with this one. Which is why Pete and I went to Penner and Colby and asked them to vote for Stephen. If Stephen was still planning on voting Pete out, this would have hopefully split their votes up enough so that Pete and I still had enough numbers to get Penner out. The reason I wanted Penner out over Colby is simply because I felt Penner was a bigger threat and I felt I had a better connection with Colby. Chelsea had also contacted me and told me I need to vote off anybody else but Penner and Colby. This rubbed me the wrong way.
Side note: Stephen's desire to turn on his original tribe is something that I used to bond with Cochran and our relationship grew a little stronger because of that.
We won the next challenge and Brenda's team had to go to Tribal Council. Chelsea had mentioned earlier that she was on the bottom of her tribe, so when we swapped I told Brenda, Malcolm and Cochran about that and advised them to work on Chelsea. Brenda and Malcolm seemed to be confident they had Chelsea on their side when I asked how they were doing, but Chelsea's comments about Penner and Colby in the previous round worried me. I told Brenda about my concerns and I said they should use her double vote and vote for Chelsea.
The vote tied and even though Brenda wasn't my #1 ally in the game, she was still one of my closest allies and I didn't want her gone. Stephen and Naonka got into a fight with the Lindquists. Jerri was thrown under the bus (not by me) and received most of the blame. I was prepared to continue the game Brendaless, but she ended up staying after all. That's also when Brenda started to emerge as a huge threat to win and I knew I would eventually have to do something about that.
Next round was a double boot. I didn't want Colby winning immunity, so I made sure I won. Brenda really wanted us to keep Colby, but I didn't want Brenda having any extra numbers on her side come merge. I had to think about what's best for me and my game and unfortunately for Colby, it didn't include me letting him get to the merge.
Over on the other tribe, the original target was actually going to be Kat. Malcolm had told me earlier that he had gotten closer to Reynold and they have a good relationship. So good, in fact, that Reynold would make sure Malcolm didn't get any votes. Much like with the Colby+Brenda connection, I wanted to get rid of Reynold over Kat because I didn't want Malcolm having any extra numbers on his side. I told Brenda and Cochran that Kat was just on Exile and she could have something so they should vote for Reynold.
The Merge
We merged at 10 and Stephen was immediately removed from the game, so we were down to just 9 people.
I wasn't sure Brenda would be up for writing Jerri's or Kat's name down at the tribal council, so Malcolm and I staged a little group chat where he told Brenda that Kat has been throwing her under the bus and I was able to make Brenda distrust Jerri enough so that by the end of our conversation it was Brenda who wanted Jerri gone the most.
Later on I found out from my allies that Jerri had been trying to gather people on her side to get rid of me. I knew that if someone was thinking of flipping and turning the game on it's head, final 9 would have been THE perfect opportunity to do so. I didn't want to take any risks and be that idiot who gets voted out with an idol in their pocket so I played it. Jerri left because I felt she was a good player and would have been a big threat - and she was targeting me. I also wanted to keep my group of people together as long as possible.
Final 8: Brenda went to Pete and said she's worried I'm coming after her at Final 6 or Final 5. That let me know I needed to work harder at making her feel safe so she wouldn't try to get me out. This is one of those times when my alliance with Pete worked to my advantage, because I knew what people were talking about me behind my back and I was able to adjust my gameplay accordingly.
With Jerri gone my next targets were Brett and Kat. Brett had proven to be good in challenges, so I knew I had to get rid of him before he would go on an immunity run. Brett sending Kat to Exile in the previous round was also highly suspicious. Brett lost and I was fortunate that Brenda wanted Brett gone just as much as I did. This allowed me to play it like it was Brenda that was pushing for a Brett boot and I was just going along with it. I wanted to build Brenda up to be the leader of our group and she would be seen as the bigger threat.
Final 7 and it was looking like Naonka was self-voting herself out of the game. Everyone seemed willing to let that happen and let Kat move to the next round - everyone except me. I wanted Kat gone because she would have not been loyal to me and I thought it was really dangerous to keep her around. We were entering the final stages of the game and people would have tried to use her as a vote each round to take out the bigger threats and she could have easily ended up winning the whole game.
Another reason I needed Kat gone is because Brenda said she wanted to use her next round to take out Pete. And Pete said he wanted to use Kat to take out Brenda. Two of my closest allies wanted to target each other. If it came down to it, Kat would have chosen Brenda's side and Pete probably would have left the game followed by Malcolm and me.
Naonka showed up just in time and I told her what she needed to do to save herself.
Final 6: I received an extra vote at the previous tribal and I went on a mission to find out from who. Brenda thought it was Pete and we should get Pete out. Malcolm thought it was Cochran. I deduced that it was probably Naonka that did it and I used it as a reason to get everyone to vote for her. Naonka had a guaranteed final 3 spot had she stayed active and loyal, but at that point she had become too big of a question mark that she had to go.
Final 5: At this point Brenda had become too big of a threat to keep around and me and the boys were looking for a way to get her out. Brenda won immunity again so we had to wait at least one more round. I knew I would be safe, because both Brenda+Cochran and Pete+Malcolm believed I was with them. I didn't know if Cochran had gotten any advantages from Exile, so I wanted to keep the target away from Pete just in case. So when Brenda and Cochran were discussing the possibility of Pete having an idol, I went along with it even though I knew both idols were gone from the game at that point.
I never made any moves in this game unless I had a solid game plan for how I was going to deal with the aftermath of it all in the next round and the one after that. The decision to ultimately side with Pete&Malcolm and vote Cochran out came when I had a clear plan of how I was going to approach Brenda and make her think I did this for her. Cochran proved to be a loyal ally in the end, but during the game I was never sure how loyal he was and we didn't get to talk as much as I had wanted to. Cochran and I never talked about our end game plans so I wasn't sure if he would have been on board with voting for Brenda at final 4 the same way Malcolm was.
Final 4: I had a plan in place for what would happen if Brenda won again. Pete and i were working together seamlessly and he was letting her think the vote would be Malcolm regardless if she won or not. Malcolm trusted me and believed Pete was getting the boot.
A miracle happened and Brenda lost the challenge. Brenda was leaving, but we had to keep up the pretense long enough to lock in all the votes. I didn't feel good about lying, but we were dealing with the person who pulled off the impossible and got Jerri to flip on her own people. If she had known from the start she was leaving, I absolutely believe she could have gotten Malcolm to tie the vote and Brenda probably would have won the tiebreaker.
Final 3: Pete offered to win the challenge if I wanted him to be the one to vote Malcolm off. I said I wanted to try my best to win it, so he decided to throw it. I didn't make all these moves and come this far to give up and let someone else control my faith in the game. I went for the immunity, because it was the only way to guarantee a spot in the final 2 for myself and for my partner in crime.
So there you have it..
Hit me up with your questions/comments and I'll give you an honest answer.
