by Penner » Sun Sep 13, 2015 6:21:19 pm
Good evening all. Hopefully you're all in the mood to sit down and watch me engage in my number one pastime - talking about myself. I'm going to explain what my strategy and approach coming into this game was and you'll see that I had a very specific plan in mind and that I implemented it successfully. If you think the way I've played and the work I've put in is deserving of a vote, then that would be awesome.
Strategy and philosophy
A lot of people take a really "strategic" approach to Survivor. Focus on the numbers, make sure you can get a majority in your tribe, and keep that majority into the merge. Ride out that alliance until final 6/7 and then start making moves on your own team. My problem with a strategy like this is that it's so rigid and gives you very few options to change things up. My philosophy has been one of adaptability; whatever the game throws at you, you need to be able to go with the flow and keep yourself safe no matter what. The game is called "Survivor" - you need to put yourself in a position where you have the highest chance of surviving every round. There's a reason I was never properly targeted and nobody ever cast a vote against me throughout the whole game; it's not because I was a poor player - everyone thought they could trust me and had options to work with me in the future. I was voted "most trustworthy" player in the game despite having voted out Steph, CiCi and Cass; people I was really good friends with.
The way I achieved this "adaptability" was two-fold - I wanted to have one trusted ally that I could work with until the end of the game and strong relationships with *everyone* else in the tribe. It's no use just concentrating on friendships with people in your alliance, because you're one tribe swap away from being voted out. Candice was the person I trusted completely; we discussed all of our plans together. I was able to achieve a lot of my plans without drawing too much focus on myself in the early parts of the merge by allowing Candice to be the "face" of the team for some of those rounds. With everyone else, I had some really strong bonds with people that you can only build by making a genuine and honest effort with people. I gave a lot of myself to this game - I think most people know a lot about me because I wanted people to feel like they knew me well because you can trust someone more if you have a stronger image in your head of who they are. A faceless strategy bot with just a name could flip on you in a second. Nobody ever seemed to think that I would flip on them, despite the fact that I did in constantly.
My game in stages
Everything is shiny and new - Svinoy 1.0
Svinoy was the first tribe I was on - ten people of whom six are on the jury; Steph, Flicka, Cecilia, Nate, Rebecca and Candice. I started the game just inundating everyone with PMs. If I didn't have a message to you in my Outbox, you were getting another one. I had lots of fun just shooting the breeze with people - getting to know lots about people and their personal lives. Eventually I started to bring up "the game" and slowly probing people to build a loose kind of alliance. The beginning of the alliance was Steph, Candice, CiCi and me, with a few more players loosely tied into it. The girls weren't too keen on Rebecca joining in, even though I liked her. No harm though - I would just keep Rebecca in the loop and feeling included so I would have more options down the road if I needed them.
Ozzy and Nate were both fairly inactive and I pointed them out as the early targets. Nate was originally going to get the chop, but when he got replaced shortly before tribal, I put in a huge effort to move the target onto Ozzy. At the time it really didn't make a difference to me (although I think Nate deserved a chance) but the purpose of this was to gain Nate's trust for later in the game. Ultimately Ozzy quit but Nate would remember that I had his back at the very start. He got swapped onto another tribe immediately, but once we reconnected later on, I've got someone who thinks "Penner is a sound guy, he tried to help me out at the beginning" rather than "I don't know Penner, I should probably get to know him".
Dark times ahead - the cursed Hestur tribe
I was voted most important player on the Svinoy 1.0 tribe which is something that really worried me. I knew going into the vote that I would consistently rank high in the ratings - I had made an effort with everyone at that point. I didn't realise it would result in a bright shiny spotlight being trained on me for everyone to see. "Hey this Penner guy is a bit of a threat, right??" Also fun fact: Rocky and Stacy were voted 8th and 9th out of 9 on Mykines.
Hestur sucked at challenges. I basically doomed the team in the first "Seven Sins" challenge my being picked to be the leader (more spotlight) and then performing hideously with the questions. Thankfully I was able to use my social game once again to build a lot of good relationships with people regardless of their original starting tribe. Candice, Cass and I teamed up, voting Adam out first and then managing to get Cass to vote out an original Mykines person and jump ship from Mykines to the Hestur "dream team" alliance. We then finally won a tribal immunity challenge and that completely glued us together. The feeling of struggling through adversity and then triumphing as a team is a great tool for building bonds.
Swap my bitch up - I head to Mykines 3.0 to collect the full set of buffs
One again we swap, and the Hestur "dream team" of Candice, Cass and me are placed on Mykines 3.0, along with CiCi, Nate and Stacy from Mykines 2.0 and Rebecca from Svinoy 2.0. Here's where my starting strategy from the beginning of the game starts to come into fruition. We've got a 3v3 deadlock with Rebecca as the swing vote. But Rebecca and I are still friends from the very start - so I don't need to worry about anything. Should we go to tribal, we've got the numbers. That doesn't mean that I can sit back and relax though; I get to hook up with Nate (who still remembers me as the nice helpful guy from the start) and CiCi who I was great buds with. Stacy I believe was travelling at the time so she's one of the few people that I struggled to get to know at the start.
Mykines is basically reverse-Hestur; we win all the challenges (woohoo!) but we don't get to form any strong alliances because they never get tested at tribal council. Had we gone to tribal council, we had already set in motion a plan to vote out CiCi. CiCi is really smart but has a tendency to overplay (and I think recognises this at times herself). She was talking me through a lot of her plans for the future and I could tell immediately that if she was this clued in, she would also have realised that Cass, Candice and I were a really solid trio and should be targeted ASAP. We won immunity so this plan was put on hold until we could implement the blindside once we had numbers in the merge.
My FOURTH tribe - merge time
Here's where I need to make a lot of decisions and change things up a little. My ideal alliance, looking at the merge tribe, would have been: Candice, Cassandra, Cecilia, Nate, Rebecca and Steph. All my closest allies, all people I trusted and all people who (I think) liked me as a person. The problem was that I soon realised that was never going to work. The "Svinoy 5" seemed really solid (Steph, Flicka, Rocky, Lil and Rebecca) and Jessica didn't get along with them at all. CiCi wanted to stay with Jessica, Jessica comes with Stacy and it all just couldn't work that way. Cassandra was closer to the Stacy/Jessica grouping rather than the Svinoy 5 so she would want to lean that way. Joining with the Svinoy 5 would make Candice and I a two-person alliance on a group of seven (not a good idea, folks!) so we chose to align with Jessica, Stacy, Cass, Nate and Cecilia.
I was the one who created this alliance, though few will remember it that way. I had realised that I had been "tribe leader" for challenges too much, and Jessica in her introduction to me mentioned the fact that I'd been voted number 1 on Svinoy way back when. My focus shifted to going "deep undercover" and trying to seem as passive as possible. I suggested to Candice, CiCi, Cass and Jessica individually that maybe that group of seven would work well. I sold it as a good mix of Male/Female, Svinoy/Mykines, Svinoy 2/Mykines 2/Hestur so that nobody would feel they were on the bottom of the totem pole. I put that idea out there and then retreated in my bunker until I get the message that they've all set up the alliance for me. Nobody would sit there and go "Penner is the head of the alliance" which is exactly what I wanted.
This left me open to making friends with the "other side" of the tribe - Rocky, Lil and Rebecca to be specific. This is going to become super important later on.
The vote-offs
Steph
Steph was one of my besties from the very start. I was crazy excited to meet up with her once we got to the merge, and then slightly devastated to hear about all the drama that went down on Svinoy 3.0. There were so many burnt bridges between Steph and the others that I couldn't find a way to work with her without putting myself into the minority immediately. Steph was public enemy number one with Jessica and co. so she was definitely the first one that was going to be voted for by my alliance. And funnily enough - she nearly managed to stay by convincing Jessica and Stacy to swap their votes with her fake idol AND Rocky failing to get a vote in at that tribal council.
Flicka
Flicka seems really nice, but I truly never managed to get to know her. I don't know if she just found me super boring but we never really "clicked" over PM it suited me for Flicka to go this round. This was the period where I was out sick for two back-to-back tribals so I was happy to just keep up to date on PMs and let the alliance manage this round.
Cecilia
Now we finally get to put into place a plan that originated with Cass, Candice and me four rounds ago. Everyone had begun to become slightly wary of CiCi and despite the fact that she was probably one of my favourite people in the game for chats and general banter, from a game perspective I knew she'd be coming straight for me. Now we get into the crazy 5-blindsides-in-a-row stage of the game.
Also - I used the knowledge of CiCi's impending doom to hook in with Rocky, Lil and Rebecca and create and alliance with them, me, and Candice. Thus begins "5 guys blindsides and fries"; Liliana's spectacular contribution to alliance naming. Now I'm aligned with everyone on the tribe, I'm nobody's number one target and I have a majority with whatever alliance I choose to run with until the end of the game.
Cassandra
This one felt pretty shitty. I like Cassandra a lot and I really had high hopes for the Hestur 3. I was approached by Stacy and Jessica with panicked messages - "Cass wants to turn on you and Candice! We're telling you to protect you, will you help us vote out Cass?"
There's smoke coming out of my bullshit detector at this point, it's beeping so much. I don't believe that at that point, Cass was willing to vote out me or Candice, knowing the other one could flip to the other side and create a tie in the next round, or bring someone along with them and put Cass in a minority.
However, I had to play along. I didn't want people to believe that Hestur was unbreakable and that I'd prioritize Cass over anyone else. I messaged them back saying how awful it was that she wanted me out, and how disappointed I was because I trusted her. I needed them to think I felt "wronged" and that this was making me trust them more and more.
Liliana
Another one that didn't really feel too good - Five Guys Blindsides and Fries was a really fun, positive alliance of people I really liked working with. Unfortunately, I was on course to vote myself into the bottom two of a five-person alliance. Liliana, being the person out of the three I was least close to, was the person who had to go. My original alliance was deciding between the three, and I steered them away from Rocky and Rebecca so that I'd be able to keep my two closer allies together in the game. Now that I have a strong four person majority, it's time for me to stop surviving and start controlling the game.
Side note: When Liliana was voted out, she said how disappointed she was because she had believed in the alliance. I actually messaged Rocky and Candice at the time to say how bad I felt about that when I read it.
Jessica
Jessica was very unpopular with some members of the jury and also a huge comp threat. It was really hard to tell if people would praise her strategic play or condemn her for the harsh words she had with some of the other players. Regardless of this, I knew that voting out Jessica would a) prove I had more strategic control than people thought and b) make the jurors happy. It was a near-perfect blindside until Rocky creates a group message with me, Nate, Candice and JESSICA asking to confirm if Jessica was the target tonight. The tribal council was pretty hectic but we managed to pull it off in a 5-2 vote, with Stacy being the other one to vote with Jessica.
Nate
Someone, I can't remember who, mentioned to me the next day about how Nate had masterminded the plan to vote out Jessica. I had spoken with him about it fairly early on in the day (thanks, time zones!) but I had been planning it for some time. Nate went to bed, and woke up to a whole alliance agreed and dead set on voting Jessica out.
I was a little bit irked by the fact that someone seemed to be trying to take credit for my move. I figured "if people didn't believe that I had made the previous game move, I guess I'll just have to make another one?". In tandem with this, Candice is stressing out that she's the number one target (she is) and I'm putting in a huge effort to keep her in the game for the time being. I managed to achieve three things in this round:
1) Build a bond with Stacy, after voting out her number one ally, that would last until the end of the game
2) Keep a 100% loyal ally, Candice, in the game, despite people fearing her as the number one jury threat
3) Vote out one of Rocky's allies. I knew Rocky was close to Nate, but had no relationship with Stacy, so I wanted Stacy and Rocky to remain isolated and dependent on me, rather than fear Nate teaming up with Rocky and flipping the game on me at a later stage.
Rebecca
The tribal council that never happened - Rebecca had been struggling with the time zone for a while at this point, and I think losing her internet was basically the final straw. This was a slightly unplanned knock to my game; I wanted to be in the final 4 with Candice AND Rebecca so I could trust to be able to swing the votes whatever way I wanted. It was a little bit more up in the air with Rebecca gone, so I had some work to do.
Candice
This vote off was actually much harder to pull off than you would think. Candice is amazing at convincing people that her plan of action is the best route to take. Candice, no less than two rounds ago, was voted most likely to win the game. That should be a massive red flag to anyone that wants to win. Somehow, she manages to convince Stacy that Rocky is a huge jury threat and has a bunch of votes locked down. Stacy is dead set on Rocky - and I agreed with her for the whole day preceding tribal council. I couldn't allow Candice any more time to pick apart my arguments or talk one-on-one to Stacy because she could flip things on me really quickly.
Once the challenge is over and I know Candice doesn't have immunity - I have five minutes to convince Stacy to vote for Candice. I had saved up a bunch of arguments for voting out Candice that I unleashed on Stacy right before and during tribal. I knew if there was enough "new" arguments, that Stacy wouldn't have adequate time to properly consider and potential reject these arguments. Once again, I managed to control who went home and ended up in the final three of my choosing.
I just want to reiterate how much it sucked having to actually vote Candice out. Playing the game with Candice was awesome, but the final four tribal council was basically a question of "do you want to win Survivor or not". Candice and I would have been fighting for a lot of the same jury votes and I couldn't deal with that level of unpredictability.
Vote for Penner!
So we finally get to the closing argument of my opening argument. I'll keep it brief as I'll have lots to say during tribal also and you will get sick of listening to me. Here's some bullet points of facts that should help convince you to vote for me:
1) Of the final three, I'm the only person who knew who was going home every round in Eysturoy. Every person I voted for is the person that went home.
2) I've never missed a tribal council vote in this game.
3) I did finally manage to win a competition. Not only did I win it, I overcame someone who had an advantage and I finished long before most people even got to the final stage.
4) I've worked incredibly hard to keep up with this game. I have to get up at 6.30am my time to go to work, while the challenges start at 2am my time here in Ireland. I've been on PMs all day every day and I've made most of the tribal councils. Every day, I go to work, get home at around 7pm, eat my dinner, go to bed from 8/9pm until 1.30am and then get out of bed for challenges and tribals. Go back to bed around 4.30/5am and get up less than two hours later for work. My commitment to playing this has been really, really high and I'm absolutely exhausted right now from this whole process. I've thoroughly enjoyed playing it though and getting to meet everyone in the process.
Looking forward to hearing your questions. I also would be totally down with some gifs.
