Board Thread:Survivor: Skye Islands (Season 12)/@comment-24277959-20151016000829/@comment-25270574-20151016064312

Evan, before I begin I want to say that I understand any ill feelings you have towards me. Voting you out last round was the toughest thing I had to do in this game. I promise I would not have done it if I didn't think that you would be the winner of this season at the end.

When the game began, I made sure that I would play the game with one personal rule: Don't confuse friends with allies. Friendships are friendships and they'll go beyond the game. An ally only exists as long as the game goes on. Every game I've played before this, I've confused my friends and my allies with each other, and each time it cost me the game. This was my chance to try and change that.

When we joined up at merge, I had the full intentions of working with you right to the end this time. I didn't have your back in Cape Verde, and I didn't have your back in Chile. I wanted this to be the time that we finally make it work. We became allies.

In this part of the game, we were very quick to form a strong friendship. When we were chatting it wasn't always just about the game. In fact, I feel like we spent more time just talking about stuff outside of the game than we did about stuff inside of the game.

When Perry was gone, and Alex followed soon after, the voice popped back into my head, reminding me not to confuse my friends with my allies. Domonique was the biggest threat to win at this point. You were the second biggest threat to win. I didn't want to think about having to take you out of the game, because you were definitely my closest ally and we had a really awesome friendship, and I didn't want to be the one to send you home a third time. Domonique at this point had come to me and reinforced my thought that you stood a great shot at winning this game. I kept her name out of my mouth, warned you instead that Nuno and Sarah might be considering voting for you (which I don't think was technically false but I have no proof). I decided not to vote for you, told myself that you didn't need to go at this stage, and told Domonique that I felt I should vote Nuno. It crossed my mind soon that Domonique probably had something planned anyways, and sure enough we reached the 1-1-1-0 tie vote. It was horrible, but I did feel a slight bit of relief. If you left that round, it wouldn't have been at my hands! Since Domonique had asked me to vote for you, I assumed they would send you home. Joe even told me he had the same thoughts.

However, Joe was voted out instead. I was both thrilled because i got to keep my close friend with me in the game, but the cloud returned over my head that I might eventually have to vote you out still. Joe was a great ally too, but we didn't talk much more than anything game-related. We were both allies and friends.

The next few rounds were both great and horrible for me at the same time. You were winning immunities and I could push the idea of voting you out back away from my mind. But with each immunity win I saw you were building your resumé even stronger and stronger.

At final 4, we did Rites of Passage, and I learned of an alliance called the Death Machine. That told me that many of the people I felt close to in this game were always going to be closer to you than to me. I was never a part of the Death Machine. So I faced one of the biggest psychological dilemmas of the game. Strategically, it was the only logical and practical thing to do unless I wanted to play for 2nd. But that's not easy for me to do to. I knew you had placed so much faith in me and #teamchile and I knew you were going to take me to the end regardless. and I saw that and it killed me. I was debating breaking the rule that I had set out for myself at the beginning of the game, and take you to the end because you're my friend. When Nuno beat you at the end, I was at this point, where I was on the brink of breaking my rule. I told you I was ready to write Sarah's name down. I have that parchment made up and ready to go:

The next morning though, I realized I was about to ruin my game again, just like I did in cape verde when I didn't campaign against Lindsay or Heather. Just like in Chile when I didn't truly think Heather would flip on me again. Just like in Generations when I gave Ricky my idol because I trusted him with it. I was at Day 38, and I couldn't make the same mistake again. I got online, talked to Nuno and Sarah who confirmed that's how they were voting. And after another few hours of deliberating back and forth, I cast a vote against you for the third time.

I felt horrible about doing it, you have no idea. Sarah knows, Nuno knows, the hosts know that this was an extremely tough decision for me to make. And then you messaged came online, liking my idea to try and get Nuno and Sarah to split the votes between us and force a tie, and I knew then that I couldn't just let you find out through the vote itself that I voted for you. I wanted to tell you myself. And I did. As your friend, I am so sorry for doing that to you. But as a player in this game, I know that not doing that to you would've cost me any chance I have at winning.

I knew there was a chance that trying to take you out could backfire, so I didn't breathe a single word of it to Nuno or to Sarah until the day of the vote. When I felt that the odds of it backfiring were at their lowest. I had to do it, and you have every right to be upset with me for doing so. I just hope you understand that if I thought I had a shot against you in the end, I wouldn't have done it. I'm not asking for your vote or anything from you in this game, but I just hope that it won't ruin the friendship we built.

2) You were the biggest threat after Domonique because you had built yourself up a very impressive resumé for getting to the end. You spent most of the game in a strong position. You won two immunity challenges, one of which allowed us to take out Domonique. You probably had the best overall jury management skills out of us all. For me personally, a lot of the votes that I thought I had a chance of getting in the end would go to you over me. Your gameplay was clean, you didn't anger nearly as many people as I did. If I had been on the jury, you were going to receive my vote. Because of all that, you were the biggest threat.

3) This is a tough question to answer without knowing the events of the game from everybody's specific viewpoints, but I can offer you my view. Aligning with you is definitely something that helped get me far down this game for sure. Having your trust and alliance was a key point in why I survived in the early merge stage of the game. I came under the heaviest fire in this stage, and you and the members of New Kilbride made sure that they didn't get that opportunity. As the game went on, I'd say my survival from final 7 onwards was mainly my own social connections, but you were definitely someone who still supported me at these stages. I say it's to my credit because I took steps to make sure that my own safety was secure no matter what the vote was. When it was tied 1-1-1, I already had Domonique telling me I wasn't going anywhere. Long before the final 6 vote, Sarah had promised me she wasn't going to write my name down at tribal. So to sum all that up, I'd say that throughout the start of our time working together, you and I were pretty evenly split on helping each other move forward. As time went on, you can take a lot more credit for getting yourself far, and I feel that I can take a lot of credit for ensuring I got far.

4) The Top 5 Players in order:

1st - Domonique:

Physical: 7/10 - She won two individual immunities and for the most part was a strong challenge presence, but in the last two competitions she performed in she had the lowest scores of the competitors, and not winning immunity at those stages cost her the game.

Strategic: 18/20 - My only criticizm of Dom's strategic game is that she didn't need to use her idol on Joe. Sam had the votes to go any way you slice or dice it. She might have been able to use that idol more effectively later on in the game.

Social: 20/20 - At the end of the day, I don't think a single person will disagree that Domonique was guaranteed to win if she got to the finale. She had excellent jury management, any enemies she had, if they even existed,  would've probably voted for her to win.

Total for Domonique: 45/50

2nd - Evan

Physical: 8/10 - Your wins started out late in the game, but that's when it mattered the most. You even almost won the final immunity challenge.

Strategic: 18/20 - You maneuvered very well throughout this game, made allies who had a lot of trust in you, and knew how to keep yourself safe. The times that put you in danger were things that were tougher to control, like Domonique's idol.

Social: 16/20 - You were great with you allies, very loyal and wanting to see the success of us as a group. I do think your downfall was that when we got to the end, you needed to really push those bonds with people outside of the alliance. Stronger bonds with Nuno and Sarah could've meant they'd send me home instead.

Total for Evan: 42/50

3rd - Perry

Physical: 8/10 - I think that team challenge was gonna be the only chance we had to take Perry out. He was a top scorer in most of the challenges he was part of, both tribal and individual. If he stayed longer, I think he could've won almost all of them.

Strategic: 15/20 - The reason this is so low is only because his strategies were ruined by everyone else. I think Perry's strategic ideas would've worked well if there had been a better sense of organization among his allies.

Social: 18/20 - Even when I declared I was not on his side, his reaction was calm, cool and collected, and he just asked me why I felt the need to do it and what my plan was moving forward. I don't have a bad thing to say about him on this front. The downside to being that cool, calm and collected is that it's dangerous, and I was never sure if he was actually on my side or just plotting my demise.

Total for Perry: 41/50

4th - Alex (he ties his score with 5th, but since 2 of the 3 categories are higher for him I'm ranking him 4th)

Physical: 6/10 - He didn't win any individual immunities, but he was a strong contender and part of the dominant OG Kilbride.

Strategic: 15/20 - He started planning to make a big move, but I think he just ended up doing it at the wrong time and by saving the wrong person. If he hadn't given Nuno his key, I don't think people would've lost trust in him as quickly as they did.

Social: 15/20 - He was positioned well socially at the start of the merge, and then he gave Nuno the key. Also he didn't really talk much to me at all about strategy from when he gave Nuno the key until Sam was gone and he was idolless.

Total for Alex: 36/50

5th - Luke

Physical: 5/10 - Luke always put a good deal of effort into the challenges, but it doesn't stand out as much in terms of why I'm placing him here.

Strategic: 14/20 - Luke never really gave me any reason not to trust him. He seemed like he was very much involved in the decisions of New Torrin, and I think he had himself set up to make some moves.

Social: 17/20 - Luke played a very good social game in my opinion. I feel like he was destined to make it far into the game if he stayed longer.

Total for Luke: 36/50

I hope that the events of this game won't impact our friendship. Do what you have to do in this game, I'm not expecting anything from you and whatever you decide to do, I'll respect it.