Board Thread:Survivor 40: Annihilation/@comment-4975295-20190802200633/@comment-5357455-20190803014430

'''Hey Aro! Thank you for your question, and I will gladly highlight three moves that I made in this game that my ability to act on my own with the assistance of my social connections. I will be going out of order chronologically, but I would like to first talk about the Final 6 vote with Zach, then the Final 7, and end at Final 4.'''

Final 6

'''I think that if we are going to speak of agency and the ability to make your own choice. This is the most clear-cut example by far. I was the ONLY person to cast a vote that counted this round, and it was not by luck, but by the information that I gathered through my connections with Augusto, Grace, Zach, and Linus. So for this explanation, I will go through what information I learned from all of them through my social connections with them that allowed me to make the best move for me at this vote.'''

'''Zach- The biggest piece of information I got from Zach this round was the movement to eliminate Grace. Zach was one of the players that was pushing for Grace to go. It seemed as if many people had this mentality including Mihai and Augusto. I was willing to have Grace and Linus believe a fake split plan between Zach and Mihai with the assistance of Augusto to help pull this off. I told Zach that if he wants Grace gone, he cannot tell Linus. He told Linus. I got this confirmation not just from him, but from Grace as well. This showed me right away how close these two were that Zach believed his connection to Linus was closer than Linus’ to Grace. Now that the plan was foiled, I knew it would be in my best interest not to tell Zach about the idol play in case they wanted to flip the vote to someone else.'''

'''Grace- The biggest piece of information I got this round from Grace was that Linus would be using the Moya idol on her while preserving the merge idol. The merge idol aspect was not crucial to this vote, but it allowed me to better maneuver the Final 5 vote. Now back to this vote, the idol being played on Grace. Well the entire idea of eliminating Grace now went out the door. All that I could think now is that there are only 4 possible options- myself, Augusto, Mihai, and Zach. I wanted to make sure that it was Zach going home instead of two people that I considered two of my closest allies or myself. '''

'''Linus- The biggest piece of information I got from Linus this round was that he planned on voting Augusto. Linus had no idea how close Augusto and I were at this time, and despite trying to say the two other names of potential votes, Zach or Mihai. Linus said no to voting either of them. I knew that it did not matter if Augusto was going to receive votes because at this time, I knew I could get rid of Zach if I wanted.'''

'''Augusto- The biggest piece of information that I got from Augusto at this time was the knowledge of his idol. Augusto also knew that he had to play it at either Final 6 or Final 5. When I learned that Grace and Linus planned on voting out Augusto, I knew that they had the majority over my one vote. With only 10 minutes left of tribal, I messaged Augusto (and by messaged, I mean called about 4 times and about 30 messages later) that he needed to play his idol. He later informed me that he had it playing conditionally anyway. I do not think that the instrumental piece here is who played the idol, but what happened as a result. My knowledge of Augusto’s idol allowed me to act as if he was going to have this played on him this round. '''

'''I acted completely on my own with the intention of eliminating Zach. When the double idol play was revealed, Grace called this a miracle because Augusto played the idol, removing it from the game, and Zach went home. I did not call it a miracle, that was a calculated decision that I made with the information I obtained from practically everyone remaining in the game. I acted completely on my own when I cast my vote against Zach and got out one of the strongest players left in the game. '''

Final 7

'''This vote I think exemplifies how I was able to work my social connections in order to get out Nathan, who was going to be a threat to my individual game. As we know, this was a split vote 4-3 with Nathan receiving 4 and Augusto only receiving 3. I think my individual connections with the 3 other people who voted Nathan assisted in making this vote happen. Additionally, this round saw every single vote cast for a Wanani 3.0 member. I was saying to mostly everyone in that game that a Wanani needed to go, but I made sure that I was on the right side of the votes to get Nathan out instead of Grace or Augusto. '''

Grace

'''It became clear as The Nucleus was operating that one of the Wanani 3 was going to need to be eliminated. At Final 8, I started telling Grace that Nathan is a big threat in this game because of his connections to Zach and Linus as well as his friends on the jury like Drew. I wanted to plant the seed early on that when she had to turn on either Nathan or Augusto that it was Nathan. Grace told me the reason she voted out Nathan was “because he was better connected than Augusto was.” This is exactly what it seemed at the time, but Grace did not know that Augusto and I were a very strong pair. Grace agreed to eliminate one of the Wanani 3 and I believe that it was in my better interest than hers for the main reason that keeping Augusto allowed me to maintain a closer ally in this game than Nathan would be for me.'''

Augusto & Mihai

'''I am going to group them together, but then address the individual connection afterwards. Coming into the merge, we were the last of the OG Wananis remaining, and always had one eye out for one another. I knew the Wanani vote was going to happen at Final 7, so at Final 8, I messaged the chat saying “What are the chances we can all come together?” This was done with the intention of then bringing this group together for 7 because I knew that I would need both votes to pull off this move. I spoke to both Mihai and Augusto privately about making the target Nathan. With Mihai, we agreed that a Wanani needs to go. Because of our OG Pink alliance, then it obviously could not be Augusto. I also told him that it should not be Grace because we need Grace to vote with us this round and that we would not be able to get the numbers to eliminate Grace, mainly because I knew Linus would not at this time. With Augusto, he understood that one of the Wanani 3 needed to go. He wanted to approach Linus and Zach instead of Grace about eliminating Nathan. I reassured him that Grace would be willing to make the move, which she did.'''

'''I think that this vote showed my social connections being directly used to eliminate my main target, Nathan. I did not need every vote, but the right ones. Us 4 had a strong sense of loyalty this round, and I felt confident that we only needed 4 votes to eliminate Nathan because I knew no one would flip. So bringing it back to the question, my social connections assisted me to get out the target that I wanted to eliminate since the previous round, which was Nathan.'''

Final 4

'''The last vote that I will be talking about is the Mihai elimination. The main reason I want to highlight this is because of how unique it is. The person that was immune, Linus, wanted to eliminate me, but was unable to do so because of my social connections with Mihai. Through the social connection, I was able to act on my own accord.'''

Connections

'''Mihai told me the second that Linus wanted to vote me off. He said that Linus wanted to split the vote between us two, so it would be determined by a challenge. Mihai trusted me enough to leak this plan to me, in which he proposed eliminating Grace in a 2-1-1 vote. I could have agreed to this and voted out Grace at this time, but that would not have been wise for me. The crucial information that Mihai gave to me was that he was not going to vote for me. As generous as this was, it was something that I needed to act on. That is why I proposed to Grace a 2-1-1 to eliminate Mihai. I used the information that the immune person wanted to eliminate me, but I still made sure that I eliminated the biggest threat to ge to the end, which was Mihai.'''

Agency

'''At this time, I knew what was best for me, and that was positioning myself if Linus were to have won immunity. For me it was simple. Linus wanted to go to the Final 2 with 1. Mihai 2. Rob 3. Grace. This vote was for me and for my best interest, if I were to have eliminated Grace, it would have been highly unlikely that I would be in this position right now. I eliminated Mihai because it was MY best chance to get to the Final 2, and it showed. I am here because I had to turn on an ally, but it was to get me to the point that I am at right now. I know is brutal to cut an ally that late in the game, but I needed to look out for myself over anyone else. '''

'''Thank you for allowing me to explain how my agency and social connections went hand in hand in this game. I think all three show a different level in which I used them. The Zach vote showed with the information I retained, I can completely act on my own and eliminate a huge threat to me. The Nathan vote showed that I was able to use my social connections to eliminate a target that I wanted out. The Mihai vote showed I was able to use the information given to me by an ally to make the best move for myself, which ended up being eliminating the ally that gave me the information. I can see how this can be seen as ruthless, but it is what I needed to do to get here. These are three clear examples of how I was able to use my social connections and agency in a multitude of ways, and eliminate the people that were the biggest threats to me in this game. I hope this helped clarify for you. '''

'''Now onto the second portion, why does Linus deserve to lose. This is difficult because I do not think that one of us deserves to lose, but one of us deserves to win over the other. So for this section, I will allude to parts of Linus’ game that I would have done differently with the cards that I had.'''

'''1. The reliance on immunities. I think that this is two-fold. One by painting a larger target on his back. Second by not utilizing the safety to his advantage. I think in regard to putting a larger target on his back, Linus felt that he needed to win out in order to reach the end of this game. In my opinion, he put himself in that position by winning the majority of the immunity challenges early on that caused this idea. He was able to pull this off, but I think that this put him in an unnecessary position especially because he had the assurance of immunity idols. Concerning not utilizing the safety to his advantage, '''

'''2. Allowing his allies to be eliminated. As Linus discussed, most of his closest allies were Zach, Aromal, Joan, and Nathan. At the Final 9, Linus had the idol from Moya; however, he even voted out Joan because of potential threat in challenges. I think that is is a much smarter decision to attempt to save your allies over eliminating a potential challenge threat at the Final 9. I think following this vote is when Linus found the second idol. At the Final 8, after believing that he saved Aromal from the Final 9 elimination, Linus decided to follow the plan to eliminate Aromal after saying that he wanted to keep Aromal over Joan for a long-term benefit. At the Final 7, Linus knew that it was going to be a 4-3 vote between Nathan and Augusto, the latter is someone that he voted for three times in a row following this. I think that he should have been able to persuade someone to vote out Augusto instead or use the idol on Nathan if he was that close of an ally to him. At the Final 6, Linus’ idol play was the reason that Zach went home. Linus decided to save his top ally, but putting his second closest ally at risk. I think that this was a miscalculation because he overlooked the existence of the Wanani idol with 3 Wananis still in the game at the time. Also as he noted, he was suspicious of me at this vote, but still did not opt to change his target or anything, which allowed me to vote out Zach.'''

'''I think the Linus played a very strong social game, honestly one of the best. His competition wins cannot be debated, but I think that he did not do much with those. He had the ability to be more bold, but he let others make decisions for him that were not for his best interest. He was able to save himself for the majority of this game, but it was at the risk of letting his allies be eliminated in front of him. This question was not fun, but for these reasons, I think that Linus deserves to lose. '''