Board Thread:Survivor: Isla Del Sol (Season 10)/@comment-25901093-20150726214246/@comment-24776269-20150727223302

Hi there Minke!

I'll follow your lead here and go vote-by-vote, since that's mostly how I played this game. I approached things incrementally, one vote at a time. I absolutely had a long term plan with a backup or two, but mainly my mindset was "How can I get past this vote?" If that involved getting a little flexible and bailing on a certain strategy, then so be it.

*looks at the rest of the jury* I think knowing that will explain my method and why I did what I did in this game. I think of all my jury answers, this one will be most straightforward and helpful in terms of what I did during the merge.

JAKE: I voted for Blaine because I had been very concerned after Blake was voted off on Cobo. When the merge came, I was terrified because basically I thought that Blaine had dumped me for the people he had spent time with on Cobo (Will, Casey, and Trace). Grace and Blaine were the two people I was really talking game with and Grace had given me the impression that she was on the outs with Trace. This made me second guess my relationship with Blaine. I had to alter my long-term plan accordingly. I figured I could team up with Grace and vote along tribal lines with New Murokata and go from there (potentially teaming up with you and Andrei, though it never ended up getting that far). I voted for Blaine because I felt like I could no longer trust him. I ultimately regret this, and have said that this is the one point in the game I really fumbled the ball, but I did so because I thought that was the best move for me.

WILL: You've got it covered. I had had enough of Tom and called him out in the tribe chat. I wanted to create a target and maybe set some pieces into motion that hadn't been used yet. I'd had a heart-to-heart with Blaine after my misplaced vote last round and we grew closer because of it. He ended up voting for me with Will, but it was an eye for an eye and after that we stuck together. I was trying to rally the vote against Tom, because I had really put my neck out there calling Tom out, and it would look silly if I had done all that and not ended up voting for him. It was also at this point where I realized that having just Blaine on my side wasn't going to cut it. I had Grace, but I knew she wasn't super reliable and I was going to have to make sure I had at least one more person to rely on. That's when I realized I could approach Trace and tell him that if we voted together from here on out, we could have each others' backs in a game where having someone to trust is absolutely crucial. My "Vote Out Tom" ploy ultimately failed, but I was happy at the end of the day that I didn't go home, and no one I had a strong connection with went home. In addition, I had gained Trace's trust and was feeling a bit more confident about my place in the game.

ANDREI: Okay here's where things got interesting. At this point, I had mostly figured out how to crack the Tribal Council code. Blaine and I were not going to turn on one another again. Grace and Trace kinda came as a package deal. I had bonded with Grace when we were on New Muro, and Trace and I had just made a "non-aggression pact". I knew that Ivan and Tom were working closely together. And I knew that you and Andrei were most likely sticking together. So basically I was right about tribal lines playing a part, but not the new ones, the original ones. It makes sense that people wanna stick together with the ones they've spent the most time with (with a couple exceptions). If I knew where at least one of each of those pairs was voting, I could most likely predict where the vote was going to go. I realized that if Blaine, Grace, Trace, Casey, and I were most likely on the same page, then you and Andrei were definitely on the outs. So when Andrei's name came up, I knew that's who would be going home and it would be suicide for me to vote with the minority. So I voted with the group and Andrei went home.

MINKE: By this point I pretty much understood that you were the next target but I still wanted Tom out. Everyone knew he had an idol and Casey told me she wanted to make sure he wasted it. So while I heard from Grace and Tom that they wanted to target you, Casey told me she could sway people to vote for Tom. Final 8 was the prime opportunity for someone to be blindsided so I think a lot of different egos were colliding behind the scenes, some of which I didn't even know about. Ultimately, it came down to you and Trace, with Tom as a fake target so that he could waste his idol. I wasn't going to vote for Trace as I had already promised him that I wouldn't. The numbers weren't in your favor, so you went home. It ended up working just like the Andrei vote: I didn't go home so I was happy.

CASEY: I really don't like categorizing players by "big moves" because I think that you can play a great game without making a lot of waves on the surface, but I think being a big part of the Casey boot was one of the bigger moves I made. Casey was a big threat to me, as I think we were playing somewhat similar games: taking things one vote at a time, not causing too much of a ruckus, and generally playing the whole board. I realized this after Casey had kind of popped up out of nowhere and started talking to me. The way things were going, she had a wide open path to the end if she continued to play low key assassin. So I beat her at her own game. It was perfect timing when Ivan approached me with an idea that maybe Casey could go home next. I told Grace, and one thing led to another and Casey went home. I couldn't tell Blaine because at the time I thought he might be playing with her close by. Ivan used his double vote and that was that.

IVAN: I may have worked with Ivan for the Casey vote, but he was also a big jury threat and I didn't want to go up against him. Plus it was easier for me to console Blaine and vote with the majority to blindside Ivan than it would have been to put my faith in Grace to flip back, and I wasn't going to do that. I'm not stupid. Grace was playing both sides of the table, it was a no-brainer to keep her with me and Blaine and Trace.

BLAINE: You know what happened here, I had my final four set in stone until Tom ruined it by idoling out my closest ally.

TOM: This one was mostly out of my hands as Trace and Grace were deciding who to bring with them. I had faith that Trace would keep his word, plus I think they both knew if they were to backstab me at that point I would not have voted for either of them to win.

Thanks for asking me and if you wanna know anything else please let me know.