Lady and Gentelmans of the Jury,
To begin with, i‘d like to say how honoured I am sitting here against all you. It was real pleasure and great experience playing with you all, and I really enjoyed these 39 virtual days and 29 real days.
You all more or less know my problem, which is my poor English, so I hope you will be patient and will have no problem to understand what i want to tell you.
And I want to tell you a story about how I... played this game. You can expect nothing but honesty here. Some of you may think now „well, he wasn‘t really honest doing the game, so how will he be honest now?“. And there is my answer to this question: it‘s imposible in this game to be honest to everyone. How can I be honest to Bryce, when he suggests to play a „flip-flop“ game by voting Danny, Jace, Bailey and Ahad in the next 4 tribal councils, if my all loyalty is given to „Pretty in Pink“ (original Saihan)? How can I accept Danny‘s suggestions to me and Nikola, to join him, Michael and Craig, if i have never talked with Michael or Craig? I think you got the point. You can‘t be honnest to everyone in a game, but you need to be honnest if you got to FTC. Ok, let‘s come back to my story.
Pre-Swap
The game started really unexpected, and fast... in the first ~5 hours of the day I had already talked with Jake, Nikola and Ahad, so I suggested to every of them to make an alliance. It is how „the Saihan‘s alliance“ were formed. We all hoped, that we should not have to vote anybody for a long time, and stay united. Unfortunatelly, we lost our first immunity challenge, and we had to choose, between Bailey and Andreas. At first, i thought it will be Bailey, as Ahad was told me how huge threat Bailey was in his previous seasons, so I just waited until Ahad gots online, and explains his points to all Saihan‘s alliance. While i waited, Bailey wrote to me, and did amazing job by convincing me how he should to stay. Also, Andreas showed later and tried to convince me to vote Ahad instead of him. After that, there was no point back, and Andreas had to go.
What‘s the point of this part of the story? Well, ALL 5 Saihan‘s wrote to me first, that‘s very unusual for me. Usually, on day one, i check the tribemates, and decide for which i have to write. This time, they all decided to trust me and work with me.
Tribe swap
Even looking to original tribes, Saihan was in minority, but me and Jace quickly decided to allign Gechii with Saihan, in order anything wents bad... Unfortunatelly, Jake quit few the next day, and we needed plan B. Fortunatelly, i have already started talking with Bryce, we had a bond, he kept talking how he has no relationship with original Bayartai‘s and if anything goes bad – he is with me. At the same time, while aligning with Jace, i got another allie – Kaeden. Our talks was pretty raw, as it‘s basically making deal to watch for each other, and few talks later about the plans for next tribal council. However, after that Sanctuary vote, it was clear that Bayartai is more tight tribe, than Bryce tried to show, so, paranoia started to grow.
Merge
Ziggy‘s vote
On the first minutes after merge, two things started happening: Jace started suggesting to make an alliance of 7: me, him, Nikola, Kaeden, Ziggy, Danny, George – that‘s basically suggesting to leave my original tribemates, and join an alliance, with 3 unknown to me players. Then i started suggesting to make simply Saihan+Gechii alliance, the main reason he rejected it was that Ziggy don‘t want to work with Bailey and Ahad, because they were against each other in Saihan 2.0 i said i‘ll think about it, and next day Jace suddenly suggested that we should vote Danny or Ahad out, and he don‘t care which one.
At the same time, there was created a chat, which later became „Pretty in pink“ alliance. (Nikola, Ahad, Bailey and me). As we were discussing our next moves, i was raporting all the things I discussed with Jace to them. As Jace had almost taken control of Bayartai and Gechii, and in the voting, there was only 10 people avalaible to vote, Saihan were in still bad situation in numbers, as it was 4 against 6. After analysed everything, Bailey decided, that we should go against Gechii, and went to talk with Danny about it. I went to do the same with Bryce. I convinced Bryce to join Saihan in that vote, Bailey didn‘t convinced Danny, so it was a tie between Ahad and Ziggy. And then i took control to my hands – went to Danny myself. I know, Bailey did great start in convincing him, but so it was pretty easy to convince Danny to join us. He agreed instantly, after he heard what i had to say. So, Ahad was saved that time. I would like to add, that at first, Bailey talked about voting Kaeden then, but i reminded them, that looks like Ziggy is the main reason why Gechii don‘t align with Saihan. I kept my promise to watch Kaeden‘s back, and put a target, on the player who was against Saihan.
George‘s vote
That‘s another vote where i put the danger from original target to actuall vote out. I remember being a little busy these days (studying for an exam), so i was ok with previously formed voting plan, to Pagong gechii and when do something with Bayartai. Danny even started suggesting me final 4 deals, but it was like „hey, let‘s go to F4 – you, me, Bryce and George“. Of course i couldn‘t accept it, and started negationation to change George with Nikola (as i hadn‘t talked with George at that point), and somehow Danny agreed to include Nikola to this, but just instead of Bryce. Well, i agreed, but i had to be in an alliance with unknown player, which don‘t work to me, so i never really thought about it as real alliance. But the fact that Danny so wanted me to allign with George built a little paranoia in me. And guess what happened next? Bailey wrote that we can‘t stay with Bayartai, because once we vote Gechii out, Bayartai will Pagong us. Maybe my and Nikola‘s alliance with Danny may have saved us two for a while, but i still wanted to go to the end with my original tribe, so agreed with this idea. And Bailey said, that we should vote Danny out. That didn‘t worked with me. It would be eliminating a threat too early, also, it would made to break my word too early. I looked carefully on George, as everyone saw Danny as a big threat, but George were more under the radar strong player. Also, Bailey won‘t let me lie, but that‘s a quote from our discusion, written by me: „i was thinking "what may George and Danny so close?" and i think that George may have the idol. if we do great in acting to be with them in voting Jace - we may flush the idol as well.“ As later were showed up (ar at least Danny told to me) – George had the idol.
Mikey‘s vote
Once again, the original target was on a dude, for which i had to look his back, this time – Bryce. I knew that it‘s 80% probability that the idol are gone with Danny, but told everyone, that we should afraid of the idol, and vote for the one, on which is the least likely to be played. So, Mikey gone home. At the same time, mine friendship with Bryce ended, as before that vote, he suggested me to start playing a flip-flop game, by voting “Danny now, then Jace, Bailey and Ahad” I agreed to him, and wanted to let him vote for Danny, just to test his loyalty. However, he voted for Jace, and later freeked out on me, saying that I said I’ll vote for Jace, and even our chat history didn’t showed him who is right… we hadn’t talked since that day.
Craig’s quit
I won’t say that I made a huge influence in it, but I won’t hide that I’d try. Posting Brandon’s Hantz’s pictures in tribe’s chat, writing him privately to calm down – all should made opposite effect. I don’t think it worked, I just hope so.
Bailey’s, Nikola’s, Danny’s votes
when it was only one step left to Pretty in pink alliance to get the numbers, everything went down. It was very obvious move by the others, to align against us, and we just hoped that Bayartai and Gechii voted against each other too many times to finally align together. We were wrong. In none of these votes I hadn’t an idea who is going home, and I start feeling ashamed for some time, as my strategic game were just relying onto immunities and having no clue what’s happening in tribal council’s. I am not proud of it.
Ahad’s vote
My biggest regret of the season, is that I lost a trust in Ahad that day. I even played Sword of Death on him… I explained the situation for these who was in a game at that moment, but I think you all deserve a short resume of it. Nikola went home, and Ahad was my only allie left. All season long, he asked me for hints in how to do one or another challenge, and I helped him every time he asked. I even saved him in Ziggy’s vote, and during the music guessing challenge, I got him lying to me and trying to waste my time. He braged to me a lot about how is doing great in that challenge, and only doesn’t know the song number 4. I asked him maybe he has a clue on how I can improve my score and his answer was “google the lyrics”. Well, I wasted about 3 hours to google the lyrics, and then my roommate saw me doing that, he told me about mobile application called “Shazam”. I used it, were able to get all songs, except… number 4, I couldn’t believe that it’s just a coincidence that Ahad knew all songs the application knew, so I got angry for wasting my time. I would have understood if Ahad had sayed “dude, it’s you or me going home, let’s do the challenge by ourselves”, but instead that, he wasted my time, and I had to strike back. However, after everything, Ahad convinced me, that I was wrong, so I need to apologise him one more time. I am sorry, Ahad, for not trusting you.
Jace’s vote
Having played with Jace before, made me afraid of him since day 1. I know how he likes to vote threat too early, and by doing it – to put a target on himself. And he proved that in the first Gechii TC by voting Tom out. As, I were doing great in pre-merge challenges, I got afraid that he may see as a target, and very often asked the Pretty in Pink alliance members “when it’s Jace’s time?” and when we decided to vote him out, it was too late. Fortuantelly, also understands that Jace would have won against anybody, and agreed to vote him out in F4.
Aditional:
Individual immunities wining in a row record: since day 30, I was in minority of the numbers, so, in order to be safe, I needed immunities. I won 4 of them, and it’s a record in 703 Survivor seasons.
0 votes in tribal council’s: After Nikola was voted out, I left the only player who hadn’t get a vote in tribal council. Immunities at the end helped me to keep this number, but before them I went to 6 tribal councils, and didn’t get any vote.
“to watch each other’s backs” deal. During the season, I made a lot of them: Jake, Nikola, Ahad, Bailey, Jace, Bryce, Kaeden, Danny. I think you noticed, that except’s Jake – all other players made to the F8, in that point – any my vote meant that I was broken my word. However, ALL these deals were necesery to me, to survive pre-swap, pre-merge, and to help Ahad in the first merged TC. I made them, and I did my best to keep them as long as I could.
Devotion: you can be sure – I left all my heart in this game. Sleepless nights became usual for me (even now, it’s almost 4 a.m. the record was to go to sleep in 9 a.m.). Doing challenges when it’s 2 hours left to the exam, or even skipped my groupmate’s party yesterday shows you all, how much I care about this game.
Finally, I want to apologise again for my bad English, and for long speech. I hope you enjoyed it, and now, I am going to listen your questions and answer them honestly. Also, I want to say “thank you” to all hosts of the season. You did amazing job, by letting the game going fast, and almost never made us wait for the challenge’s, tribal councils, or they results. I hope we hadn’t let you down.
I am waiting for your questions,
Sincerelly, Martynas Bendikas, 5martis5
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