Kristina wrote:what i know:
david
talked to me the first three days and then pretty much went away after that. he would only message me if it was in his best interest, if he could gain something out of it. i literally didn't hear from david from the vote when rick went home pre-merge all the way till after grant got blindsided and all of a sudden he wanted to stick together and draw rocks...which he then proceeded to not do as he flipped and i got booted. which i actually don't hold against him. david's game reminds me a lot of cesternino's game from the amazon. alliances were fairly fluid to him.he moved whenever it was convenient. his willingness to flip on anyone and everyone let him hop back and forth to the end. i made a thread right after julie drew rocks and got out about it. i know ash and soph, you guys were hating on him pretty hard that tribal, but it was that same tribal i really started to respect his game.
mike
like grant said, mike was in trouble immediately. i was voted least trusted from the beginning. he wasn't in the game for at least the full first day, if not longer. i tried talking to him immediately because i figured he'd be desperate to talk to anyone. we were pretty close, but never about the game. we messaged pretty much every day, but it was always about music or movies. great social play. i think that's what he did to get ovambo to like him again and proceeded to play a solid under the radar through the game. using people like grant and myself and even david as shields along the way. as much as his statement to you at the final challenge pisses you off ash, i think that the fact that he was able to put himself into that kind of position to say something like that and pull a hatch at the final challenge is commendable. he might've worded it wrong, but if he played that solid of an under the radar game with decent to great social interaction and it took till f4 for you to not like him? there's something there. he's the long shot for me at this point, but if he can talk his game up well, i could still see myself working with him.
steph
for me, this is the front runner, because of how much she played grant and me. we've already discussed this, but we both thought, 100%, that she was each of our partner in crime. i even came to trust and work with steph more than ralph who was my night 1 ally i was telling everything. so much so that i was trying to shoehorn steph into every alliance i would make later in the game with ash and soph, even to my own detriment. she was able to get grant and i to love her all while playing under the radar enough from nama to not be a huge target immediately post-merge like the two of us were. and by the time she was a target, she became a huge badass. pre-merge she was a challenge beast, right up there with grant. at the merge she slowed down, and i'm starting to think it was intentional. almost like a skillset hibernation. and when she started to become vulnerable again she started finding idols and beasting challenges.
i think all three actually played great games, some just moreso than others. i have a good idea where i'm leaning, but their words at FTC can still change everything.
I agree with everything you said. I think Mike is being hugely underrated in this thread alone but it is hard for me to find the words to describe him or his gameplay. It's just not easy for me to do, which in and of itself might be to Mike's detriment. I typed a different thing up a few days prior on Ralph's but it seemed that everything I was crediting under Mike's name seemed like I was bragging about myself or what I was doing. He'll probably have a "scooby doo" finale but honestly I don't think it is that bad to do that, so long as what he says matches up relatively well to what we've been saying, which I suspect it will.
For what it's worth, I thought Steph was with me 100% but I always thought she would be more loyal to you, K, than she was to me and I think I mentioned that somewhere in Ponderosa already and I mentioned it quite a few times in my confessionals. The point remains though she was one of my better allies and I do agree that I think she kind of stopped trying in immunities to let me try hard in immunities because she knew I was capable and she knew I was willing, and it wouldn't be the end of the world if a Nama won, as there were plenty other options. All in the meanwhile, NOBODY is thinking about her. I swear I thought she was going to be a huge threat pre-merge and I wrote that all over my confessionals. She proved how good she was when she actually needed immunities and didn't have me and you fighting for them as well.
I agree with David. He'd always talked to me so I'm surprised to see he and Mike didn't talk to other people. I guess they put a lot of their trust in me to kind of navigate for them, which is a strategy I guess. I think a lot of what all three but in particular the two boys did was use me to get info so they could make plans accordingly. I filled them in on almost everything relevant to them, and I also withheld a lot of info from them, incl. the girls + me alliance that in my confessional I knew wasn't legit, ugh, retrospect. I actually even compared myself to Cesternino in my confessional and some other high-prowess Survivors and finishing 9th I feel like a bonehead doing so. But, back to David, yeah I agree that the voting out Kristina was when I noticed David's not just playing an alliance game, it made sense for vote her out. But at the same time, I don't think he was fluid with alliances, I think he just played emotionally which is not my type of game, as I'm sure everyone is aware (excl. when Ralph went home), nor is it a Cesternino game. His emotions almost ruined the Cochran vote, his emotions /almost/ saved us in the vote that sent me home and his emotions caused him to vote Ashley in the FTC. I think he was pandering for jury votes by voting for Ashley, David is the shrewd type of game player, there is usually intention to whatever he does (as you say, he only talked to you when he needed something). I still find that interesting because I talked to him a lot and figured he was the type to have his hand in a lot of different cookie jars like me, but I guess that wasn't the case.
All in all I think all 3 deserve it. I think dismissing Mike's game as not doing anything is kind of silly. It is not always in everyone's best interest to make a move, sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
Luck is the biggest component of everyone's game. If you want to keep bringing luck up, luck put me with you, Ashley, on the Nama tribe. If it doesn't, you and I don't become friends and you are likely a target along with Cochran for the first/second post-merge boot. No one on our side would've trusted you (as much) without me saying "post-merge, if Ashley makes it, I think we gotta get her on our side" and Kristina/Ralph can back me up on everything I said and my recommendations for bringing you in. So, I mean, calling them lucky when not realizing how lucky YOU were is kind of silly. You get anyone other than me or Kristina sent over to Nama and I don't think they even bother, they just come right back to us. Luck is a huge huge huge part of this game. I think dismissing someone getting to the end as lucky when luck is a huge part of the game kind of diminishes your cred, IMO.
If they hadn't we would've dropped it and waited another day.
