The events in this game illustrate how the thinking behind one's voting changes as the game progresses. In the early stages, you would not want to lose challenges, and would therefore prefer to vote off the weakest tribe members. In the later stages, nothing should change as long as you have a realistic chance of winning some challenges. However, this was an extreme case of one tribe totally dominating simply because they were far better in the challenges.
There were three of us (me, Mr 14, Mr 13) clearly weaker than the other two (Mr 15 and Mr 11), who compared favourably with members of the Opposing Tribe. They were let down by us incompetents. Mr 15 asked who I'd like to vote for, and, thinking of strengthening the tribe by voting out someone weak other than myself, I answered Mr 14. I had been communicating cursorily with Mr 13 during the game, and he told me he and Mr 14 were sticking together, and so were Mr 15 and Mr 11.
Then inspiration struck. This was the moment that changed the game. I had to get Mr 14 and Mr 13 on my side to survive. We could vote for Mr 15, who did not have immunity, and let off Mr 11, who had a high score in the immunity challenge and looked likely to get it. I gave them two scenarios: either vote me out and then hope to win a tie-breaker against the others, or vote out Mr 15 and improve the chances of all three of us. I added some weight to the second scenario by pointing out that we were not going to lose by 10-0 if Mr 15 and Mr 11 were in the top two - it would be worse than that. They, especially Mr 15, were good enough to be accepted into the other tribe and would have strengthened them. Would we rather lose 10-0 or strengthen the opposition?
They accepted both arguments in favour of voting out our strongest player, and to the immense surprise of the Opposing Tribe, this is what we did. He received 3 votes and I received 2. A mail message from the disgruntled Mr 15 arrived later, to which I replied that he was not to blame Mr 11, who had voted as required, and that I would explain everything after the game. His blog posting, along with some comments, proved I was right, and I provided the explanation after I got into the final two, when I had nothing to lose.
The proceedings of the rest of the game are really hardly relevant, but let's have them just to complete the story.
As agreed, Mr 11 was naturally the next target. It was looking good when Mr 13 scored 32000 in Match 3, but Mr 11 was unable to play until just before day change, so he was not out of it yet. As promised, he arrived for the challenges and with 32400 he had won immunity. I cursed as our plan had failed, but fortunately for me they had locked in their votes and not changed them. Mr 14 received the two votes that eliminated him.
The next day, I did the immunity challenge just before day change, and to my frustration narrowly lost to Mr 11. Fortunately he voted for Mr 13 rather than me. On the last day, I lost again, and of course came in 12th. I thought there was a possibility of the Opposing Tribe throwing the challenge so that they could recruit him, but that did not happen.
Conclusion:
I had certainly got further in this game than I had any right to. My alliance fell apart very early. My challenge scores other than Match 3 were a little below average. People were voting for me quite early in the game and I made the mistake of not voting out the scheming Ms 17 when I could have, and had to survive a tie-breaker against her. When the tribe had no more excuses to vote out others, I had to save myself, and argued with enough convinction to achieve this. It was necessary to change the thinking of two people, and together we achieved the modest aim of depriving the Opposing Tribe of our best player. The tribe had not enough skill to win challenges, and luck also went against us. While we lost 10-0, it was not the worst thing that could have happened. Congratulations to Mr 11 for finishing highest in the tribe, and thanks for not voting for me. He and I had played for the first time.
Frankly I do not care that the Opposing Tribe won every challenge without any problems. There was absolutely nothing we could have done about it other than hope to be lucky in WoF and DonD. The nature of the game is that a strong team will win far too often, and some of its players could benefit from the efforts of strong individuals and share an easy win. I don't think they had anything to be proud of. We just had to accept that we were going to keep losing, and at least not be daft enough to let them get stronger.
Comments
Yet another good analysis, and you certainly did well to make it as far as you did, so well done. :D
