Zach's Questions

[zach]

I want to start off by saying, that from the very beginning, I have been playing this game with, and for my alliance. I was lucky enough, to have two amazing allies in Andrea and Aubry, from day 1 - we clicked, we bonded, and in the game of full lies and mistrust - having people, you can depend on, was and still is a blessing. I was delusional, thinking that I had Locky and Silas in my pocket too, which led to my downfall, didn't see it coming, but I don't regret anything. I could've tried to guilt trip Locky into keeping me, but I didn't. Being loyal, and having legit relationships is extremely important to me, and that's why I can't resonate with any of you.


Jefra, I want you to thank you, for making this end game exciting. I would have never expected two Rarotonga tribe members to be sitting at the final tribal. I love an underdog, and you're sitting next to two biggest underdogs, in the entire game. Not sure whether that was a good strategy, but I am sure that some appreciate your bold gameplay. Now, your social game was okay, you were okay at the challenges - but at the end of the day, we've played the game together for 10 days, and in that time, you've given me no insight, into what's going on in your head. I thought you said, that you felt like, you were on the bottom of Vuku - yet, not once have you approached me to talk game. You had so many opportunities, and you did absolutely nothing. So, I guess my question for you is: is there anyone who can vouch for you being a strategic player? Because, from what I have seen, nobody seems to know what kind of game you have played.


Phoebe, you have no Zach blood on your hands, but I don't know anything about you. I think you played a great game, but that's all I can say, we just never had an opportunity to talk, at all. I think you are very coherent, intelligent and well spoken, but I can't think of a question to ask you, sorry.



Jamal, you know what's my biggest turn-off? It's Sarah moaning, and praising you constantly in Ponderosa. After reading your speech, I don't think you're living up to the hype. I think that you lied a lot, I think that you threw Jefra under the bus, and made her look dumb. Had I made it to the end, with my F3, I would have never done that to either of them. But, I guess that's why you made it to the end, and I'm the merge boot, everyone (minus my stalker, Silas) is going to forget about in a week. It might sound odd, but I do respect your gameplay, and I think you've played the most visible game, and you basically played, the way I wish I could. The one question I have for you is: would you be willing to throw Sarah under the bus, had she been sitting next to you at FTC? There's been lots of speculation, regarding who your true ride or die was, whether you actually had one. I know you said, you had many alliances, but was there a person, you were willing to bite the bullet for?

Congrats to all three of you.

[zach]

I wrote that yesterday, sorry if someone else already asked the same questions.

[jamal]

Jamal, you know what's my biggest turn-off? It's Sarah moaning, and praising you constantly in Ponderosa. After reading your speech, I don't think you're living up to the hype. I think that you lied a lot, I think that you threw Jefra under the bus, and made her look dumb. Had I made it to the end, with my F3, I would have never done that to either of them. But, I guess that's why you made it to the end, and I'm the merge boot, everyone (minus my stalker, Silas) is going to forget about in a week.

Hey Zach, so, let me defend myself here for a little bit concerning Jefra.

I love Jefra and we worked together very well throughout the game. And I admit that she outplayed me in the F6 round. I'm not trying to throw her under the bus. But what I am trying to do is argue that I played a better game than she did. I'm doing the same with Phoebe.

Part of Jefra's argument in her opening statement was that her and I were inseparable and we worked together on everything. That's certainly partially true. We worked together on a lot of things. But if I were to agree to her narrative, all of a sudden she and I are on equal footing in terms of strategic gameplay. In my opinion, that is not the case at all. And I have to use my close connections with both Sarah and Phoebe to illustrate that.

Is that throwing her game under the bus? Absolutely. I'm trying to win. Is she trying to throw my game under the bus? Absolutely, she's trying to win, and you can see it from her shift of tone after her opening statement. But I am not trying to throw her under the bus, and I think she would say the same about me. Bottom line is that only Jefra and I know the bond we build, and we both agreed that we had to shade each other in order for us to win.

My way of shading her (as the teens say) is to illustrate that the premise of her entire strategy was false. I was not totally devoted to her because I had other allies. Does that make me manipulative? Yes. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know, that's up to you. But I think that shows that it makes me a better player.

It might sound odd, but I do respect your gameplay, and I think you've played the most visible game, and you basically played, the way I wish I could. The one question I have for you is: would you be willing to throw Sarah under the bus, had she been sitting next to you at FTC? There's been lots of speculation, regarding who your true ride or die was, whether you actually had one. I know you said, you had many alliances, but was there a person, you were willing to bite the bullet for?

I answered this question in Silas' thread and hopefully it was coherent enough. It might not be, so let me know if you have any questions. The TL;DR of it is that I did not really have a ride or die, as I wanted to win the game, but if there was someone who I considered to be my strategic ride-or-die, it would have been Sarah, given that we orchestrated a lot of the votes together (I'm not sure if I even made this point in Silas' answer ngl). But no, I did not have a true ride or die - my game was to convince others that I was theirs.

[phoebe]

Phoebe, you have no Zach blood on your hands, but I don't know anything about you. I think you played a great game, but that's all I can say, we just never had an opportunity to talk, at all. I think you are very coherent, intelligent and well spoken, but I can't think of a question to ask you, sorry.

Sometimes in these games you just don't get the chance to interact and play properly with someone and that's what happened with the two of us. Regardless of all that thank you for the kind words, it's very much appreciated.

[Jefra]

Thanks for the words, Zach, and I'm glad to finally get some insight into the game from you, because we certainly never shared any together. And it really just comes down to things being a two way street. The difference is that now you're judging my game and I'm not judging yours, but I just scrolled through our chat logs and the only time I ever left you on read or didn't respond to you is at the very end of your rope when you said "oh wow." I consistently was looking at you as a potential ally but I just really didn't feel like that spark was there or that we would work well together, so I didn't pursue much game talk with you because I really didn't think you had any interest in it either, and you never brought it up with me. And of course, that's a bad reasoning, "WeLl, BeCauSe YoU DiDn'T EiTheR," but there's also more to it than that. We won every single challenge up until the swap, at which point you ALWAYS had a compliment for my performance in those challenges and so I think I was a little better than OKAY, and post swap, I had already gotten myself into a group that felt much more solid than anything with you, and the only way that we could have worked it out is if I purposely went out of my way in the FIRST vote of the merge to work with you, after Locky, one of my allies at the time, spilled the beans to you and then you suddenly made things a lot more fun and decided you wanted to vote for ME. So all chances of that were out the door at that time. It was the first chance we ever had to even vote and you came for me, and then the vote turned onto you after Locky had originally told you the plan. 

Aside from Jamal, I would say Sarah, Aubry, Andrea, and Hayden could all vouch for me being a strategic player. Andrea, I'd say the least out of the four, but during the Final 7 round I even made a chat with Aubry and Andrea trying to figure out a way to vote for Sarah and offering trying to deflect Hayden and Phoebe's vote so that we could mess up the vote count enough to eliminate Sarah, but they were not willing to pull the strings to try to make that happen so I decided that I would vote for Aubry instead, after she had told me she thought she was going and not to risk tanking my game for her. So I did. Sarah would hopefully be able to see my strategic side in her final 6 boot by having a good enough conversation with her at final 7, after I told her that yes, I was coming for her, but it was just because of a miscommunication about the Locky vote, enough for her to want to vote with me that round and not with Jamal, who she has said she believed to be her Final 2. Hayden would be able to see my strategy in the way I went about final 7 and onwards, because he would see the conversation we had during that boot as a way to open up a new level of communication between us, one that would ultimately benefit me by using the information he provided to vote that I wanted and play double agent between Jamal and Hayden. I also think he would see a strategic player by the way that I went about the final 6 vote as well as a way of feigning a bond between Hayden and I that would last until the end and then also going against Jamal and voting out someone that Jamal really trusted and wanted to keep in the game. I also think the strategy from those rounds helped in that he had no qualms playing his idol on me and then the way I created safety for myself for making him believe it would go to a tiebreaker at the end of the game, when I knew that if he were to make it to the end, I would have much slimmer chances of winning. 

[zach]

Thanks for your answers, once again congrats, and good luck to all of you.