Well, here I am in the final 2. It was a great run and I'm even more excited for the fact that I share this final 2 with horvie. He was a great alliance for me from the start of the game and I think that he was an important piece of the puzzle for me. Coming into the game the theme was "The Brain". This is why I think I deserve to win. If anyone played to the theme more than me then I'd be surprised to know who it was. As always in Survivor the goal is to Outwit, Outthink and Outplay your opponents, which I also clearly did. I'm not going to put down the final person standing in my way, because he obviously deserves to be here as well, but I am going to compare us and give you guys 2 different reasons for voting.
At the start of this game I found myself in an alliance with jhard, trev, and horvie and I was fine with that, but the last time I played survivor I learned quick that you can't trust people. Well, they earned my trust quickly when the first idol clues came out and we spent a whole night tossing ideas back and forth about what it could be. After the others made their guesses, which I wasn't ready to do, I noticed that some others that traded clues made some guesses that didn't work with the clue they gave us. It didn't take long for me to figure out which clue they had and I put it all together and won the first idol. Turns out this is a bad thing. This is where things got tricky.
After the tribe merge I was left with nobody from my alliance or my original tribe. That's when I met up with csudak. That's also when the fake Polabonez came in and tricked some of us into giving up their alliances. Funny thing about that was that golfpro, the fake Pola, came to me and wanted me to join him in voting out csudak and showed me that he had all this info. Thinking on my feet and deciding how he could use that info against a lot of us, I went to csudak to let him in on the gig and tried to sway the others. The thing is, according to the message Casey sent, he knew I had the idol and I'd be an eventual target, if he got my message then it clarified that. That's when I fell asleep in Pola's garage after a heavy night of drinking and couldn't find my way out. As a reward for finding my way out Pola gave me the second Idol, which was the most powerful. I then decided to play the first idol when the vote came up that I knew was going to eliminate golfpro, but it took the pressure off of me and nobody would know that I had the next idol. Just to be safe, I gave the idol to another player in case I got voted out the next time around. You may think this is stupid, but it wasn't at all and if that other player, would have played it when I told him then he would probably be sitting here in the final 2 and not one of us. And no Casey, I didn't lie to you about that, I just told you that an original member of my alliance had it, which I was.
At the next tribe merge, I thought it was great how my alliance ended up together again. It was a tribe of 8, my alliance was already well known thanks to golfpro, but for some reason the others thought their best bet to make it farther was to team up with us rather than team up against us. We were 4, they were 4, a firebuilding challenge would have been in their favor more than teaming with us. Now my decisions start affecting the jury. The first person to come to us was dublinuf. We allowed him to join us and then he wanted psap to be the 6th member of out alliance. Bhaz came to us as well and I told him from the start that I was going to give him a chance to prove himself and if he did then we'd keep him as long as we could. I never told him that he was part of the alliance and to be honest I don't know why he'd be so upset like he got backstabbed, because he didn't. He just chose the wrong path to take. I was actually surprised that others in the alliance were going to vote out dubs because we told him he was part of the group, but it all worked out and dubs made the final 10.
At the final 10 we were outnumbered and we knew it. But, instead of joining against us, we added Arfy and dubs to out group, I guess. The first vote came and we all agreed that sjurat would be first to go. That's when dublinuf came up with the off the wall comment that sjurat likely had an idol and would play it. Why would he play it so early? Why would dubs think he had an idol? There was a vote after the third idol challenge that sjurat could have been targeted, why didn't he play it then? Yes, dubs, I put 2 and 2 together and realized you were trying to save sjurat and possibly deceived the alliance. It wasn't trev. Poor guy took some heat that he didn't deserve. Really, there should have been no heat, because even dublinuf admitted that sjurat was an alliance of his after the fact. Even dublinuf supposedly wanted me and jhard to turn on horvie and trev and supposedly use him to get to the final 2. Now if he had Arfy and sjurat around and me and jhard helped him then we weren't far off from getting screwed over. Anyway, the person that went down was Nyaggie. It kind of ticked me off because Nyaggie was always honest with me when we were in the second tribe together and he helped me out. Yes, dubs, it wasn't trev that left us out to dry because he didn't vote with the group, it was me. I wasn't going to vote for nyaggie because he didn't deserve to go that way. He wasn't our target, wasn't supposed to be, but it got changed up to save someone else. That whole situation showed me that dubs had to go next.
I planted the seed in the mind of the other 4 that dubs had to go and they were all for it. That gave Arfy a chance to vote out one of our alliance and keep the scales tipped the other way. The problem was that at this point the others seen Arfy as a bigger threat than a 4 person alliance. REALLY? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they weren't using The Brain. I even sitemailed csudak to get him to vote dubs with us, but it wasn't to be. Arfy and dubs tied and we all know how that goes. Arfy went home, with the idol I gave him. Yes, Arfy was my original alliance to start the game. I even warned him that others were talking about eliminating him, but he got over confident that you guys wouldn't try to screw him and you all did. After Arfy was gone, there was no more nice guy left in me. I knew Casey had the idol based on his guess and the way he asked me to let him know if he was the target of a vote. Once he admitted it to me, I gave him the scenario that he couldn't pass up.
Knowing that a tie could hurt my alliance, I added csudak to the mix. I made him realize that if I could keep him around until the final 5 then he could use the idol to make the final 4. Unfortunately that meant that one of my alliance had to go home at that point, but it was the only way to avoid a tie and things getting swung the other direction with a firebuilding challenge. If we got outnumbered, we surely would have been picked off one by one. Dublinuf sent me his sitemail about still wanting to help me and jhard, but I already knew he had another alliance with sjurat and just wanted us to not vote for him. We picked off dubs, sjurat and tsut. Now it was time for Casey to play the idol. He did and unfortunately trev went home, but someone had to. Then Casey won the next challenge which helped get him to the final 3. At this time jhard was on vacation and just decided everyone should vote for him. Now the final 3 and it was a matter of who won and who got to go with them.
To sum this up, it was nothing personal to anyone. You guys were just another player that made bad decisions and bad alliances. It very well could have been anyone of you in my spot had you used your BRAIN a little more and made better choices and won a couple idols. You can vote for horvie, who clearly was the good guy that came along for the ride. He didn't lie to anyone and he played the game honorably. Or you can vote for me who proved to be the better player by winning multiple idols and using some very good strategy to get to the end. Is the name of the game Survivor: The Friend, Out handshake, Out help others and Out tie? No, the game was Survivor: The Brain, Outwit, Outthink and Outplay. I know some of you will vote the only way you planned on, but hopefully some of you will vote based on the spirit of the game.