Episode 2

[liam]

Leo and Austin are gone (no surprise there). My tribe is AJ, Chase, Jonah, Kendell, Leah, Paige, Sawyer and myself.

Thoughts.

AJ: Had a good chat with him one day never see her around, so hopefully, I'm more connected to her then other people. I don't feel a strong connection with her, but in this game you want to be aligned with people who like you, not necessarily your best friends. A little bit of a wild card here.

Chase and Jonah: I think we're on friendly terms. Chase and I just had a little chat. Not about strategy, just talking.

Kendell: Had a good chat with her on the first day. Hoping to see her around, and I think I could work with her. She's in high school, but is going to be on break, so she might be more active after this week.

Leah: Yes, I'm glad she's on my tribe. We've had some long chats with each other, and I think we've got the start of an alliance. I'm going to have to be careful not to be overly reliant on her. I'm taking a little bit of a backseat to start this game, and that might be hard to overcome. Basically, you need to try some different techniques to learn, so I'll definitely learn from this game. I might make some different mistakes then previous games, but I plan not to make the same ones.

Paige: Who? I think I got her info by PM'ing her. She's not on much, but maybe I'm one of the few that contacted her? I don't know.

Sawyer: My secret "Partner". I wish I had any idea what that means. Because it seems like a good idea to stay aligned for now, but I don't know if it'll actually affect the game. The thing is Leah said Paige and Sawyer seem like the weakest members of our tribe. If we lose, I think I'll have to try to make sure the target is on Paige and try to get Sawyer to become more active.

So, everyone on my team seems pretty friendly and likeable. Which kind of sucks. If Tina were on our team, she would be an easy first vote, but I feel like we're going to have a little bit more difficulty coming together at first.

[ingrid]

Loved hearing your thoughts. Keep it up:)

[liam]

This is such a different dynamic then playing on SC. I feel like on SC there would already be F2 deals flying all over the place (and who knows, maybe there are). The thing is, absolutely nobody has approached me for an explicit alliance (not even Leah). Everybody seems very mellow right now.

I feel that Leah and I both have an understanding that we're probably working together, but we haven't actually said that.

So, here is my dilemma. I see two options:

a.) Start building explicit alliances, figuring out who is in and who is not. The thing is, at this stage Leah is my closest ally. The thing is, she is trying to put Sawyer and Paige on the outs, and Chase is on a lot, who I don't connect with very well. So, in order to build an alliance that people feel is genuine, I would have have to go through Leah. I think forming an AJ, Kendell, Leah, Sawyer, Me alliance would be difficult, because I don't think Leah is thinking along those lines.

So, I could get stuck committing to something I'm not actually that gungho about (Like a Leah, Chase, Jonah alliance) or I could appear to be the overly stratagizing guy (i.e. untrustworthy, shifty, etc).

B.) I could wait until we lose a challenge, try to get an unanimous vote against Paige. The unanimous part is important, because I don't want solid alliances forming yet. I feel I could pull this off, as some people haven't even seen Paige online.

When we have vote someone out next, I have three directions to take with this.

B1.) If Sawyer continues not to pull his weight, take him out. This would make sense, if we want tribe numbers up, and the secret partner continues not to have any clear benefit. Unfortunately, I think it could lower me on the pecking order on my tribe.

B2.) Try to get an alliance to exclude Chase or Jonah. Get Jonah out (probably) and still have Sawyer secretly aligned with me. That extra vote is so nice. Especially for later game activities.

B3.) If it somehow comes down to say Leah, Chase, Jonah, or AJ, Kendell, and Sawyer, I'd probably go with the latter. I don't see this happening without Sawyer getting more active.

So, writing this out has helped me to clarify what the issue is for me. We seem to be one solid group (with a couple outliers). So, the majority doesn't feel threatened and we can just pick off the outliers one by one.

The important thing for me is to make sure the outliers go in the order that I want. Because, I need to make sure that as the future rounds become more and more cutthroat, the remaining players are more loyal to me then each other. There are those who would stick with me for the time being, but as the game moves on would probably turn.

So, how would I describe my gameplan right now?

I think I'm going to go with my B options for the time being. Don't let anyone on to the thought I'm putting into the game. Make everyone think, "well, he's not the most strategic player, but he'll stick with me". Get down to a point when the perceived leaders need me, then kick 'em to the curb.

Go to the end with some goats, everyone who's been voted out knows me from talking to me. I explain, "I was playing a UTR game to get you all to underestimate me" and hopefully win it all.

Of course, it's never that easy.

[wendy]

Are you a misogynist?

[Faith]

LOL wendy.

[liam]

So, Chase and I agreed in principle to a Chase, Leah, AJ, Me alliance.

Chase basically said not to talk to Leah and AJ about it because.... it might spook them or something?

Chase, you expect me to believe that I'm the person you come to first for an alliance, even when you've admitted you haven't had much of a chance to talk to me?

My guess, he's trying to do the same thing with Leah, Jonah, and AJ. Well, he'll have to make the alliance official at some point, and I can innocently say, "Oh, I'm so glad Chase decided to finally make this official" to AJ. Basically, cast that seed of doubt in people's heads about Chase's loyalty, so that when the time comes to turn on each other, nobody will feel safe with him.