Hi everybody! Welcome to my first Starcraft 2 Survivors Blog – I’ll be giving you an in depth, behind the scenes perspective on this week’s show and every show thereafter leading up to the finale. As we proceed, feel free to ask additional questions on my twitter account @DOOMeSports and we can continue the conversation from there!
LAST WEEK: We saw a wild sequence of events play out in episode 4 – a 3-person tribal vote, the hidden immunity idol, & CHAOS. First off: who thinks throwing immunity challenges is a good idea? I hope none of you raised your hands…
Making a concerted effort to end up at tribal council is not a good idea, period. By doing this you introduce a chaotic variable into your game, and when you go into the challenge knowing that a hidden immunity idol is out there in the wild, this decision becomes even more mind-boggling. Going into tribal you’re already faced with a 33.3% chance at going home – entering tribal without the idol in your pocket shoots that rate up to 50%.
Now I get it, sometimes you don’t want a person in the game due to his or her strategic alliance on the other side, because he or she is a beast at challenges, or they just generally smell bad – but don’t proactively make that your problem to solve! Reformed Tfarcrats had a huge opportunity in the challenge despite losing reward: three opportunities to play Suppy. If I’m Suppy in this situation, I don’t think you can pass up the chance to lead your team to a triumphant victory. Let’s say he turns down Massan’s plan to throw the challenge: what’s the worst thing that can happen? You survive the week, you stay alive in the game, and you and your tribe mate’s odds at going home drop to 0%. Even if he disrupted his ally’s plan, I’m betting that Suppy could have talked his way out of it (and he could have shown some amazing games in an effort to earn cred from the viewers in the oh-so important fan vote!). At the very least, it should have raised a red flag that Massan is willing to do anything to see his plans for the game come true – DANGER, Will Robinson!
Either way, Massan’s plan backfired in a gloriously entertaining tribal council where kaitlyn proved herself to be a true survivor and someone who you do not want to mess with in this game. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned has never been more appropriate. Kudos to Brent for finding the idol and having the guts to give up his own security in an effort to keep his ally in the game for at least one more week [BONUS! Brent & kaitlyn’s confession cam after tribal]. Unfortunately, I can’t help but think Brent’s putting a huge target on his back by publicly admitting he has the power to influence the vote from across the aisle – it’s a bold move Cotton, we’ll have to see if it pays off!
REWARD CHALLENGE: The tribes are no more and we’re merged! “Umyasur” wins out in the naming process through a interesting sequence of events (I was secretly rooting for Jae-dong-da-dong-dong-dong :3) and we’re off to Phantom Mode.
Now for those of you wondering, the survivors are rarely given an opportunity to check out an arcade game before the challenge starts. We like to keep the playing field relatively uneven in this regard for one reason: the playing field is already very uneven! Whenever you have Grand Master players competing vs. Masters players, the advantage always goes to the Grand Master player. With custom games as the basis for a lot of reward challenges, we give the players on the lower end of the ladder spectrum an better opportunity to win reward, which of course can lead to a greater chance to perform well in the immunity challenge. The one caveat is that if you’re faced with a custom game you’ve never played before, you will find yourself at the same level as the GMs, which is never opportune (in this case, you better read the rules quick!).
Tubby had two big advantages right off the bat: he’s a GM AND he’s played this game before. By publicly allying with Tempo in a semi-serious, happy-go-lucky fashion, he makes himself a bit less of a target (who wants to take on two people early in the game?) and he conceals his identity as a phantom (why would a phantom need an ally?).
On the other hand, Brent goes for an all out rush on Suppy and makes it very clear he’s a phantom. As a result he’s dead on arrival and digs his grave very early in the game. This is yet another huge advantage for Tubby: one phantom is outed early and the paladin has yet to be revealed (a role he can easily claim if questioned).
It seems like Puck let an easy chance at victory slip away when he un-allied everyone – I’m not sure if he didn’t know he was the paladin, or if he thought he was a phantom, but either way he didn’t establish a trust relationship early enough in the game to reap the benefits of it later.
In fact, the general lack of allying in this game ultimately led to each player’s demise (perhaps this was a result of some residual angst/mistrust between Suppy and kaitlyn?). I think we can attribute Tubby’s opportune spawning position on the map, his expert deception, and simply having a plan as his keys to victory, but this definitely felt like the slayers and paladin losing the game more-so than Tubby outright winning it.
I touch base with Puck and Suppy at tribal in regards to why they did not ally in the game earlier (regardless of who was what role), but this seemed like the only logical choice for each player knowing that A. there was a crazy mystery prize on the line (maybe the reward would benefit both of them?) and B. that the biggest targets in the game were on each of their respective backs. Oh well, at the end of the day Survivor is an individual game, and a setback in the reward certainly doesn’t disqualify a players chances in the immunity challenge, but it’s safe to say Tubby gained a huge advantage in the game going forward.
IMMUNITY CHALLENGE: Aaaaand just like that Tubby subsequently throws his advantage away… Our survivors sure are charitable, aren’t they? Tempo becomes the newest benefactor of another survivor’s generosity by receiving an element of Tubby’s mystery box prize: he doesn’t have to off-race in the FFA (I say element of the mystery box prize because we don’t know for certain whether or not there was more to the prize).
However, the advantage doesn’t seem to be too much of a factor in the challenge, as we see solid macro is solid macro no matter what the race is. Brent decides once again to go into super-aggro mode and attempt to take down Suppy (at least someone recognized the urgency in the situation at hand – Suppy is the most dangerous player to keep around post-merge form both a social and strategic vantage point) but he fails and is out pretty early in the game.
Once again, the sheer lack of in-game allying is startling to me. Tubby and Tempo know what’s up though and continue to press their advantage as far as they can. Unfortunately for Tempo, Tubby seems to be fooling around a bit in-game while Puck and Suppy go into super try-hard mode (Who can blame them? Their survivor lives are on the line here!).
Puck mentions later that if he and Suppy had allied it wouldn’t have been beneficial for them because they’re the two biggest threats in the game. Well, I hate to break the news but that’s been obvious from day 1! I honestly can’t think of a better reason to ally up at this point in the game – exert your dominance, win immunity for one of you in the game, and try to break someone’s alliance/pull one vote over to your side after you win (if you can think of a better strategic approach for these two at this point in the game, tweet me your thoughts).
Of course, the method and means by which you go about determining who to convince is always going to be difficult (hey, what hasn’t been difficult so far in the game?), but I think a promise of taking someone to the final 2 at end of the game after you’ve just established you can beat anyone in the game at any time is a solid enough reason for them to flip. What do I know though, I’m just the host! 😀
TRIBAL COUNCIL: kaitlyn is safe (& guaranteed top 5!) and the rest of the survivors aren’t. Puck and Suppy are convinced one of them is going home. Can we seriously promote kaitlyn, Tempo, Tubby, and Brent to Grand Master social league? How in the world they were able to kill these guy’s spirits up to this point and prevent them from making a move is beyond me [subscribers who donate to the prize pool will know though!] – all I know coming into tribal council is that someone’s game is about to end.
After some weird voting and what appears to be some miscommunication between Tempo and his teammates, we almost see our first 2-2-2 tie in a tribal council vote, but alas Suppy is voted out of the game and becomes our first member of the jury!
Things start to heat up next week – will Puck put his foot down, make a run at winning every remaining immunity challenge, and force the other survivors to make a crucial decision on who to vote out from their alliance – OR – will the “unbreakable” alliance avoid letting the inevitable cracks show and continue their path to the top 4?
Tune in on twitch.tv/basetradetv Friday at 3PM EDT or 9PM EDT to find out!