Matthew

Matthew is a contestant on Visionary Survivor: Haiti and Visionary Survivor: Blood vs Water. He also hosts the Visionary Podcast.

## Haiti Summary

Matthew’s game involved a lot of different strategies, some of which were questionable, others were pretty standard. But the core of Matthew’s game was simple, find a group of people and ride with them for as long as possible.

After Ryan made his infamous seven person alliance on day one, that only two others were loyal to, Matthew formed a solid core alliance with Dwight, Josiah, Maxx and Mink that later extended to Robby through Matthew and Josiah. The alliance proved to be rather successful for a majority of the game as nearly all of the votes in the season were controlled by at least one of six members of the Hounds alliance. Their first targets were Essix and Ryan, Ryan for creating a seven person alliance on day one, and Essix for being his right hand man. After losing the first two challenges, Vodou was able to get a small taste of victory by winning the third challenge. Unfortunately, fellow Hound Maxx was becoming a big concern for the Vodou tribe as his inactivity was starting to become more and more apparent. So after taking their third loss in the fourth challenge, the Hounds decided it was best to cut off one of their own.

After the swap Matthew found himself in a tight spot on the new Vodou tribe with Josiah and Mink. They were outnumbered 4-3 based on original tribal lines, but between the three of them they had two advantages and found a third after the swap. While the numbers weren’t in their favor, they had confidence that they could get some momentum by playing their advantages correctly. Fortunately, they didn’t need to. As the swap was going down Giully made a promise to Jacob that she would do her best to get Ry eliminated before the merge. So after the swap, Giully fed a lie to Vaeril that Ry was using him as a number and had no intentions of working with him long term. This opened up a huge door for the Vodou trio to hop on the Ry hate train and settle into an easy vote. In order to ensure the vote happened before the merge and to keep their fellow original Vodou castaways on the new Egzagòn tribe safe, Mink proposed that they throw the next few challenges leading up to the merge. Ironically, Dwight, Ephraim and Robby were also trying to throw challenges on the new Egzagòn tribe so that they could take advantage of Izaak and Patrick not having a vote at their next tribal council. Due to both tribes trying to throw challenges, the new Vodou tribe didn’t lose until the third post-swap challenge.

While Ry was the obvious target, the vote wasn’t as simple as most of the tribe expected it to be. Giully didn’t have her vote because Dwight pulled a pin on her after the challenge, Matthew didn’t have his vote because he pulled a pin on Jacob at the previous tribal council to protect his alliance members on new Egzagòn, and Mink didn’t have his vote because he got cursed after last pre-swap tribal council. This left Gregory, Josiah, Ry, and Vaeril as the only four people who could vote. With such a small pool of votes, Josiah contemplated changing the plan to take out Giully. It was no secret that she was a strong physical threat and the merge was likely coming up soon, but after Ry leaked the plan he reverted back to the original plan. But when Greg flipped, a tie was forced between Giully and Ry after Mink blocked Ry’s idol. As a result, Giully was sent home by the wheel.

Coming into the merge all the remaining Hounds were reunited, and including Ephraim, original Vodou had a 6-5 numbers advantage over the original Egzagòn members that they planned on taking advantage of. Vaeril was still very adamant about eliminating Ry and wasn’t really willing to target anyone else until he was gone. So naturally, everyone hopped on the Ry hate train in order to settle into an easy first merge vote. After Mink won immunity, a plan was set in motion. Josiah came up with a plan to put a majority of the votes on Ry, but also throw a few on Gregory in case Ry played another idol. Mostly everyone involved was cool with the plan, but it didn’t ever really seem like it was finalized. Suddenly Josiah’s whole game collapsed without him knowing when Ry found another idol and told Gregory and Jacob about it. After Ephraim ignored the split vote plan and voted Ry in confidence anyway, and Izaak and Jacob flipped to vote Josiah with Ry, a Gregory vote was clearly missing and Josiah was blindsided in a \*4-3-1 vote.

After the first merge vote it was clear people couldn’t be trusted and it was even clearer that either Ephraim or Jacob flipped. At this point, Matthew had secured a ride or die in Robby and also had Dwight as another close ally. Other than that, all bets were off. One thing was certain though, people were tired of Ry not getting eliminated. After two tribal councils of Ry surviving, Dwight, Matthew, and Robby realized that Vaeril was gaining more traction by everyone agreeing to vote his target, and Ry really didn’t have much power in the game, if any at that point. So in hopes of achieving an easy vote, they switched gears and managed to vote off Vaeril unanimously.

Coming into the final eight Mink had distanced himself from the Hounds a bit and had clearly begun to play a more individual game. After Mink lost Vaeril, who had become his strongest ally in the few days before his elimination, Mink was isolated from the rest of the tribe. This was on top of already being a huge strategical and physical threat. Another big target at this point was Jacob, who had recently been exposed for playing a very shady and sneaky game. Knowing that they were the two biggest threats at the time, Jacob and Mink both targeted each other in hopes of getting the targets off of their own backs. But after the challenge they made amends and agreed to target Ry. They managed to get Dwight and Izaak to flip and vote with them and almost had a majority. Dwight became very adamant about eliminating Ry because he didn’t want him to slip under the radar and reach the final tribal council with an underdog story. But Matthew and Robby were hesitant. They both felt that Jacob needed to be dealt with and on top of that they had just made individual final five agreements with Ry that they intended on keeping. So a 4-4 tie was forced, and Ry’s luck with the wheel continued as Jacob was eliminated.

At the final seven Matthew’s gameplay started to become a little bit questionable as he instilled his “Make trust, break trust” strategy. Knowing that Mink had no options, he willingly gave him his immunity idol after some convincing on Mink’s end. This was after back to back tribals of Robby telling him not to play it when Matthew was worried, and after Robby strongly encouraged him to not give his idol to Mink. But Matthew was tired of holding onto the idol, he had had it since before the swap and from the start of the merge pretty much everyone knew he had it. He felt that it made him too much of a target, so he gave in to Mink with the condition that Mink would return it if he didn’t play it. Mink agreed to the condition, but he had no intentions of playing the idol at the final seven, and no intentions of actually giving the idol back afterward. With an idol now in his possession, Mink was able to get Dwight and Izaak to flip by bluffing that he was going to play his idol. Eventually Robby felt he had no choice but to also vote Ry since everyone was flipping and he needed to stay in the majority. So Robby had broken his deal with Ry, Matthew lost his idol, and Mink was still in the game.

At the final six Mink had a lot of power, but he was also still a massive target. Before the challenge it was clear that either Mink or Robby needed to go, so after Robby won immunity Mink naturally became the vote. Not all hope was lost for Mink as he still had Matthew’s idol and ignored Matthew any time he asked for it back. Yet again, Mink was able to bluff his idol to get people to vote with him even though it was pretty obvious he was saving it for the final five. But fearing that Mink was going to play it, Izaak flipped again and voted for Matthew. The votes tied 2-2 as Mink blocked Matthew’s vote, which resulted in Matthew being eliminated by the wheel.

## Blood vs Water Summary

Before Blood vs Water Matthew was simply known as the amazing Visionary podcast host who gave Mink his idol. After Blood vs Water Matthew became known as the amazing Visionary podcast host who now had a solid game to his name. Despite having a slower social game that took a bit to pick up, Matthew’s keen sense of numbers is really what took his game to new heights from where it was in Haiti. The original tribe phase of the game was simple as Wyatt completely overplayed, making him an easy target at the only tribal council that the Zeus tribe went to. But the swap is when the game really began.

On paper Matthew had landed in a rough position. He had been swapped onto the Hera tribe with Jay and Epoxy and was down in numbers 5-3. But they were a stronger tribe in challenges, and the only tribal council they attended was made easy due to Toon’s social game becoming very poor. Or so they thought. No one talked to Toon about the vote, and no one agreed to split the vote or throw a rogue vote. So Toon pretty easily determined that he was the target, and unshockingly played an advantage to nullify all votes that were cast against him. This resulted in all of the other castaways on the tribe going to rocks. In a terribly devastating turn of events, Matthew’s main ally Epoxy was eliminated by rocks.

After Epoxy’s elimination and another challenge win the merge was next. Matthew was fired up due to the last tribal council he attended but he knew that the final thirteen was no time to start turning up his gameplay. So he kept his cool as Matthew does best and settled into an under the radar role as the bigger heads like Enrique and Kaden started clashing. Meanwhile, Matthew was building up his own allegiances on both sides of the numbers. He sided with Enrique for the first few merge votes as Nick was legacy advantage’d out, Amani was voted out, and Kaden was voted out. But at the final ten Matthew really started to switch into a riskier playstyle, one that involved him playing both sides.

Matthew’s strategy moving forward was to start targeting and taking out the big threats to his game. First Enrique, which took two tries, and then Giully. It was also around this time that he and Quizzy had really solidified their bond in working together. They had agreed in passing to work together due in a half joking half completely 100% serious singles alliance since Danny and Epoxy had been eliminated pre-merge. The Enrique votes had little repercussions, but after Giully had been eliminated things started to get tricky. They had lied to Maji big time in order to eliminate her girlfriend Giully, which burnt a crucial bridge that was really their last strong bridge at that point in the game.

Matthew’s strategy was solid given his playstyle throughout the season. The only problem was that while he had focused so much on getting rid of the remaining threats, he had failed to recognize his own threat level had surged pretty dramatically compared to the rest of the players still in the game. After realizing this at the final seven it appeared too late. He tried desperately to flip numbers back to his side to vote off Maji but only Quizzy stayed true to her word. Thus, he was eliminated in a 5-2 vote after being perceived as the very type of player he had been working to eliminate the previous few rounds.