Yuujin's Jury Statement

Thank you to all the hosts for planning such an enjoyable game! You must have been fed up with us many times, especially for our impatience, but thanks for putting up with it for this long >.< Also big congrats to my fellow f2, hedger, you played a great game and deserve to be standing where you are; thank you for honouring our f2 deal as well! Now I’ll do my best to explain why I, too, deserve to be standing where I am (:

**Pre-swap**

I actually missed the first couple of hours of the game (timezones ftw), and thought that would put me at a disadvantage because people would have grouped up already. Surprisingly, I was offered, by yoshi, to join his alliance with voidzz very soon after logging on (thanks again yoshi!). One thing I tend to prioritise when playing survivor or BB games is making allies, the social aspect, and so I was very much in favour or forming a majority alliance with yoshi and voidzz. We later recruited hedger and tobi; I specifically suggested including hedger for several reasons. The first being, I knew yoshi and voidzz were going to be f2s (if they weren’t already at that point), and so I needed at least 1 other person in this f5 alliance who I could f2 at a later point, and I had already begun talking to hedger by that point, and was more comfortable with him than everyone else (nikki, alice, picante and blake). Second reason was I knew, because of his physical ability in games like these, the other players might target him first later on in the game, therefore he would be a good shield. Tobi joining was also good for me because he was the only other person in the tribe that I had also started talking to, therefore he was also another person in the alliance I could potentially f2 later on.

**Swap/Pre-merge**

During this point in the game, I got an opportunity to branch out my alliance. Although I had spoken to nikki a few times in our original tribe, I used this time to solidify my alliance with her. In addition, eat also approached me (and I believe nikki and hedger too) about joining our og Copas alliance post-merge, because he thought he was in a bad situation with his original tribe members. We were fortunate enough to not go to tribal during this time, and so instead I focused on getting to know those I would be working with after merge.

**Post-merge**

First day of the merge, I was in a good position. I was in a majority alliance with eat, nikki, hedger, yoshi, voidzz and tobi. The f5 alliance hedger, yoshi, tobi, voidzz and I made at the start of the game was also still alive, so there were at least 4 people in our majority alliance I could trust to not betray me till f5. Despite being in a good spot, I chose to also ally someone from the opposing faction, so that I would be in the know concerning how they would be voting as the game progressed, and that person was Yan <3

Initially, things went to plan. Yan even invited me to his alliance chat, with llewell, alice and mary. I later on suggested adding one more, for ‘majority’, and suggested hedger, only because he knew I was in the alliance at that point, so I needed insurance that he wouldn’t sell me out to our og Copas pals (and eat) by also involving him (cat). Sadly, Yan ended up being voted out, and that is probably the one game moment that I wish I could have changed somehow. The idea was to vote out FDP because he was a neutral player; not with Yan’s harem (the name of his alliance), and not with the og Copas alliance, but when nikki began pushing for Yan, that was no longer possible. By arguing to not vote him out, I was jeopardising my own position within our og Copas alliance, so I had to let it go and side with them. Granted, this was the right decision to make because eat ended up idoling FDP, so would have been major awks if I’d voted FDP out instead. I’m not sure why eat chose to use his idol, but if it was because he suspected that I, or I guess hedger and I, would flip, then it was good that we made an attempt to protect Yan and instil those doubts in eat.

For the rest of the game, I was fully aware of the decisions made because of my alliances. Next vote voidzz was meant to be the target, but since hedger and I were in a f5 alliance with him, we just told him that and he played his idol. This was advantageous in two ways: first, we got rid of voidzz’ idol, which if he kept till f5 would have been an issue, and we managed to save him. But we still ‘voted him out’ to maintain the notion that we were still sided with nikki and eat. Funnily enough, nikki and eat suspected I was the sole leaker, and so proceeded to cut me out (!!!) of their alliance, and made a new one, with the other players. This meant I was no longer directly aware of what they were planning (I still knew because hedger told us everything), but it also allowed me to indirectly break off an alliance that I would have eventually had to screw over, and refocus my attention to my f5 alliance.

It was either during FDP or mary’s elimination that hedger, tobi and I made a f3. It was also roughly around this time that hedger and I had our f2. Voidzz leaking information to eat meant that he was no longer trustworthy, and so tobi was willing to side with us, without knowing of our f2. The only issue that remained was getting rid of yoshi’s idol before f5. But before that, there was eat’s elimination. To clarify, and I guess this is directed towards eat and nikki, I chose not to flip because I was already in a f5 alliance (it was not a case of me joining a f4 like you guys suspected), and there was no logical reason for me to switch sides, all it would do is force me to hurt more people than I needed to.

Fast forward to yoshi’s elimination. Originally, we (the f5) were going to vote out nikki. The problem was yoshi’s idol, when to blindside him and get rid of it. I brought up the topic with hedger, and he informed that he was going to use his colour pen to blindside yoshi tonight. So I had to decide to either vote yoshi out with him (and so he wouldn’t need to use his pen), or vote out nikki as planned and retain my alliance with voidzz and tobi. The other option was to tell yoshi he was being voted for and get him to use his idol, but I chose not to for 2 reasons. First, if I got to f5 with voidzz and yoshi as planned, tobi would be the decider in who to take to f3, either me and hedger or voidzz and yoshi. Although I thought tobi would have likely picked hedger and I, it would have been an iffy gamble, so it made more sense to take out one of yoshi and voidzz before then, and get to f4 with the other. Second reason was I suspected yoshi had 2 idols, idk why, it was a weird feeling (did you yoshi?!). It always bothered me where those other merge idols went. Anyway, I chose to vote out nikki because I didn’t want to lose voidzz, and I didn’t want to flip sides unnecessarily. Plus, according to hedger, nikki and the others assumed I was in a f3 with voidzz and tobi, so it wouldn’t have made sense for me to flip on them, unless I was in a f2 with hedger, and I had to hide that fact from them and tobi/voidzz by sticking to our original plan. The reaction post that vote was as expected, and although I would have liked to move on in the game with Voidzz, when I heard that he had attempted to flip on tobi and I (from tobi), I decided that there was no harm in letting him go as well.

I think it was around this time that tobi asked me for a f2, and I accepted. It was terrible because it meant I now had multiple f2s, but I also didn’t have a choice because if I had rejected his offer, he’d have known hedger and I were f2s and not gone to the end with us. Plus, I knew it would also benefit me at f3, because regardless of which one of them won (I was planning on throwing that challenge), I had a good chance of getting to f2, unless tobi had also f2’d hedger, which I don’t think he did. The rest of the game after voidzz was voted out went by uneventfully. I knew that unless any of them had an idol, alice, nikki and llewell would be the next 3 people voted out. The odds of either hedger or tobi flipping were small, especially considering my f2 deals with both of them.

**Conclusion**

So overall, I think the key aspect of my game is that I had my core group of people, and I did my best to stick with them during the entire course of the game. In addition, although I didn’t cover every elimination in this speech, I was part of every discussion before tribals when it was decided who would be eliminated, and at some points, even part of the discussions that resulted in someone’s blindside. I knew, going into the game, who were the right people to ally, and it was these very people who allowed me to smoothly make it to the end of the game, despite there being several opportunities for them to flip on me. Guess that’s all! Thanks (: