Hedger's Jury Statement

First of all, thanks to the hosts for making this game run very smoothly. It was a pleasure to play and thanks to all the players that made this game both interesting and at times very stressful. I do have a lot to go through because my game was very complicated and featured a lot of both bold moves, as well as more subtle moves that allowed me to gain a lot of trust with everyone despite me flipping a lot.

I’ll break this up into the stages of the game. I will still be keeping the early stages of the game relatively short however because the merge was where I really started playing the game hard so I’ve only included the information that I feel influenced my decisions later in the game.

**Pre-merge (Original tribes + Swapped tribes):**

Given my strength in challenges, I knew I wouldn’t have to do much to stick around and wanted to take a relatively slow approach by starting to build some social connections. I quickly was able to connect with yuujin and was added to the Work In Progress (WIP) alliance of Voidzz/Yoshi/Yuujin, which we quickly added Tobi as a fifth to make a majority alliance, given I knew he would be a very trustworthy player so I was sitting pretty.

I developed a strong relationship with Nikki mainly due to us not knowing many other players in the game and bonding over our hatred for Ginga :’) Asides from that, time zones meant I talked a lot with Yuujin in the first few days so I felt closest to those two even though the WIP alliance was wary of Nikki after coming off as playing too hard early on, but I felt like I had enough power to avoid an early difficult decision so I just went along with keeping everybody happy during the early stages. In particular, Alice was in a difficult spot after Voidzz called her out for throwing in the tribe chat so I made sure to give her some comfort so she would be more willing to work with me later down the road and continue my game plan of just staying on everyone’s good side for the early stages of the game.

The tribe swap worked out perfectly for me, given I had formed close relationships with Yuujin and Nikki. Immediately, I found out that Anthony was on the bottom of his original tribe who said he was more than happy to turn against his old tribe. While I wasn’t sure whether to trust him fully, I felt like keeping Anthony around was best for my game at that point, both as a shield and a potential ally and Mary would have been my target had we gone to tribal. However, we were able to win both challenges and never had to go to tribal.

I had for the most part sat back during this stage, mainly due to how long Kong’s Dilemma took but my relationship with Yuujin resulted in an F2 deal being made as I saw her as the only player in the game I could truly trust, which will explain a lot of the decisions I made after the merge in order to protect the interests of that deal.

**Early Merge:**

At merge, I was in a nice position reuniting with the WIP alliance which had stuck strong through the post swap stages, but were also seen as a tight three by the rest of the cast. A new alliance was made with me/Yuujin/Nikki/Anthony and me/yuujin were also added to an alliance of Llewell/Yan/Alice/Mary. The latter alliance was targeting FDP due to him taking immunity in the first challenge and supposedly the Kong’s Dilemma advantage as well so I saw going with an FDP vote as an easy way to keep all sides happy initially. However, Yan being a major threat and Anthony/Nikki pushing hard for Yan to go instead, Yuujin and I sided with the original Copas (+ Anthony - Alice) to vote out Yan, seeing that as a better move for our game overall.

I quickly set up FDP as a target using a possible Anthony/FDP close alliance, after Anthony had played his idol on him, along with FDP’s likely advantages as ammo to influence the WIP alliance in that direction. I had also started to form a stronger connection with Llewell once she told me she was f2 with Yan and wasn’t very close to Mary who won immunity again thus I didn’t want Llewell to be targeted. Nikki/I had already talked about taking out Voidzz earlier who I saw as a loose cannon and them targeting FDP led to Nikki leading the charge against Voidzz by forming a new alliance with the FDP voters from the previous vote. Yuujin wanted to side with the WIP alliance though and with Voidzz considering playing his idol, I suggested the plan for Yuujin/I to vote him, telling him everyone was voting him out and for him to idol out FDP, which worked out perfectly for me. However, Voidzz being unable to keep his mouth shut made Anthony suspect that it was leaked and I had to quickly throw Yuujin under the bus to keep my relationship with Nikki and Anthony strong. This also allowed me to make it seem like Yuujin/I weren’t as close as people may have thought we were. While unintentional, this was a very good side effect of this entire incident.

I used my position in the middle to pick up the coloured pen for myself in the auction and leaked information to the WIP alliance so they could get the best of the items. My plan was originally to use the coloured pen to vote with WIP to force a 6-5 vote, but with Mary’s supposed disadvantage being a vote against her and a new plan for me to use my coloured pen to be able to split votes against Tobi’s idol due to Voidzz leaking that to Anthony, I came up with the plan hoping to waste Alice’s vote negator (which obviously she lied that she had to use it rather than it being automatic), but also just in case that an idol was used on Mary, I wanted them to think Alice was the vote and thus we were able to blindside Mary.

As for the reasons why I sided with the WIP alliance here, I had an F2 with Yuujin obviously that I wanted to protect which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I voted the other way. I also had started to get into Hansie’s head about making an F3 with Yuujin due to Voidzz/Yoshi’s close relationship and them possessing the idol from the auction making them too powerful so I wasn’t too worried about being on the bottom of that alliance, at least in the short term and I knew by keeping the coloured pen, I would have an opportunity to use it to remedy the situation.

After the Mary vote, I was surprisingly able to mend fences with Nikki, Alice and Llewell, although a lot of thanks had to go to Llewell here who allowed that and a new F3 deal was made between me/Alice/Llewell. This majorly came down to me acting like I felt like I was on the bottom of that alliance because I wasn’t even added to the alliance chat and didn’t have a relationship with Mary at all which Llewell understood and opened the possibility of still working with her despite me voting two of her allies out of the game. However, Anthony was still a major physical threat and given his close relationship with Nikki, voting him out was for the best of my game, cutting most of Nikki’s connections to limit her power after she had been the major strategic threat thus making it easier to work with her after that and also knowing I would have less resistance against myself later in the game and was upfront about this with Nikki, Llewell and Alice to solidify my spot as the swing vote (with my pen) going into F8.

**Setting myself up for end game:**

At F8, I made the decision to flip back to vote out Yoshi with idol in pocket after Tobi told me Voidzz/Yoshi approached them with an F3 deal who claimed me/Yuujin were an f2, so I basically knew I had Tobi’s trust at this point due to me reaching out to him before the others did. I continued to maintain a strong relationship with him while also making myself seem wary of even Yuujin to make sure he wouldn’t feel like a third wheel in that F3 and that it would be a very fair F3 deal. Of course this basically reinforced the fact that I needed to take out Yoshi though especially as Tobi told me they were thinking about making a move at F6 which meant I had to make the move at F8 since my coloured pen would only be useful on even votes and they both didn’t expect anything so I knew they wouldn’t play an idol, still thinking I was on bad terms with Nikki who I had made up with by this stage.

I was tossing up between telling Yuujin about this or not but once she asked me what we were going to do about Yoshi’s idol, I told her I would handle it myself that vote and although she didn’t think it was the right time to do it, I went ahead and used the pen to vote out Yoshi, and quickly explained to Hansie who was confused at first but quickly understood the reasons behind it and I was able to even build a closer connection than I had to him before, while also using Yuujin’s reactions towards it to make Hansie feel like me and him were on the same page a lot more than anyone else. Also while I had kept the target off Llewell up to that point as I promised I would, this was the first time I was able to vote with her and prove that I would be looking out for her.

With Voidzz mad I just voted out his F2, I knew I couldn’t really afford to keep him around however it was a difficult spot if I wanted to still be able to take Yuujin to F2. While distancing myself from Yuujin, Nikki knew I was reasonably close to Hansie and I came up with a new F3 deal with those 2 to set up a Voidzz vote on the condition that Nikki would split up Alice/Llewell at F6. I felt like this was a safer option than taking out Alice first and although Hansie and Yuujin both wanted Alice out first, I told Nikki to keep hard on the Voidzz vote first, and I backed her up to gain her trust as well while also taking out another player I had made mad at me. While I knew Nikki still wouldn’t take me to the end, I felt like she would at least vote with me at F6 and I knew I had Hansie’s idol as insurance to ensure the F6 vote went my way.

While I knew Nikki wanted to break up me and Llewell, I made sure Alice was the vote at F6. Llewell had shown a lot more loyalty to me throughout the game and I had kept a close relationship with her so it didn’t make sense for me to vote out Llewell over Alice. If anything were to go wrong, I still had Llewell’s trust so I knew it was the safer option for myself and should have given me a free run to the F2 no matter what happened from that point onward. I knew as long as I made sure Hansie and Yuujin would vote with me after Hansie won immunity, then it wouldn’t matter even if Nikki didn’t vote with us as I got Hansie to play his idol on Yuujin. This would ensure that even if it were a 3-3 tie, that we would all be immune from rocks so pushing for the better vote for myself was definitely the better play there.

**The run to the F2:**

So now at F5, we were basically set. I was originally going to let Llewell take immunity so we could vote out Nikki but Yuujin and Nikki being at each other made it easy to convince her to vote out Nikki first, and Hansie said he would go with whatever Yuujin and I agreed on. So I won immunity, then voted Nikki out as a stronger strategic threat and the only one that wouldn’t take me to the F2. She was also more likely to beat me in a challenge due to having a much different skillset to mine so it was the best shot at ensuring me/Tobi/Yuujin would get to the F3 and I knew that Llewell winning F4 immunity wasn’t terrible for me either because she wouldn’t vote me out over the other two so while it was tough to go against Nikki again, it was the best move for my game and at this point I felt like I had an F2 pretty much locked up.

At F4, I was in a tough spot because the immunity challenge was Knight’s Move which we easily could have trapped Llewell but I couldn’t bare to make Llewell lose and helped her in the immunity challenge, which was probably the biggest game mistake I could have made but I don’t think I’d have been able to sleep at night if I gave her no chance at all. In the end, Hansie edged her out by way of turn order and I didn’t really have any choice but to vote Llewell out, knowing she was a way bigger jury threat than Yuujin was. It was definitely not an easy vote though and if there was a mistake in my game, I think I may have ended up playing with my heart a little too much with Llewell. Even if things had turned out slightly different, I definitely could have seen myself at the end with Llewell but coming to realise she would easily have the best story out of everyone left, I think it would have been silly for me to vote out my F2 in that situation even if Yuujin and I hadn’t been as close as we were in the few days leading up to this vote.

At F3, I was pretty sure both Hansie and Yuujin would take me to the end, so I was highly considering throwing the final immunity but given I had taken full control of my game up to that point, I felt like it would be better to win the final immunity and choose who I sat beside in jury and I also felt like I had to make something up to Yuujin for some of the decisions I had made in the game and as much as it hurt me to have to vote out Hansie. Of course, I felt terrible about this vote and I know I upset Hansie but I wouldn’t have felt any less bad if I had let Hansie win immunity and vote out Yuujin knowing I would be at fault there as well so I felt like I was in a pretty difficult spot either way.

So I know that’s a long read. I tried to keep it as to the point as possible but I really didn’t want to leave anything out. In summary, I feel like I played a very strong strategic game based on maintaining the trust of a few close allies on all sides of the game - Yuujin, Tobi, Llewell and Nikki - allowing me to play the middle very well for the entirety of the season.

Anyway, that's it for now so I’ll happily answer any questions you may have and I’m sorry if I glossed over anything, a lot of consideration went into every single vote but I only touched on the key areas so while I felt my game was very transparent, if there’s anything you don’t understand let me know. Otherwise, thanks for reading and thanks for making this a really fun game for myself.