Brains

**Highest Placing Member**: Hayley (Winner/20)

Brains was a tribe from Survivor: Cloncurry.

Although a pair of returning players with history formed the majority alliance of this tribe, a new castaway managed to build social bonds that superseded the dominant power structure. The second iteration of Brains demolished this original alliance, and entered the merge with a mixed group of Brains and Brawn. Their tribe colour was yellow.

## Tribe History

Despite there being an even split of new and returning players on the original Brains tribe, all ten castaways who wore yellow on *Survivor: Cloncurry* started building fluid relationships with anyone they deemed trustworthy. After working together on their first season, *Mamanuca Islands* alum Karlos and Neda gravitated towards each other once again and wanted to build a majority alliance containing both new and returning players. Gabby and Jacob were apprehensive to work with the pair, because they thought Karlos and Neda were the villains of their season compared to the Levu Five. Karlos and Neda also tried building trust with Christopher, but they felt he was not a worthy ally because he did not possess the social capital or *Survivor* expertise to benefit them. The pair switched gears and instead focused on the first-time players, who they saw as potential followers to their cause against the other returning players. Although Cara, George and Wai were viewed as the physically weakest members of the tribe, Karlos and Neda created the strongest bonds with the trio. They also brought in Hayley, who arguably performed the worst in the first immunity challenge, to create a six person majority.

At the Brains first tribal council on Day 3, Christopher and Phil voted for Hayley because of her performance at the first immunity challenge whilst Gabby and Jacob voted for Karlos in order to separate him from Neda. However, the six person majority consisting of Karlos, Neda and the four new players voted to eliminate Phil. They also performed poorly in the challenge, but Karlos and Neda wanted to vote for them to keep their options open because the returning players would still have a majority on the tribe. Cara and George went to fill their water bottles at the well on Day 4, where Cara found one of the two Hidden Immunity Idols that were hidden at the Brains camp. Although Cara wanted to share this information with the alliance, George managed to convince her to keep the idol a secret for now. Meanwhile, Hayley recognised she was at the bottom of the majority and focused on building her social capital. She had separate conversations with Christopher and Wai, where they all agreed Karlos and Neda were threats who eventually need to be separated.

The Brains tribe won the immunity challenge on Day 5, but lost the following challenge and had to visit tribal council on Day 7. Gabby and Jacob campaigned for the tribe to split votes between Karlos and Neda, but the alliance of six wanted to split between Gabby and Jacob. Hayley felt it was important to bring Christopher into the folds of this plan in order to strengthen their growing bond. Karlos then heard that Christopher knew about this plan, which made him a target since he was worried Christopher had the means to ruin this plan. At tribal council, Karlos voted for Christopher, Gabby and Jacob voted for Neda, Cara and George voted for Jacob but Gabby was voted out by Christopher, Hayley, Neda and Wai. The following morning, George stumbled into finding the second Brains idol. Although he was aware of Cara's idol, George thought it was important to keep his idol secret as a last resort. Hayley continued building her alliance against Karlos and Neda by working with the perceived bottom feeders. With Christopher and Wai firmly on her side, she started to work on Jacob now that he was without Gabby. Her plans were put on hold for the moment because the Brains tribe won immunity on Days 9 and 12.

Cara, Christopher, George and Karlos stayed on Brains at the Tribe Switch on Day 13, where they were joined by Brooke, Emmett and Kez from the Brawn tribe. Although the original Brains had the majority on the tribe, George did not want Christopher and Karlos to work through their differences and form a strong returning player coalition against him and Cara. George instead focused on building his relationship with Christopher, which involved further driving the wedge between him and Karlos. Meanwhile, Karlos threw himself to the original Brawn castaways because he saw through George's gameplay and wanted him gone. Despite having the majority, however, the tension between the original Brawn players was still evident. Emmett and Kez felt lost without their more strategically competent ally whilst Brooke was trying to keep the pair together so she would not be under threat. When the Brains lost their first challenge on Day 15, Brawn felt they could split votes between George and Cara with the rest of the tribe. Christopher was initially on board with this plan, but changed his mind after finding out Karlos was involved, and revealed this plan to Cara and George. At tribal council, Karlos and the Brawn trio split votes between Cara and George. However, Cara used her idol on George and their trio with Christopher had the numbers to eliminate Karlos.

Due to the odd number of castaways at the Tribe Switch, Doug joined Brains after Karlos' elimination. Doug felt it was important for him to publicly pledged his loyalty to Brawn, especially after seeing Harmony's game implode for trying to play the swing vote earlier in the season. Meanwhile, Emmett managed to build trust with Kez by revealing that Brooke was not loyal to either of their alliances. The pair then organised a meeting with Cara and George, who they felt were valuable allies because of their loyalty to each other. This group revealed their respective concerns about Brooke and Christopher, who had closer relationships with Hayley, Jacob and Wai than with Cara or George. Cara, Emmett, George and Kez decided that Brooke and Christopher should be their next targets should Brains lost another immunity challenge. These plans were so well-hidden that Brooke and Christopher did not know their games were under threat. Brooke thought the four Brawn controlled the tribe, and would vote for Christopher should the tribe lose a challenge. Christopher also did not think he would be targeted by his allies, but felt uncomfortable due to the 4-3 minority of original Brains castaways. Despite the growing plans on Brains, the alliance of four never solidified their loyalty with a vote because the tribe won the next two immunity challenges and all seven castaways entered the merge on Day 20.