Survival Challenge: 2018

Survival Challenge: 2018 is the sixth season of the Survival Challenge live reality game.

The season featured twenty-four contestants, including one returning Survivor player. This season was the first to be filmed in Macomb, Illinois, as well as last for five days. Kourtney Trout beat Maria Elizabeth in a 6-1 vote to become the Sole Survivor. Livestreams for the season can be found here.

## Twists & Advantages

* **Former Survivor Player**: Survival Challenge: 2018 had one former Survivor player and Survival Challenge veteran return to compete.
* **Marooning**: Players opened the game by swimming out to the middle of a pond to retrieve items for their tribe. Items included survival items but also two advantages (stealing an item from another tribe and an advantage at a reward challenge). Apisi claimed both advantages.
* **Night 1 Duo Challenges**: Tribes sent pairs of players to compete in three different duo reward challenges. Prizes from these challenges included survival items, but also a real and a fake immunity idol.
* **Multiple Round Reward Challenge**: On Day 2, players competed in a series of reward challenges, earning points for their tribe. The tribe with the highest number of points received a reward feast, where there was also a hidden immunity idol. Apisi ultimately won the reward feast.
* **Idols at Challenges**: Idols were hidden at immunity challenges for players to find and players received clues to their whereabouts in various ways.
* **Willed Advantage Clues**: Players voted out before the second swap could will clues to an advantage to a player. If that player was still in the game at the second swap, that player would receive those clues to an advantage hidden at the next immunity challenge.
* **Vote Blocker**: During the first Tribal Council following the second swap, Tocho voted to give a vote blocker to one player on the Apisi tribe. The advantage allowed a player to prevent another player from voting at Tribal Council.
* **Extended Pre-Merge**: As the first Survival Challenge to last for five days, the pre-merge vote outs occurred over a two day period, with only one tribe visiting tribal council each round.
* **Multiple Swaps**: Players swapped tribes at the end of Day 2 and near the end of Day 3 when there were 24 and 16 players left, respectively. Each swap also reduced the number of tribes left in the game by one.
* **Late Merge**: The season merged with nine players in the game.
* **Extra Vote**: An extra vote was given to the winner of the only individual reward challenge.

## Trivia

* Kourtney was one jury vote away from playing a perfect Survivor game (no votes cast against her, receiving all Jury votes).
* Kourtney had a perfect voting record during the season. Katie also had a perfect voting record, partially due to her not voting at the Final 3 tribal council where Kourtney cast the sole vote to eliminate Katie.
* The season featured three returning Survival Challenge players. Jill had previously competed in DWSC: 2015. Katie had previously competed in DWSC: 2017. John had competed in DWSC: 2014 and DWSC: 2016. John is the only player to have played in three different Survival Challenge seasons. John, Scott and Bill had all been volunteers at previous seasons as well. Scott's wife also played in DWSC: 2015 along with Jill.
* 10 players were eliminated the first tribal council they received a vote at.
* Laura was the only player in the game to receive the willed clues (from Jen, John and Stephen) to the extra vote, but never found it at the following immunity challenge.
* Jill and Evan had the longest immunity streak of the season, as they did not attend any of the first nine tribal councils.
* Jack is the youngest person to ever play the Survival Challenge.
* Leah, Adam B., Jack and Rachel would all compete in Adventure Kokopelli together later that same summer.
* Jen returned to compete in Survival Challenge: 2019.
* The tribe names were all drawn from Native American languages. Apisi means coyote in Blackfoot, Tatanka means bison in Lakota Souix, Tocho means mountain lion in Hopi, Ago means porcupine in Potawatomi, and Maga means goose in Lakota Souix.
* This was the first Survival Challenge season to be five days long.
* This was the first Survival Challenge to feature an all female Final Four as well as Final Tribal Council.
* This was the first Survival Challenge season to be played in Macomb, Illinois, but not the first Survivor LRG to be played at that location. The previous year, Pirate Survival Expedition was hosted at the property, and Stephen competed in that season.
* This was the rainiest Survival Challenge to date, with players enduring a storm their first night and rain for the following two days.