YOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!

Thought I'd make a little graphic to spruce up the confesh this round, hopefully Neal likes it as well! Nothing brings two people together like the miracle of really quick photoshop edits.

Update:

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homie FUCKING G DUDE yeeeeeeeeee THIS IS SO GODDAMN AMAZING not gonna lie it got me hard looking at it i was looking at your face licking ice cream and well just innuendo dude dude wet dream city

he likes it.

_________

This is just a brief ramble of thoughts of some of the members on my tribe, my interpretation on my position with them, and the direction I hope everything goes.

Neal: My ride or die right now. He's conveyed a lot of trust into me, and I've reciprocated tenfold. I've talked game with him more than anyone thus far and last night I shared the "mystery" profile with him. He told me Rachel gave him a clue to the idol saying it was up north somewhere. Rachel was on Mushu so I wonder if this mystery was originally a clue to help narrow down where to look for the idol. Yesterday I had my blonde moment and forgot that three idols and could be found independent of tribe camp. Now I think that mystery was an initial idol clue. I don't know if all three idols were found, but at least I still know where one is. I hope to get more information from Neal about this later.

More often than not on merge tribes, there's always an emphasis on old tribe lines remaining. Almost every Survivor, there's always importance put upon OG tribe members and their shakedown come merge. I believe I have Natalie, as I touched upon previously, so right now it lays 5-5. I think the most favourable position Neal and I can be in is if we dissolve old tribe lines and make a majority out of Anaira and Mushu. If we get our way, I don't know how this would boil down to yet. We've agreed that we have gotten on with everyone except for Mel and Lil. Mel, however, is a huge asset come challenges. Lil, a bit lesser. If we do lose, Neal wants to go for a Lil boot and I agree. There's so many factors that play into a vote, and it's too forward thinking right now. There's an easier way to ensure our safety and it's called winning. I think we have a strong tribe and pull out another W.

Jaclyn goes on Mushu, which is rather because:

a) Natalie called her a "rock".
b) Liz/Ken found themselves into a comfortable majority.

I'm hoping for a little bit of a, a little bit of b.

Natalie:

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but if they can pull out a win or whatever im excited to be here with you and i think we should deffs have each others backs and slay

I love Natalie! I have really good conversations from her and she's different from the rest. Neal also really likes her, so I can see Natalie staying around for the forseeable future. I've got her back for this stage of the game, and I really enjoy talking to her. At this point I haven't had to separate social and gameplay, and eventually I'll have to. I can't predict how I'll handle it, so I'll go with the flow. Right now she's an ally, and an asset to my longevity in the game.

Rachel:
I've been talking to Rachel the most since the swap. I think we're having great conversations, a little flirting, a couple of incentives for her to divorce Tyson and come to a man who can truly rock Lóng hair ;). Neal thinks he's pretty close to her. I suggested maybe share this "mystery" with Rachel to show that he trusts her with valuable information. Neal isn't entirely sure if he can trust Rachel, and maybe this will help? Or maybe it's stupid? Idk, the "mystery" isn't really anything that we can utilize since I tried and to no avail. So sharing it can't really worsen ones position, if anything just build some trust. I like Rachel. If we're gonna do an alliance of Anaira/Mushu members, she's perfect for it.

Last challenge I saw Rachel doing the 250 posts on her own, so I decided to jump in and help to speed up the process. I hope it's the little things people remember. I want to show I'm someone who is a team player, and who is there for people.

Ozzy:
Distant because of exams, but I keep checking in on him.

Hunter:
Distance because of vacation, worried that's going to be the nail in the coffin to his game, I assured him it wont be. If I were to do a split alliance, Hunter would also be in it. He's a good guy, I work well with him, and he's a solid competitor.

Mel:
Small talk, haven't really broken some sort of conversational barrier with her yet. Don't really gel with her, but I respect her competitive nature. We were a bit rocky with communication come the last challenge trying to build a pyramid, but we got it done eventually.

Lil:
Virtual invisibility.

Rita/Jenna:
Still love them. Click with Jenna little bit better than Rita, but I think Rita would have my back more than Jenna would. Rita was a little weird yesterday though...

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im doing something for my confessional and gettinge everyone on the tribe to write up a self assessment of themselves for me for my tribe assessment while i mess with the viewers lol they can be anything you want, like "joe is the coolest person ever i would give up anything for him" or like "joe is the worst person to ever exist how is he still in this game, literally the most negative person ever!!"

I didn't entirely know what her angle was on this. Maybe there was no angle, but it just seemed very forced and unauthentic from her. Dunno mayne!


Basically, my strategy right now is the same as it has been. Remain social and a tribe asset, don't become overbearing and let others dictate the votes, vote accordingly, as Lóng as it ain't me or my allies I have no complaints. I do think last round I had a lot of focus on me -- I won the challenge, "Captain Joe", and came up immediately with the spreadsheet idea to keep track of the 41 tasks which Rachel acknowledged to me was a captainy kind of move (Sausage Island: The Nine Dragons Spreadsheets). This round I hope to still pull my weight but take more of a backseat role. I don't know how successful this will be seeing that I defeated 19 other people in an individual challenge last round, but whatever! S'all good mang.

I'm hoping tonight isn't two individual challenges, but since we had to sit someone out I'd assume that it's going to be a tribal challenge or else it would be unfair to Natalie. Hoping we can pull out another victory and move onto final 18.

Brooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo last night was craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazyyyyyyyy.

So I'm gonna get this out of the way right now.

I put the "o" in Stratego, because 8/10 (I'm being generous) times I'm sure as hell not the strateg -- and I'm just left looking dumbfounded saying "o".

Ba dum tssss

Anyways.

The beginning of the challenge was a FUCKING. NIGHTMARE.

I'm trying to find a gif of a bunch of people prancing around going "omg omg omg omg" over something but I couldn't find it. I swear I've seen it before and I know it exists. I just dunno where.

The first hour of the challenge wasn't even the challenge. I knew my google spreadsheet expertise (sarcasm on expertise) would help so I threw a quick one together. Lil or Mel, I forget who, brought up some stratego sites, I threw out a couple of strategies that people play with on the professional circuit we decided on one, Mel took on the painstaking task of matching random assigned letters to respective values (god bless her I wish I could have helped her by editing her post -- maybe I could have helped, probably could have helped, I was just so overwhelmed and aggravated at that point that I was better off cooling down), put them in backwards, everything went to hell, and at that point I was ripping my hair out, almost ready to scream at the computer at how frustrating this entire execution was.

My frustration boiled down to the lack of communication within the tribe. You had the people actively trying, and the people actively sitting back. I'm perfectly fine with not chiming in if you don't know what the hell you're doing, but try to pitch in some way instead of staying passive. Granted I know Hunter was on vacation, Jenna had a final to study for, Lil wasn't initially added to the official Stratego game chat so she was throwing out dumb questions but it wasn't her fault, Rachel and Rita were chiming in... we were all losing our minds, we were all pitching in at some points. Some points were a bit more quiet than others and it stressed me out because it was just a machine with all of the gears out of tune.

BUT THEN

"Who the hell said I smell?"

Ozzy is more concerned with looking at the random stuff written in the Stratego game doc, than trying to help with the challenge.



...

In the moment, it was just... it was the worst possible thing imaginable for a start of a challenge. I was beyond frustrated, a little bit pissed off. But I kept it together. Walked out for a minute or two, came back, and just got to it.

At the beginning we were all just trying to figure out what the hell to do. Woo definitely had Stratego experience, and he was firing off moves. We kept going over the minute and extending conversation, or lack thereof, to the last possible second. Those first few moves were, again:

*insert people freaking out running around going omg gif here*

Nobody knew what to do. It just came down to people like Jenna throwing out a move and me just saying YUP. At this point I was just trying to get our tribe doc together, entering the values, trying to make the rest of this challenge as calming and clear as possible and shit was just not heading straight.

I had a ton of doubts.

Rita was the first one to step up in the challenge and offer strategic insight to the challenge. She got the ball rolling and I'm super thankful that she stayed up til 5 AM her time to help set the pace for our tribe.

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May 25, 2016 10:44 PM thank you SO much for your help May 25, 2016 11:21 PM No problem, though I fear I'm not much help for the actual challenge portion lol May 25, 2016 11:23 PM i think you have a great mind for this stuff May 25, 2016 11:23 PM nobody really knows what's going on haha May 25, 2016 11:32 PM the moves you're talking through make a lot of sense btw you're a huge help for this challenge imo! May 25, 2016 11:33 PM I'm gonna try! I appreciate it May 25, 2016 11:34 PM :) i'm right there with you i'd rather lose trying

I dunno if this helped, but seriously I think our tribe just needed some confidence that we knew what we were doing. I'm not saying I gave Mel a boost, but I think I gave myself a boost seeing Mel coming out of the woodshed after this and talking a ton of sense and really helping direct this tribe in this challenge alongside Neal and myself. I'm going to give myself the least amount of credit. Sometimes the moves I said made sense, but as per usual I'm a very "attack and get shit over with" kinda guy, and I miss the obvious moves sometimes. This is why I suck at Hearthstone. I don't think.

The best part was like four hours through the challenge Ozzy said he was going to bed and NOBODY acknowledged him. I still laugh at that.

When we all calmed down, had some faith in what we were doing, and a couple of lucky showdowns (a lot of lucky showdowns on our behalf) we gained the piece advantage and things started going out way.

The key move we made was using our C piece of value 2 and moving it around to make it appear as if it were a spy. This deception allowed us to take out their largest piece at a pivotal point of the game and gain not only piece advantage, but value advantage.

From there it was simply a game of trading 1 for 1 or trapping moving pieces and killing them off. We won by domination, rather than taking the flag.

Overall this challenge mimics a lot of situations in life. It starts of ballistic and feels like a plane nosediving into a mountain. But with some patience, persistence, confidence, and moral support, you work it through, you get it done, and you can look back and be proud of it.

Stratego is my favourite challenge I've ever participated in.