Hitting the post button on the first Immunity Challenge of a season of Survivor Hamilton is the greatest feeling in the world. I immediately begin pacing around the house, phone in my hand, high on the anticipation of the moment the answers start pouring in. This is the fun part of hosting a game like Survivor Hamilton; I get to see how all of the players perform when given the exact same odds. Just like in a real episode of Survivor, we get to learn who sets themselves up early to be a challenge beast. We may watch a player or players completely blow the first challenge, potentially putting a target on their backs. And I for one will be hooked from that moment.

You will need to wait until I finish writing this post to learn what’s posted above, and so I’ll keep typing.

Our two tribes, Kobara and Nevala, symbolize the legendary rivalry between between the cobra and the mongoose over territory in rural India. Snakes have all the reputation, sharp fangs, venom, plus they’re just gross, and most of those things could be said about the 15 returning players compromising Kobara. On the other hand, you have a bunch of cute, innocent mammals just trying to enjoy their time, but having to deal with snakes in the grass. We will see over the course of the game just how deadly this rivalry will be,

My initial thought would be that Kobara, with all their experience, would dominate the early challenges of the season. They’ve all played some version of Survivor Hamilton before, and so would be better prepared to monitor the website, quickly answer and coordinate. Last season, when the Immunity Challenges could be posted at any point day or night, that level of 24/7 attentiveness was hugely important. This season however, everyone needs to be prepared only over a 4 hour period, requiring less of a commitment. Even so, I assumed that Cowin, Chelsea and Bryan would answer first for Kobara. It was likely that Nevala wouldn’t even be able to locate Ross, or that Damien would be too busy cooking shirtless and miss the whole thing, sending them to their first Tribal Council. This would be the first in a long string of victories for Kobara, while Nevala would take at least a few weeks to get it together.

But then I hit the post button.

And while Kobara appeared to react the most quickly, at least according to the group chat I’m a part of, it was a close challenge in Survivor Hamilton terms. I mean, did Chelsea literally message her group “Up!” 20 seconds after I published the question? Yes. Did Kobara send the majority of their answers in (mostly in the correct “10” format, but I”ll get back to that) in rapid succession before I saw anything from Nevala? Yes.

But the mighty mongooses came to play too. Let’s break down what happened.

First, I posted the question:

If you wrote out all of the whole numbers from 1 to 500, then used a highlighter to highlight only the numbers whose digits have a sum of 3, how many numbers would you have highlighted?

Sandra and I worked through the problem together; of course getting the answer right the first time, and we figured that yes, this would do just fine for the first challenge. The answer is “10”. So we posted it, saw that Chelsea informed Kobara in record time, and after 3 minutes the answers started rolling in.

In the first minute we saw responses from Chris, Graham, Bryan, Chelsea, Silas and Cowin – all members of Kobara, and players very familiar with this challenge format from last season.

Kobara was off to a huge lead at this point. The next minute saw 2 more from Kobara cross the line, with Elliott narrowly answering correctly before Peter – art imitating life! We then had correct answers from Jonathan and Kyle, staking Kobara to a 10-0 lead.

And then it started to get interesting.

The first member of Nevala buzzed in with their answer, as Ian made it 10-1 before a flurry of activity blasted your host’s WhatsApp message list at once.

After Ian, Paul and Jordan answered, followed by Jon and Andre for Nevala. David C.‘s double-message pushed him down the list to 16th place, he still answered just before Shareed. Amanda, who hasn’t played Survivor Hamilton for 13 years finally figured it out with the 14th correct answer for Kobara, while only correct 4 WhatsApp responses had been received from Nevala. Then,

Sharon answered “10”
14-5
Dave answered “10”
14-6
Marishka answered “10”
14-7
Damien answered “10”
14-8

And then, after responding “ten” 3 minutes earlier, which would have been accepted just fine, James messaged your host again with a second correct answer of “10”. In the nick of time, just as Nevala was poised for a comeback, the yurt-living BC resident came through in the clutch…

And the first Tribal Immunity Challenge win of the season goes to Kobara!!!

Congratulations Kobara, you are all safe from elimination on this first vote, and none of you will have to live with the shame that arguably follows those voted out of Survivor Hamilton first overall (ahem, Jon B). Here are the full results for your perusal:

As you can see, Kobara was just on another level, and in fact the last 2 players from Kobara to answer were Amanda and James; neither of which played last season with this similar challenge format. This just goes to show how much of an advantage the returning players have early in this game. You had the usual suspects up top with the quickest answers, and Kobara will hopefully shed more light into how they dominated this challenge in the comments below.

As for Nevala, the speed at which people answer these questions probably came as a shock. Ian was the first to respond, and 11th fastest overall, but outside of Jon and Andre the rest of Nevala was in the bottom half. That’s nothing to be ashamed of for this first challenge, especially as there are so many rules to keep track of, and none of you have done this before. It will take time. As for David M., April, Jim, Sasha, Ross and Wayne, you all submitted your answers after James, and in Wayne’s case sent the answer via text first.

The bottom performers:

You can imagine that its really tough to keep track of the order of answer if the responses are coming in on different formats, and folks are sending more than one message so for challenges this season, you must only send one respond to your host via WhatsApp. If your answer is incorrect than it doesn’t count period. If it’s correct but you send more messages, the time on your most recent message will count, pushing you down the list. That happened to a few of you, but James’ second message was in before the 6 Nevala bottom performers.

So while Kobara gets a couple of days off, it’s now time for Nevala to work to strengthen their bonds within the tribe, build new connections, start alliances, and get the numbers on their side. Tribal Council will hosted live via Google Meet for the Nevala Tribe at 8:30pm on Wednesday. Your votes must be sent to your host by 8pm on Wednesday, and you can of course message me with any questions.

Remember you must send me the name of who you want to vote out of Nevala by 8pm on Wednesday, May 6th. If I do not receive your vote by that time, you will automatically be eliminated.

Happy hunting mongooses.

MH

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