Previously on Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New
An eventful couple of days saw both tribes struggle through a Reward Challenge on Sunday that neither tribe won, then an Immunity Challenge on Monday that saw both tribes fail their first attempt. When a re-do was called, Kobara had learned from their mistakes, worked together to find the correct answer, and came through to win Immunity (see order of answer below). Nevala will be heading back to Tribal Council for the 2nd time, with a much more difficult vote ahead of them than they faced last time.

It has not been a strong week for either tribe, but Nevala’s has been especially rough considering they had a 2nd chance to get the right answer in the Immunity Challenge, botched that, and now will truly experience Tribal Council for the first time. When they voted out Ross it was completely unanimous – even his family was pushing for his elimination for the “good of the tribe.” That feel-good togetherness would only last a few days however, and now we’d really get to see where Nevala’s cracks begin to appear.

The Immunity Challenge performances will improve with time. Both tribes will get used to each question being a little different than the last, and they’ll eventually realize that the instructions are just as important as the question itself. What never really gets easier however, is voting out people who really want to keep playing Survivor Hamilton. Everyone agreed on Ross because he didn’t show the passion for the game; but now that everyone has begun building relationships, alliances, and finding their footing on the tribe, who would be next to go?

If the Kobara Tribe is defined by their current and past relationships, as well as their shared Survivor Hamilton histories, then Nevala is defined by the lack of those same things. While there certainly are a handful of relationships on Nevala, alliances would need to form between complete strangers who may never meet in real life, but who would need to somehow be trusted. It’s at this point in the game we as viewers will see if Nevala adopts an old-school big alliance approach, or a more new-school anyone but me, “get out the biggest targets” strategy.

Because these players do not have Survivor Hamilton “histories” to go off of, each of them will truly need to trust their gut and figure it out as they go along. Labelled as “The Family” from early on in the game, it was apparent that Jim, April & Ian were a pretty close group of three. That fact could paint a target on them, and early in the game, any target can become THE TARGET so easily that they would each need to also formulate their own strategies. Of course, a group of 3 in a tribe of 14 can’t really do anything alone – they will need more numbers.

While a handful of other Nevala players claim to be flying solo, coming to this game with no attachments, rumors have been running rampant about who knows who on the Kobara side. That complicates things. All of a sudden a single vote, given a swap or merge, could be part of a much larger group. So we’re not only talking about Nevala dynamics, but numbers across tribal lines. David M. and Jon were pretty clear that they had connections on Kobara, but David M. in particular was adamant that, if anything, he’d be happier to vote his friends out of the game than work with them.

How would players like Damien, Wayne and Sharon vote this week? They all knew eachother from high school, and had many mutual friends, but they weren’t exactly close, and definitely were not assured to be part of the same voting block. Plus they also had a connection or two on the other tribe that the other players could be worried about. Alternatively, Marishka, without any close contacts in all of Survivor Hamilton, would need to quickly find a person or two to align with or she could find herself on the outside looking in. Sasha and Ruth came into the game, presumably with some strong advice from last season’s winner, Meg – but what was that advice?

This vote was likely going to come down to who was communicating most with who. Obviously if players like Shareed, Andre and Dave don’t have any strong connection on Nevala, their votes were up for grabs. What that means is whoever gives them the strongest pitch, that person (or people) are going to win their votes, and take another step further in the game. If you don’t make the effort to take at least a few minutes to figure out what the other players on your tribe want to achieve, and how they want to achieve it, then they’re obviously not going to vote with you.

So for Nevala, the game really begins tonight. They started with a really easy vote, but that will likely be the only one in the entire game, and so it was about to get really real for this group of wide-eyed newcomers. And now it’s time. Check out our Tribal Council video below to get some insight into what happened this week, and watch as we reveal the 2nd player voted out of Nevala.

Continue reading on for a reading of the votes.

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go

First vote:

Second vote:

That’s 2 votes David M. 

Third vote:

That’s 3 votes for David M. 

Fourth vote:

That’s now 4 votes against David M.

Fifth vote:

That’s 5 votes David M. 

Sixth vote: 

We’re now at 5 votes David M. and 1 vote Jim. 

Seventh vote:

That’s 5 votes David M. and 2 votes Jim. 

Eighth vote:

5 votes David M., 3 votes Jim. 

Ninth vote:

We’re now at 5 votes David M., and 4 votes Jim. 

Tenth vote:

WE’RE TIED at 5 votes David M, and 5 votes Jim!!!

Eleventh vote:

That’s 6 votes David M. and 5 votes Jim. 

Twelfth vote:

We’re now at 7 votes David M. and 5 votes Jim.

Thirteenth vote:

And that makes it 8 votes for David M., which is a majority, so that’s enough. By a total vote of 9-5, the third player voted out of Survivor Hamilton: Old Meets New is…

And so Nevala is beginning to take shape as a tribe. With 9 votes, the majority was able to vote out a future big threat in David M., who had multiple connections on Kobara that would certainly have come into play when the merge hit. This was a big move, make no mistake, and so these newcomers are really starting to figure out how to play Survivor Hamilton. For those folks that that voted for Jim, it’s back to the drawing board. You gotta regroup, continue building on the relationships you have so far, and find a way to get into that majority group, or break it apart.

David M. also taught us to really pay close attention to the multiple group chats you’re taking part in. It’s very easy to write a message meant for one person to a whole group of people by mistake, and though it didn’t necessarily seal the deal against him, it didn’t help David M.’s game at all to make a mistake like that. We’ve had players in the past struggle to overcome similar mistakes, and so let this vote be a reminder to our current players to be super sure about who your messages are going to before you hit send.

Our next Immunity Challenge is tomorrow! For now, check out our 4th episode of PLAYED! with Meg & Mike for a deep dive interview with David M. on his experience, what went wrong, and what he’d do differently if given the chance to play again.

MH

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