Survivor: Willamette Valley

Survivor: Willamette Valley Year: 2019 ORG/LSG Format: Meet-up Survivor Type: Non-Anonymous Players: 16 Moderator(s): Haschel Cedricson, Malkon05, TanisNikana LSG List Mod: N/A Winner(s): Radja Runner-Up(s): VashtaNeurotic, Save the Dragons Ariel, Cephrir and Mina assisted as crew.

Survivor: Willamette Valley is a Survivor game that took place in Newberg, Oregon from August 9-12, 2019.

There were two starting tribes of 8, which were split up by the mod team based on several criteria. People who started on the same tribe at Lake Gaston were split up, people with pre-existing relationships (from college or are dating) were split up, and people flying in from other continents were divided evenly.

Everyone voted out in premerge was sent to Redemple Temple and given a chance to compete to eventually get back into the game. Three rounds took place on August 9th. First thing on August 10th, a swap occurred, sending VashtaNeurotic temporarily to Exile to later join the tribe that lost the immunity challenge. Once 4 players had been sent to Redemple Temple, the first redemption challenge occurred, eliminating the first two players.

After two more premerge rounds, the final Redemple Temple competition took place, with two back-to-back challenges. Two more players were eliminated from the first competition. Mitch defeated Menno to earn his spot in the merge. Three idols were hidden during the game. One was found by Radja and another was found by Save the Dragons; both were played at the last opportunity (Final 5). The third idol was never found. After 8 rounds of merge play, three finalists remained. Radja defeated runner-ups VashtaNeurotic and Save the Dragons in a 4-2-2 vote.

Location

Intro

Intro Video

Players

Player	Tribe 1	Swap	Merge	Final	Position
Meme CaptainMeme	Tualatin	Redemple		Premerge	Eliminated at Redemple 1 16th Place
peg pickemgenius	Tualatin	Redemple		Premerge	Eliminated at Redemple 1 16th Place
Cody racefan12	Clackamas	Clackamas	Redemple	Premerge	Eliminated at Redemple 2 14th Place
Piggy PiggyGal15	Tualatin	Clackamas	Redemple	Premerge	Eliminated at Redemple 2 14th Place
Menno McMenno	Clackamas	Tualatin	Redemple	Premerge	Eliminated at Redemple 2.5 12th Place
Lexi Lady Lambdadelta	Tualatin	Tualatin	Willamette	Juror	1st Juror 11th Place
pants pantaleon	Tualatin	Clackamas	Willamette	Juror	2nd Juror 10th Place
entreri entreri	Clackamas	Clackamas	Willamette	Juror	3rd Juror 9th Place
xofelf xofelf	Clackamas	Clackamas	Willamette	Juror	4th Juror 8th Place
Skelda skelda	Tualatin	Tualatin	Willamette	Juror	5th Juror 7th Place
Chris/DV DeasVail	Tualatin	Tualatin	Willamette	Juror	6th Juror 6th Place
Monty PrivateI	Tualatin	Clackamas	Willamette	Juror	7th Juror 5th Place
Mitch Elisu	Tualatin	Redemple	Willamette	Juror	8th Juror 4th Place
Fen Save The Dragons	Clackamas	Tualatin	Willamette	Finalist	Runner-up 2nd Place
Vash VashtaNeurotic	Clackamas	Tualatin	Willamette	Finalist	Runner-up 2nd Place
Radja Radja	Clackamas	Tualatin	Willamette	Finalist	Winner 1st Place

Reflections from Attendees

Haschel

Our finalists were all incredibly solid. I made it a point to intentionally not know a lot of what was going on strategywise, but I'm not at all surprised that 1) Radja won, and 2) all three finalists received multiple votes. Radja presented his game extremely well and had quite possibly my favorite mic drop moment of FTC. Vash started out with a weak opener but when he launched into that monologue about his personality and perceptions and chopping wood on Exile Island he turned into a snowball rolling down the hill getting bigger and bigger. Fenrir managed to play a solid UTR game despite his public idol find putting him on the radar, and I thought he did a very solid job of defending it. I thought Radja would win when votes were cast, but any of you three could have won and been a deserving winner.

Mitch, I'm sure by now you're sick of people telling you play an online game now, but play an online game now!
You mentioned using your time at Redemple Temple to reflect on what went wrong and what you could have done better, and it showed when you demolished the slinky challenge, rejoined the game, and stomped all the way to F4. I also loved listening to Linguisticschat.

Monty was coming off a first-night-boot 13th-place finish at Lake Gaston, but he showed up in Oregon to play. He's a very likable, fun, ball of positivity of a person, and they needed an idol to get him out.

DV was a target for almost all of the merge, but he was so charming his allies had a lot of trouble turning on him; his reputation for being a strong social threat is well-earned.

Skelda was another player who I kept thinking was on the ropes and then kept surviving. He went from being targeted at the very first TC to joining the jury on the last day of the meet. Despite being a regular target he did great at finding allies willing to stick by his side.

Xof came into this game with several subgoals besides winning the whole thing, and she achieved all of them. She survived a TC, won a challenge, made merge, and survived until the final day. And Ms. I'm-Not-Good-At-Challenges surprised us all. She was probably the most effective person in the Bucket Brigade, anchored her team in College Bowl, and was just a few inches of thread away from winning the needle challenge. I've talked with her before about how non-anonymous games always have her fighting uphill because she starts the game with the burden of "everybody knows she's xof", but she rocked this game and I'm incredibly proud of her. <3

Entreri surprised me the most out of anybody on the playerlist. Prior to Survivormeet I hadn't really interacted directly with him a ton; all I knew was that he was a Diplomacy player who had been the early boot in several Survivor games and he also put a crazy amount of effort into studying Hive. As soon as I picked him up from the airport I could tell he was charismatic as hell; combined with his smarts I'm not surprised at all he seems to have been running the Clackamas Tribe.

Pants was a great player, a great juror, and a great person; I don't think anybody told me unprompted about how much fun they were having more than he did. I definitely want to hang out with him and Mitch in the future.

Lexi is an amazing person. During the spectator drafts everybody was worried that she would overplay too hard at the beginning, but she jumped in the driver's seat for the first four TCs of the game and stayed there comfortably for the entire pre-merge. On a non-game level she was a FANTASTIC cook, preparing fajitas the last night and what was without hyperbole the best Indian-style curry I have had in my life. Our grocery run was also a fun experience. Thank you again for everything.

Cody barely missed the merge, which made me sad, but when his tribe voted him out they unanimously told him they wanted him to win Redemption. He's a very introverted person, but he also has an innate ability to make people like him. I'm very sad we will never get to know what could have happened if a slinky had retracted just a liiiiiittle more stable manner.

Piggy, on the other hand, had everyone who voted her out hoping that she wouldn't win Redemption because they knew she'd be back for revenge. It was a great dynamic to watch, made all the better when she made a great comeback at the tangram challenge where she was the second-to-last player to find her pieces but put together the puzzle really fast.

Menno was a surprise boot for me; I still have no idea what happened that TC. This guy was a challenge beast. While we are all going to remember the sheer creativity of the slinky challenge, for me the defining Menno challenge performance will be the slide puzzle at the end of the relay; my comment about Gen Z texting was a joke but he seriously buzzsawed through that slide puzzle like it was nothing.

Meme was our last boot of the first night, and although I was sad to see somebody who flew all the way from Europe go home on night 1, the way it happened was so amazing that I think there was no better way you could have left the game. The man with the custom title "Banana Split" found himself in yet another
ridiculous vote split, orchestrating a 2-2-2 vote. If he hadn't voted for his own ally he would have stayed in the game, but in the end his boot was extremely on-brand. He also caused the modteam a bit of anxiety by being so bad at finding tangram pieces we started to worry that we forgot to put one in his bucket, so that was fun. Thanks for being a good sport about those jokes.

PEG was our first person voted out of the game, and I suspect he knew going into this that he would be a target at his first TC. He didn't go home lying down, though, and his words about people making a mistake turned out to be true. After being voted out, though, he kept a positive attitude and never stopped having fun which is the most important thing at an event like this. PEG is one of the most chill people I've ever met and I am so glad that he came. He also gave us some footage that I won't spoil for those who weren't at the meet, but will definitely be going into the introduction when I edit the footage.

Malkon

I sit here thinking about a lot of things from this meet. I think about my last minute sprints to the store, I think about 3 years ago proposing that we do a meet in Oregon with Haschel. I think about being asked to co-mod with Haschel after it became feasible to pull off after having previously ghosted him in a prior game as co-mod. I think about how much fun it has being putting faces and voices to names. I think about having chills and shedding a tear watching the finalists arm in arm standing over the final fire pit.

I think about how ecstatic I was to see an impressive jury award votes to three very deserving finalists. I think about Radja impressively placing himself in the center of everything. I think about Fenrir doing things he didn’t know he could do and pull of some immunity upsets. I think about Vash being so passionate and defending some very questionable but amazingly strong moves strategically and socially. I think about CaptainMeme literally voting himself out of the game. I think about xofelf for constant support throughout this entire process. I think about PrivateI playing an incredible merge game (at least from my limited merge view). I think about skelda getting pushed around and almost crashing in an ikea chair. I think about Ariel, Mina, and cephrir for being the best damn crew we could have asked for.

I think about the crazy planning days and discussions TanisNikana, Haschel, and I had to make decisions, plan challenges, schedule things (that didn’t always go according to plan), and pour blood sweat and tears into in order to make this happen.

I think about laughs and disagreements and board games and memory sharing. I think about how my journey from player to mod has finally come to fruition and how much better of a person I am for having been a part of this process.

But most of all I think about how wonderful this community is and how much you all mean to me and in my life and how this meet has made me feel a sense of belonging in a time where I’ve had a lot of hardships and I think about how blessed I am to have experienced this all alongside you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone, players, co-mods, crew, and specs for making this an experience I will never forget.

Edgic

10 video episodes of Survivor: Willamette Valley have been produced so far. Skelda created this edgic chart based on these episodes.