Monterrico Madness

[Gary Hogeboom]

Well, today feels like kind of a dark day for me in the game...hmm, lemme back up a little and explain everything.

First off, Susie got voted off at the last tribal council. Even though Sherea self-voted, Susie did as well. So finally Susie was off my tribe and we could finally start winning challenges!

Except.....two words. Tribe. Switch.

I'm now on the Monterrico tribe, and I think I'm going to be voted off if we go to tribal council. It's just this really paranoid feeling that I have.

I think the main reason I think this way is that I'm on this tribe with Eliza, who may or may not be working against me, still not sure about that. It would be really easy for her to throw me in front of the bus since we are the two new people in this tribe.

The others, besides Robb are people I don't know or haven't really talked to in a long time. I've played previous games with both Rudy and Kathy, and I've liked them....but I also haven't talked to them in a year. Dan K. I'm pretty sure I don't know.

Right, now, I don't really have much of a strategy to handle this new situation. I guess I'm gonna try and be social, but I also don't think I'm gonna be around that much tonight during the challenge, which could hurt me. If we do lose....maybe I could target Dan for being weak? The only problem with this is that everyone, myself included, is kind of feeling a merge on the horizon. So the strategy of getting rid of weak people isn't exactly a strong strategy right now. Sigh...I'm not really sure WHAT to do. I need to go think, lol.

[Gary Hogeboom]

Holy crap. So, a LOT has gone on in the past few days. Between meeting my new tribemembers and working on the challenge, a ton of shit has gone down and I may have bitten off more than I can chew as far as strategy....ugh, where to begin...

Okay, first off, the challenge. It was a jigsaw puzzle challenge and each member of the tribe had to post their puzzle solution along with the name of the building in the puzzle (they were all different buildings in Lima Peru). Our tribe actually worked REALLY well together. I helped Kathy find her puzzle location, and also helped Dan put together his puzzle. And then results came out....and we WON! By a landslide too, three of the members of the other tribe didn't even do their puzzle. So our tribe won IMMUNITY WOOOO! And I'm in the final 11.

The only downside to this is that I'm pretty sure Sherea is going to be voted out of that other tribe. Things do not look good for her from where I'm standing...so sigh, my final two partner just got thrown down the shithole, I think. So maybe it's time to come up with another plan?

And WOAH do I have backup plans!

Okay, before I start coming off as an evil mastermind lemme kind of explain what I think happened here. I think I've entered a tribe where not much was going on socially....so when I entered with my Social Game strategy and started chatting with everyone and developing relationships.....EVERYONE started coming to me with alliance plans! And of course I had to accept, 'cause that would be stupid not to, so now I have alliances with more people than I'd like to, honestly.

Okay, lets start off with Robb. He approached me last night and asked me how I felt about San Antonio loyalty and such. I said I was still open to it, so he proposed a three person alliance between him, me, and Eliza. He also talked to me about recruiting members so we could be set during merge. He's a little worried because an original Miraflores has YET to leave the game, all six of them are still here. I actually don't think it's as big a problem as he thinks it is, especially since I'm pretty sure Tina does not get along with Amber or Kathy. Anyway, I said yes to that alliance, and sent a PM off to Eliza talking about that idea and she accepted as well.

However...I also am a little wary of Eliza, so while I think that Robb is totally down with a final 3 idea she is...not so much, ya know?

Okay, back up to today. I was talking to Kathy, who is so awesome to talk to! She always comes off as so nice and honest. I had played a game with her a long time ago and we got along good. So she started hinting around really strongly for an alliance proposal...you know, like not proposing it herself but trying to get me to. So I proposed a "information-sharing" alliance, that we would let eachother know if we hear of anything and help eachother out. I'm actually WARY of this alliance because I don't really want to be put in a position where I'm manipulating Kathy, she's too nice. And honestly she doesn't deserve that. So I'm not sure how I'm going to procede with this new alliance.

THEN I got approached by Rudy, and he straight up asked me if it'd be cool if we worked together. And of course I said yes, because it'd be stupid of me to say no, ya know? I also told him that I had an information-sharing alliance with Velva, and he said that was great 'cause he really likes Velva. He also started talking about some tentative merge plans, which involved taking out Amber the sooner the better. Which gives me further proof that the original Miraflores is NOT a unified tribe.

And then there's also DAN. He and I have been talking a LOT the last few days, and we have a lot in common because he lives in Mexico City and I used to live in Guadalajara. We haven't brought up alliance talk yet, but I really like him and I feel like we have a pretty strong bond.

Ahem....sooooooo, here are my alliances as of right now:

A Final 2 Alliance with Sherea (although like I said, I think she's gonna be voted out this round, ugh).
A Final 3 Alliance with Robb and Eliza
An information-sharing alliance with Kathy
An Alliance with Rudy.
A possible 3 person alliance between me, Kathy, and Rudy (this isn't a fact, but I think it's kind of insinuated since both Kathy and Rudy get along and have made deals with me)
A...friendship alliance, I guess, with Dan.

Ugh, so as of right now I have so many different deals going on, and I know they're gonna clash down the road. I'm still not really sure who I want to go with yet. To be honest...my head tells me to go with Rudy because I feel he'd be a good alliance partner, my loyalness tells me to stick with Robb and Eliza since I made that deal first, my conscience tells me to go with Velva because I'd feel horrible if I screwed her over, and my sense of fun is telling me to go with Dan because I feel I connect with him the most.

And I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do. But I need to get a plan going soon, because you never know what could happen in this game.