There are three elements to the game of Survivor: outwit, outplay, and outlast. Each of those words encompasses one aspect to the game when looked at from a more simplistic standpoint.
For the past three weeks, we have been focusing on the “outwit” aspect of the game: in other words, the strategic gameplay that is involved. Outwit is the strategic, alliance-building part of the game.
“Outlast” represents the overall goal of the game. Using the elements of “outwit” and “outplay,” you work to survive against the other competitors. The object of the entire game is “Don’t get voted out.”
This week, we’re going to narrow in on the “outplay” section of the game. So you have outwit, which is the strategic side. Then you have outlast, which represents the overall goal of the game. So what is left? What does outplay stand for? Very simply, “outplay” is the word that represents none other than, you guessed it, the challenges.
Whether it is a Reward Challenge or an Immunity Challenge, the impact they have on the game is indisputable. Reward Challenges provide tribes and/or individuals with valuable morale and energy boosters, and, of course, there is nothing short of the million dollars that is more important and valuable in this game than Immunity.
But how important are they really? How much impact do they have on the game itself? How should a future Survivor player handle this aspect of the game if they aren’t the most physical or most intelligent people in the world? How should they handle it if they are?
The challenges are far more than just physical and mental competitions. They expose the abilities of your tribe members. If you are going to play this game, you can not ignore the impact of the challenges when it comes to labels.
Labels. It’s an interesting term, and in a largely political game, it’s a very important one. To “label” simply means to “mark.” When someone is labeled in this game, it means that their other tribe members have marked them in one way or the other. They have decided that, because of certain factors, they are too nice, or too mean, or too strong, or whatever. Now, labels can be either positive or negative. A label might help keep someone around if you are labeled with a positive image. If you are given a negative label, then your chances of being voted off and/or losing the Jury vote at the end have suddenly skyrocketed.
There are many ways to label someone in this game. Behavior at camp is a big one. If you’re a pleasant person to be around, you will be given a positive label as someone who is nice and should therefore be kept around. However, if you are lazy and snippy all the time, you will be given a negative label, and no amount of work you do later to fix it may very well be in vain. After all, first impressions are some of the strongest of all, especially in a game with a serious trust issue.
But let’s be more specific. After all, we are talking about the challenges, and the challenges help provide one of the biggest Survivor labels of all: strong or weak.
The complication of the game is that there are times to be strong, and other times to be weak. The strong usually survive during the tribal section of the game, but then are eliminated by the surviving weak after the merge. However, even that is all in question now, because I’ve been noticing a trend in recent seasons that involves weaker players banding together to take out the strong BEFORE the merge. So this idea has become a bit shaky in recent seasons, but hey: no one ever said anything about Survivor was simple.
So that’s the first thing the challenges do: they label you as either being strong or weak. Once you have a label, it is very hard to erase it. So, you want to make sure you go out there and get a good label placed on yourself. How can you do this? If you are going out to play this game, there is just one very simple thing you should do before going out there.
PREPARE!!!!! There is nothing worse than coming in to a game of Survivor and blowing a challenge for your tribe because you can’t handle it. Think back to my column on the first people voted out of the game. People who blow challenges are easy targets in an early phase of the game because there are simply no better reasons to vote because usually, alliances haven’t formed yet. Vanuatu’s Chris is really the only person ever to have blown a first challenge and then walked away with the million.
So how do you prepare beforehand? All you can really do is train. Of course, there is no way to know for sure exactly what kind of weird physical tasks you will have to perform out there. However, by this point, we have seen enough seasons of Survivor so that we should have an idea of what some of the common themes are to physical competition. Swimming. Running. Climbing, whether it is even climbing or climbing over rough terrain. ENDURANCE, that’s a big one. Balance.
Before you go out to play, just do some conditioning. Swim long distances. Run and bike up and down neighborhood streets. Climb trees and maybe go to some of those rock climbing places. Practice standing on a log for a few hours at a time and build up your endurance. Walk balance beams, making them more and more complicated as you gain experience. Try lifting some weights.
This kind of physical training program is NOT something that should be done overnight, but you can’t go into Survivor without having physical ability. After all, you don’t want to blow a challenge for your tribe and risk getting a negative label placed on you before you can even really get into the game. And THAT is the main importance of challenges: do well so that you don’t get negatively labeled by your tribemates, whether it is because you are too weak in the early phase of the game or too strong in the latter phase of the game.
And that brings me to another point. As important as it is to do well in the challenges so that you aren’t negatively labeled, there is another word I wish to add to your Survivor vocabulary: restraint.
In short: Do well, but not so well that you are deemed as too strong for the latter phase of the game. I commented earlier that, recently, it seems that the standard pattern of the game has been shifting so that stronger people are going earlier. It’s kind of hard, in that case, to make the argument that you should not be weak.
So what do you do? My advice would be to do well, but not so well that you appear too strong. Be useful, but not the dominant character. That way, if you’re useful to your tribe, then you will most likely be kept around longer. However, as long as you’re also not the dominant physical powerhouse, you could protect yourself from being targeted later. Find the middle ground, and go from there. If you’re really strong, then hide some of those abilities. It does not pay, from a political standpoint, to stand out. Sure, you’ll win a lot of challenge.
But REMEMBER: challenges are only one aspect of the game.
The point I am trying to get across to you here is that the challenges are important because doing well in them will give you morale and energy boosters in the form of Rewards and a guaranteed ticket to the next round in the form of Immunity. However, they also affect the political strategic game a lot more than you realize, and that’s where the labels I talked about come into play. So, in short, when dealing with the physical challenges as a future player of this game: do well, but not so well that you make yourself stand out. Plot the middle course, and you should be good to go from a political vantage point within your tribe.
(NOTE: This does NOT apply if your neck is on the line in an individual challenge. If you know for a fact you need Immunity to stay in the game, then fight like hell and bring all of your abilities to the front so that you can stay in. After all, positive images won’t do you any good if you’re out of the game. It’s your responsibility as a player to feel out the tribe and know when to back off and when to go all-out.)
As we all know, of course, physical challenges represent only one-half of the challenges. There are also mental challenge. In Palau, they had more physical challenges than ever. Does this mean this is another shifting trend? Who knows? Only Guatemala will hold the inkling of an answer to that question. However, mental challenges are also important. However, I’m not going to spend much time on these, because it’s the same thing for physical: find the middle ground.
What I’M interested in is talking about is the political challenges. In other words, the challenges designed specifically to reveal how you stand in the tribe in an attempt to get people paranoid and hopefully turn the tables.
I want everyone right now who can to think back to the Marquesas. Hard-core fans know where I’m going with this. There was a challenge in that season now referred to as the coconut-chopping challenge. This challenge is now infamous because it had a major impact on the outcome of the Marquesas season.
Here’s the set-up for those of you who don’t already know. The Rotu 4 Alliance of John, Tammy, Robert, and Zoe had the game all locked up because there were only five other people in the tribe, and even though a few people like Sean, Kathy, and Vecepia saw the threat they posed, people like Paschal and Neleh were a little unwilling to go against their original tribe and change the game. So you’ve got a strong alliance of four with no set majority against them. Sounds like the Rattana tribe all over again, doesn’t it?
Then we come to the coconut chopping challenge, where the Rotu 4 very foolishly show their hand by chopping all the others out first and revealing the pecking order. This caused Paschal and Neleh to quit waffling and decide to control their own destinies. The result? Paschal, Neleh, Sean, Vecepia, and Kathy band together as five and take out the Rotu 4 one by one.
I really shouldn’t have to explain the moral of this story to you because I think it speaks for itself. It is critically important in this game to HOLD YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST. You know how I said that if you’re a physical powerhouse, don’t show it? The same applies politically and strategically, and these types of challenges are specifically designed to make you slip up. Don’t fall into the trap, because that’s exactly what it is.
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Okay. Hopefully you’re seeing a common theme here. In the game overall, it is very important to hide your cards, whether they are physical, mental, or political.
Challenges are designed in these three varieties as a part of the game, because winning Immunity is an important part of this game. However, the challenges also affect the political strategic side of the game.
Physical and mental challenges, if you are not careful, will make other people label you as being too strong or too weak, whether that be strength of the body or the mind. Political challenge, like the coconut chopping challenge, are designed to make you slip up and expose your strategic hand.
So, in summary, how should you handle challenges overall as a future player of this game? Before the game, prepare for the physical challenges by doing conditioning and training like I described above. If you know the location you’re heading to, then do all the research you can on that locale for trivia question knowledge.
When you’re in the game, don’t let yourself come out too much. PLOT A MIDDLE COURSE. That way, you can hopefully avoid being labeled as too strong or too weak. Be useful and capable without coming across as a threat to the other players. Let the fools who don’t follow this important piece of advice take the fall. The only exception to this rule, of course, is when you know your neck is on the line, ala Shii-Ann in All-Stars, in which case you use every skill you have to your advantage and save your butt. Brian Heidik, winner of Thailand, is a good model for this because he did well for his tribe and hid his true abilities in the first few individual challenges. He only came through with his true abilities with an Immunity run at the very end when he needed it most and it was too late for other players to do anything about it.
Don’t fall into the trap of political challenges. There is at least one like the coconut chopping challenge every season since the Marquesas incident, so watch for it. When it comes, take care not to fall in the trap. Follow the model of Jenna Morasca when playing this type of challenge. She won it in the Amazon because she took turns knocking people out without any specific pecking order, and then gave pleasant excuses for knocking people out. For example, when she knocked Deena out, she “joked” that it was because everyone needed to “share the necklace.” ALWAYS KEEP YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST.
Hopefully, reading this has given you a little more insight than you had before as to how future players of the game should handle the challenges. A lot of times, emphasis is placed largely on the strategic “outwit” side, and I do agree that it is the most important and significant element of the game. But the impact and importance of the “outplay” side, the challenges, whether they are of the physical, mental, or political variety, are indisputable, and they oftentimes have a large impact on the strategic side of the game through things like labels, so it is important for players to use restraint, especially in the early phases of the game.
You can’t “outlast” without the combined powers of “outwit” and “outplay.”
“See” you next week!
