TV: Survivor: Winners at War - Season Discussion Thread

[nickp91]

survivor is the greatest game on earth Tony Vlachos is the greatest of all time

 

[Trap Jesus]

Tony has to be the best player of all time now no? Totally dominate an all winners season like that is indisputable

Yeah I think you have to. The one thing that MAY hold that back is how awful he was in his 2nd season, but he learned from that experience and adapted beautifully.

Sandra has really chipped away at her reputation IMO. He's easily better than her.

We saw Yul and Kim come back who both had only played once and had exceptionally strong winning seasons, but they came back and Tony beat them, so you can put Tony over them.

If we're going to count a player learning from their mistakes and adapting, Cochrane coming back and dominating after his first poor outing is impressive, but you can't just discount Tony winning twice lol.

I feel like the one outstanding person you could maybe argue is Earl from Fiji, who I think is one of the best winners ever, so he has a spotless record, but it's just not fair to compare someone who played once to someone who has played 3 times.

But yeah, realistically I don't think you can argue against him. He won an all winners season and dominated in it as well.

 

[TheBeastCoast]

Natalie also clearly got votes because she became friends with people on the edge(Parvati was obvious). Michelle played the 2nd best game of the three at the end. But there was a pretty giant gulf between Tony and the rest anyways.

 

[Trap Jesus]

Natalie also clearly got votes because she became friends with people on the edge(Parvati was obvious). Michelle played the 2nd best game of the three at the end. But there was a pretty giant gulf between Tony and the rest anyways.

Jeremy voted for her and is super tight with her (also was tight with Michele but Jeremy and Natalie have history), Parvati was tight with her on Extinction, and she gave Tyson that Immunity Idol so that one makes sense. I think the other one was Nick? That one seemed odd.

 

[TheBeastCoast]

Jeremy voted for her and is super tight with her (also was tight with Michele but Jeremy and Natalie have history), Parvati was tight with her on Extinction, and she gave Tyson that Immunity Idol so that one makes sense. I think the other one was Nick? That one seemed odd.

Nick voted for Tony the fourth vote for her was Ethan who also spent almost a month with her on the island. Tough for Michelle to be a zero vote finalist though.

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

I don't agree with that at all but looks like a few thought that way. She was voted out first, had an Extinction idol to play first vote back, misplayed her Immunity idol she found then wasn't exposed for the last one and made a poor decision for fire making. Even her Extortion advantage she played on Tony strengthened his case. I think it's a bit of a farce she was 2nd IMO.

There's no right or wrong answer because both Michele and Natalie played really well

She made the right decision for fire making. If Sarah beats Tony at firemaking (which was a coin flip), Natalie has a equal shot at winning the game IMO. If she's not confident in her firemaking ability, it doesn't make sense to put herself in it. You're putting unlikely odds on yourself.

Her extortion advantage is not a negative on her game. She got 6 fire tokens and was able to use some of it to give Tyson an immunity idol, who by the way gave her his vote. It's a win-win for her and Tony.

As for misplaying her immunity idol. Considering who went home and it was the last time she could play an idol, there was no mistake on her part.

 

[SensBrawler]

Jeremy voted for her and is super tight with her (also was tight with Michele but Jeremy and Natalie have history), Parvati was tight with her on Extinction, and she gave Tyson that Immunity Idol so that one makes sense. I think the other one was Nick? That one seemed odd.

I think the other vote was Ethan

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

Nick voted for Tony the fourth vote for her was Ethan who also spent almost a month with her on the island. Tough for Michelle to be a zero vote finalist though.

Tough for Michele but she definitely should be proud of her game
The way she played, on many other seasons, she would've won

 

[Trap Jesus]

There's no right or wrong answer because both Michele and Natalie played really well

She made the right decision for fire making. If Sarah beats Tony at firemaking (which was a coin flip), Natalie has a equal shot at winning the game IMO. If she's not confident in her firemaking ability, it doesn't make sense to put herself in it. You're putting unlikely odds on yourself.

Her extortion advantage is not a negative on her game. She got 6 fire tokens and was able to use some of it to give Tyson an immunity idol, who by the way gave her his vote. It's a win-win for her and Tony.

As for misplaying her immunity idol. Considering who went home and it was the last time she could play an idol, there was no mistake on her part.

She could have scouted the fire-making though. Not saying Michele would have done better, but it certainly looked that way in the edit. Natalie said she had her mind made up on Michele but switched it because of the idea of "breaking up that alliance". That type of strategy isn't strong enough to take on Tony. She really needed to swing big I think.

 

[Trap Jesus]

Nick voted for Tony the fourth vote for her was Ethan who also spent almost a month with her on the island. Tough for Michelle to be a zero vote finalist though.

That's weird, they didn't show Nick's vote but in his confessional he said "I know how tough it is to be on the outs the whole game". That definitely didn't describe Tony haha.

 

[TheBeastCoast]

That's weird, they didn't show Nick's vote but in his confessional he said "I know how tough it is to be on the outs the whole game". That definitely didn't describe Tony haha.

I am assuming that was just editing tricks that probably cut out a crucial "but" right after that statement.

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

That's weird, they didn't show Nick's vote but in his confessional he said "I know how tough it is to be on the outs the whole game". That definitely didn't describe Tony haha.

Yeah I was confused. I thought he voted for Michele when he said that

 

[The Mars Volchenkov]

Fantastic season. Would be tough for them to beat that one.

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

She could have scouted the fire-making though. Not saying Michele would have done better, but it certainly looked that way in the edit. Natalie said she had her mind made up on Michele but switched it because of the idea of "breaking up that alliance". That type of strategy isn't strong enough to take on Tony. She really needed to swing big I think.

I kinda wonder if they put in that edit to make it not so obvious that it would be Tony and Sarah doing the fire making.

In her mind, I just feel like it came down to who had the best shot at knocking out Tony in firemaking between her, Michele and Sarah.

 

[Apex Predator]

EOE needs to end at the merge.

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

EOE needs to end at the merge.

I believe Jeff said we're not seeing EOE for a while
This season was an exception

 

[Glenn Isildur Healy]

Yeah I think you have to. The one thing that MAY hold that back is how awful he was in his 2nd season, but he learned from that experience and adapted beautifully.

Sandra has really chipped away at her reputation IMO. He's easily better than her.

We saw Yul and Kim come back who both had only played once and had exceptionally strong winning seasons, but they came back and Tony beat them, so you can put Tony over them.

If we're going to count a player learning from their mistakes and adapting, Cochrane coming back and dominating after his first poor outing is impressive, but you can't just discount Tony winning twice lol.

I feel like the one outstanding person you could maybe argue is Earl from Fiji, who I think is one of the best winners ever, so he has a spotless record, but it's just not fair to compare someone who played once to someone who has played 3 times.

But yeah, realistically I don't think you can argue against him. He won an all winners season and dominated in it as well.

Earl played a really good game but 2 players who I have higher on my all-time list as one time players, Todd Herzog and Brian Heidik. Interested on your view on those 2.

 

[Maplebeasts]

EOE needs to end at the merge.

No kidding. If Nat won that would have been 2 winners in a row from EoE. It needs to end much earlier and you should not be able to re-enter with an idol.

 

[Maplebeasts]

Anyways is it recency bias to call Tony the GOAT? That was one of the best games ever played. Not a single vote against all season despite being the #1 threat for the majority of it.

 

[Viggo Mortensen]

So happy Tony won, still shows how the edge is a bad idea. Doesnt make sense how a Day 2 boot gets 4 votes at FTC.

And how can you come back from the edge and not follow Chris Underwood's footprint to win the game? How can you feel confident enough to not risk fire making when you're a first boot on a winners season? Hell, bringing Sarah instead of Michelle at FTC would've been a better play:

1- If Tony wins fire against Michelle, you have the chance of jury members splitting vote between Tony and Sarah while your strong connections still vote for you.
2-If Michelle wins against Tony, you just removed the bigger threat and appear like you made a boss move to bring Sarah with you.

I understand it would suck to have to risk it at fire after winning immunity to bring you to FTC but that's the cost of being an EOE returnee. You gotta go balls to the wall

 

[kingsboy11]

Going into the episode I thought Tony was going to run away with and he did, but I thought Natalie had a very strong argument to win and thought it would've been closer than it ended up being. Say what you want about EOE, but its apart of the game. Natalie was there since day 1 and I would've figured that those who were on the edge with her for as long as she was would've respected that part of the game more and especially with the amount of fire tokens that she earned. Going into the season when they introduced it we all wondered how it was going to affect the game and who was going to utilize the best. Well at the end of the day Natalie accrued the most and absolutely used it to her advantage in a season where it was completely new to everyone.

That all being said, I'm still not surprised Tony won. He had the best all around game, but I'm still stunned that no one really picked up on him down the stretch. That last week-10 days was all Tony. They had chances to get him out and nobody took a chance on him. Full credit to him for the whole season, but given that everyone had won the game before hand I'm shocked that nobody singled him out.

Overall I really enjoyed this season, certainly better than previous year. I think EOE has run its course and still not really a fan of fire tokens, but I'm not going to be upset if they keep them around here and there. It was fun to see familiar faces back in the game again against some of the newer players.

 

[Pay Carl]

Anyways is it recency bias to call Tony the GOAT? That was one of the best games ever played. Not a single vote against all season despite being the #1 threat for the majority of it.

he’s won the most money, and tied for most wins

not to mention he played the best players ever and won with no votes

im glad there can be a king and queen

I was not a fan of him in seasons past but it was hard not to root for him now. he was just masterful

also I was so wrong about Ben. I didn’t like him all season but that sacrifice he made was so crazy I don’t get why

 

[JabbaJabba]

Too bad that Michelle didn't get any votes. I don't think she was the best, but she made some noise and proved that she belonged. Her original season was very eventful and because she didn't have to go to a lot of tribals, thus she wasn't the center of focus for most of the season, which is why people at home didn't care for her winning it. It is problematic for the editing because on one hand you want to show how the winner won the season but on the other hand you don't want to give them too much screen time because the audience is going to guess the winner. Michelle won because of her social game, which isn't highlighted enough because it is more entertaining to focus on people hunting idols etc.

It sucks to hear that a lot of these players get nasty comments from people saying that they shouldn't have won and they didn't deserve it. Players clearly know what people are talking about them. It is not fun being a celebrity this day and era, anyone can easily send you mean messages online and it takes like a couple of minutes to find you, write something and send it. Back in the day you had to mail a letter if you wanted to do that. You actually had to go out, buy stamps and letters, and write it with a pen and paper, and then you had to know some address you could send it to. And even then it was likely that someone else checked the mail and threw it away.

Great season. Too bad that a lot of players that I wanted to see got sent to the Edge early on. I think that my favourite season is still Second Chances and I hope they would do another season like that very soon.

 

[clunk]

Tony is the greatest player there has ever been or ever will be. He has it all. He grew from his weaknesses and turned them into strengths. He was a social butterfly and didn't get one damn vote against him despite being a top 5 threat from the start (after Rob, Parv and Sandra). Definite GOAT. Nobody comes close.

Ridiculous Natalie got votes imo. EOE is such a gimmick. Don't want to see it ever return.

I didn't like Michele up to this episode but she really impressed me and I think she definitely deserved 2nd. I would have much preferred Natalie's votes to go to her. She's definitely cemented herself as arguably the best 'hyena' of all time. Full respect.

 

[Transplanted Caper]

I'm not a huge fan of getting back into the game anyways, but a big issue with EOE comes down to the show trying to put too much into the show. 20 contestants, fire tokens, the usual challenges on the main beach, etc. If they're going to do an EOE season, they need to do something - 16 contestants, fewer challenges, - to allow there to be more room to follow the journey for each player. What Natalie did was incredible, but it still feels like someone was dropped in from the sky (At least from a viewing perspective).

Anyways, Tony deserved it. Played fantastic, was hilarious, did a lot of the random stuff that makes him such a unique player. I thought Natalie had a shot when they went into Final Tribal, but even there, Tony was incredible. He had the jury laughing and enjoying the hell out of his performance.

The teen thing for Survivor 41 sounds dubious, but we'll see how it goes. Hopefully they are able to get back in the fall.