Survivor gameplay: Avoiding the challenge threat appearance
When you’re built like you work in a firehouse and things like that, how can a Survivor challenge threat best hide their excellence after the merge?
Survivor is very much a social experiment first and a game of games second (even with twist after twist being thrown into recent seasons). Anyone can, and has, won the game, ranging from marines, corporate trainers, office managers and office assistants (twice). Still, the challenge facing the extremes of character archetypes exists for those who wish to compete as strategically or as brazenly through gameplay as possible.
While you can hide being a superfan, you can’t easily hide being a strong competitor in Survivor, especially if you’re extremely muscular or slender and lean like an otter. As soon as you make your way onto the island and start keeping your beginner tribes far into challenges, everyone will be counting down the days until the merge before they can take out the biggest and the strongest.
The ultimate question for those players remains; how exactly do you avoid getting tagged as a challenge threat, thus ending your game quickly?
I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately, especially in this meta-aware era of Survivor. One fan on Reddit posited that losing the first few Individual Immunity Challenges on purpose may be the key to avoiding such a fate, as people will think you’re not as strong as you’re capable of being.
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The problem with that idea is, even if you’re not on the bottom (in which you’ll need to compete regardless), the game of Survivor is so twist-oriented now that the number of variables required for others to make their decisions on who should go home makes throwing three challenges in a row might kill your game regardless.
One idea is to utterly lose just the first Immunity Challenge and take things from there. Only four winners have won the first Individual Immunity Challenge after the merge and went on to win their season, and they were John Cochran, Denise Stapley, Fabio Birza and Tom Westman. With the obvious exception of Westman, all three winners to perform this task were much smaller in stature compared to the challenge threats of their season, and none of them won another until at least three challenges later. Furthermore, nobody has won the game after winning immunity twice in both first challenges.
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More earnestly, saving your challenge wins for a run at the end may be the best approach to hiding strength in Survivor, as nobody will know the threat until it’s too late. It’s a tricky strategy, though, as multiple people have won two or more of the final Immunity Challenges in a row and were not rewarded with a million-dollar check.
The players who pulled that feat off and make it to the Final Tribal Council were Kelly Wiglesworth, Colby Donaldson, Brian Heidik, Jenna Morasca, Chris Daugherty, Tom Westman, Ozzy Lusth, Amanda Kimmel (twice in a row), J.T. Thomas, Fabio Birza, Kim Spradlin, Tyson Apostol, Mike Holloway, Ken McKnickle, Brad Culpepper and Chrissy Hofbeck. Of those 17 situations across 35 seasons, nine winners have been produced, showing one effective way of winning your way to the end.
As Survivor is a constantly-evolving game, it’s entirely possible that the tried-and-true strategies for challenge threats may go away fairly quickly. Hell, we’ve seen three seasons in a row where someone has won multiple Immunity Challenges to close out the season and promptly lose. Perhaps the best tactic for people who look like they can win a series of physical challenges in a row to group with like-minded people.
Next: Survivor Winners: Ranking 34 Sole Survivors By Season
Who knows; maybe just throw a bunch of interestingly-placed idols around camp and hope they’re placed where you give confessionals!