Survivor Edge of Extinction: Ranking the top five players of the season

1) Victoria Baamonde

It was funny how even Jeff mentioned at the reunion how Victoria was an incredibly stealthy player who floated under the radar. Rick may have been the more entertaining character to watch, but no one had nearly as much control or game awareness as Victoria did.

For ten straight Tribal Councils Victoria was on the right side of the numbers! She is also the only person in the season to correctly vote out each of the four returnees. Victoria did a tremendous of always understanding where everyone’s heads were at, and that enabled her to execute some of the biggest blindisdes of the season.

The most exciting moment of the pre-merge game was when she masterfully deceived Aubrey into trusting her. She succeeding making the three-time veteran so comfortable that Aubrey got sent to the Edge of Extinction with an idol and an Extra Vote in her possession.

Another amazing move she made was taking advantage of Rick’s idol play. At the Final Seven Tribal Council, Devens was the obvious choice to vote out, but Victoria knew that he probably had an idol. Instead of letting Devens determine who will go home, Victoria put a plan in place to throw votes on the next biggest threat, which was Ron. The plan worked perfectly, sending Ron to the jury.

What was great about Victoria is she understood when she could control the vote, and when she should yield. She chose her battles wisely, and the moves she did make never made her out to be a dangerous threat, unlike Julia, Wardog and Ron after their big plays.

It was ultimately Rick’s third idol play and Chris’ return that snuffed her torch. However, Victoria outplayed many people this season, becoming one of the few female strategic masterminds to take over the game of Survivor.