Board Thread:Virtual Tribal Council/@comment-1294345-20171109061606/@comment-2002887-20171109175632

Copper5 wrote: Your dislike of Cole is gross Ian. Here's my (the correct) ranking of everybody left.

Move Cole and JP to the bottom of this list and Devon and Ben to the top with Lauren and that's pretty much how I feel about the final 11. I think this was a pretty good merge episode. Nothing too crazy like Heroes vs Villains or even Caramoan which despite being a bottom 10-15 season at best had a solid merge episode, but we were given a lot of different perspectives and it's set nicely for the next few episodes. Sure it may look like a 7-4 pagonging but both Mike and Joe have idols and I can see Desi and/or Mike infiltrating the current majority alliance. As for whether or not Ben and Lauren made the right move, aside from saying the usual "we'll find out later this season", it looks like the right move and I'll explain why. If I were Ben and Lauren, I would be a little suspicious about being in a supposed core 5 with 3 players from the same original tribe and then the two other key votes also being from the same tribe. Also since 3 of those 5 healers haven't been to a Tribal Council yet, it's relatively likely they'll gravitate more strongly to their original tribe members. That's route 1, or Tribal 1, Survivor strategy. Both Ben and Lauren have avenues to the final 3 in this mixed Hustler/Hero alliance.
 * 1. Cole
 * 2. Lauren
 * 3. JP
 * 4. Mike (He's really grown on me!)
 * 5. Ashley
 * 6. Chrissy
 * 7. Desi
 * 8. Devon
 * 9. Ben
 * 10. Joe
 * 11. Ryan

I'm still not a fan of the intentional Matsing theory, but it's given the Hustlers, especially Ryan since he attended and survived the most pre merge Tribal Councils, more of a chance to be in the majority early post merge because in a 3 tribe format, 5 or 6 original members is too intimidating. I know the opposite happened in Worlds Apart where despite the Blue Collar having 5 members they still were able to pull in Will, Tyler, and Carolyn, Tyler and Carolyn having options and going deep into the merge as part of the least represented White Collar tribe at the start of the merge also shows the benefits of coming in with fewer members. And we all know how Malcolm, Denise, Tasha, Kass, and Spencer fared in their original seasons.

Also, Jessica becomes the third person to be voted out post merge without surviving a Tribal Council following RC Saint-Amour and Nick Maiorano.