Top Ten Best Survivor Tribes

Well, you’ve seen my list of the ten dumbest Survivor tribes and the ten worst tribes. So, it’s about time that I finally get to the ten best tribes in Survivor history (of the writing of this post at least). There are some tribes that went above and beyond the standard for being a good tribe. I’ll be sure to include every tribe that I think was the best and hopefully I didn’t forget to mention any good tribe. Well, I might have intentionally not included some tribes that others think were good. This is a good time to mention the rules that I have.

Rules: #1 I can only pick one tribe from a single season. Would there really be more than one good tribe from the same season? #2 While this is not a requirement per say, I would like to pick tribes that produced the winner of the season. That’s why a tribe like Rotu won’t be on the list. I will make at least one exception. #3 I’m only picking tribes that did well both premerge and postmerge. A tribe like Tagi isn’t on the list because it did poorly premerge. A tribe like Galu isn’t on the list because it did poorly postmerge. #4 Since the merge rule is on the list, I’m also going to include a rule regarding the tribe swap. Makal, for instance, won’t be on the list due to how poorly it was postswap. There might be an exception here and there, but I’ll normally only pick tribes that were good regardless of how they fared before and after a tribe swap. #5 I’m not going to include Moto on the list because it was only good due to a highly unfair twist. Plus, it had two members in the final three, both of which failed to receive a jury vote to win. So I don’t think that it’s much of a difficult choice.

Now that I’ve done all the rules that I can think of, I might as well mention the honorable mentions to this list. I’ll also mention why they weren’t included on the main list. Fei Long was good, but only seemed to work well due to an unfair tribe swap. La Flor was mostly good just because of an age advantage on the other tribe. Ometepe succeeded too well in my mind. They never had to worry about people having an advantage against them. Salani was pretty good, especially after the merge, although it mostly was just good due to how dumb the men that season were. Galang, in my mind, wasn’t good enough out of the ten that I chose. Hunahpu was mostly good, but I believe that I picked better tribes on the list in the end, ones that didn’t make terrible decisions despite their good winning streak. Anyways, on to the actual top ten.

#10 Bikal (Caramoan): I feel that number ten is the best place for it on this list. This tribe of returning players dominated against the tribe of fans. Now some may feel that favorites would trump fans in most scenarios and you’d be right. Hence the fact that it is only number ten. But, I still think that it is one of the best tribes in Survivor history.

#9 Chauy Gahn (Thailand): This is on here due to my tendency to always have the first of something chronologically on my top ten lists. This was the first tribe in my mind to be really good both before and after the merge. While it may have only lasted long due to having the advantage of a fake merge (without which, the tribe would have still probably come out ahead) and it might not have stood out that much beforehand, it is still a good tribe in my mind.

#8 Tandang (Philippines): Here we come across the only of the best tribes on this list that didn’t produce the winner of the season. You see, this tribe still deserves to be on the list because it made the merge without ever having to attend tribal council. While the three tribe format may have helped that come to be, I still feel that this tribe was pretty good in the end.

#7 Chapera (All-Stars): It’s hard to believe that such a tribe of odd characters that had no former winners on it could wind up doing so well in the game. It was somehow the best tribe in the first all returning player season when there were two other tribes against it or just one. It dominated in challenges and was pretty good throughout most of the game.

#6 Escameca (Worlds Apart): There’s a reason that a tribe of all blue collar workers ended up doing well. You see, it wasn’t just strength that made this a great tribe. Most people on this tribe knew how to work well with each other and could dominate the game that way. They worked far better than any other tribe their season at least, and a lot better than most other tribes from other seasons.

#5 Aparri (Cagayan): Sometimes a tribe of strength is all you need while you have other characteristics helping you out along the way. While you can probably think that other tribes could have done good that season, this tribe went over and beyond the status that most good tribes have. They stuck together at all times and typically made good decisions for themselves in the long run.

#4 Kota (Gabon): This might be an exception that I have to the tribe swap rule, although it is hard to make sense of a lot of this season with its many tribe swaps. But I still think that this tribe pretty much dominated the game when it played. It only lost two immunity challenges and produced the winner of the season, so I think that it did pretty well in my book.

#3 Villains (Heroes versus Villains): Considering my known hatred of the Heroes tribe, one can only believe that the Villains tribe would find its way to this list. Well, here it is. Full of wonderful characters and great players, the Villains tribe made you glad that evil was winning. They dominated throughout the game and even knew how to get the heroes to help them along the way. There’s a reason that they all made it to the final four in the end.

#2 Drake (Pearl Islands): I love this tribe a lot, even if throwing a challenge could have winded up costing them the game. For once, the clear dominate premerge tribe managed to actually produce the winner of the season. This was unusual since either the minority tribe would pull out ahead or there wasn’t a clear majority for a while until after the merge. But the point is, this tribe had some of the best players and contestants of a tribe in any season of the show. They were clearly good, but there is one that I think is better.

What do I have mentioned as the best tribe? Some of you may have good guesses, since there’s clearly a great tribe that’s not on the list yet. In my mind, only one tribe can qualify as absolute best and I’m not sure if it can ever be beaten.

#1 Koror (Palau): Pop quiz! Name a Survivor tribe besides Koror that existed for both the premerge and postmerge part of the game. Wait a second. There wasn’t one, was there? This tribe was so dominate that the other tribe just had one single player left when it came time to start the individual part of the game. That’s highly usual. By winning every immunity challenge and negating the need for a merge, I fail to see why any other tribe should be number one.

Well, that’s about all for the blog post. I hope that you liked my list and weren’t offended by any of my choices. Should I have included a tribe like Rotu? I hope that I didn’t miss any good tribes or include any tribes that shouldn’t be on the list. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Survivor: Palau- Hero or Villain

Okay, so here’s what I’m going to start doing. You may know that there are some seasons that I either have or want to have on DVD. Those seasons can be called seasons that are special to me. Now, I will do an analysis from these seasons on each of the contestants. I will start with the players from Palau. You see, in my mind, on Survivor, you are one of three things: a hero, a villain, or neither. I only have the third category because of the many contestants who fail to meet either one. So, I will share my thoughts on the contestants from Palau and mention which of the three categories that I think they belong it. Also, something to remember when you read other blog posts like this is that you will only see my thoughts on them from this season. Their hero/villain status can easily change in other seasons.

Now when a person like me thinks about Survivor: Palau, I think about just how likable and heroic the cast was. Yes, there were villains. But the heroes pretty much ruled the game this time around. So I will mention who all were heroes and what other categories other players were.

Jonathan is someone that seems hard to classify due to just how little we saw of him. But, in the end, I think that he is, actually, easy to classify. He obviously fails to meet either category. He’s not a hero and he’s not a villain.

Wanda for me seems like a hero. I’m not sure if that’s the right or fairest assessment. But, I still think that based on what little we saw of her, that’s she’s pretty much a hero. She’s definitely not a villain and I’m pretty sure that she fits hero more than failing to be in a category.

Jolanda might seem like another strange choice for a hero, but in my mind, she fits that more than the other two categories. From what little we saw of her on the island, she definitely seemed to fit hero the best, in my mind at least.

Ashlee is hard to classify in either category. That’s why for me, she’s easily in neither category. In fact, if you see that a lot in the future, then I apologize. There’s a lot of the prejury boots that are neither heroes nor villains.

Kim also fails to classify in either category. In fact, with no disrespect meant for this candidate, she was one of the least seen contestants of this season. She failed to stand out as a player in general. I’m not sure why her edit was so bad.

Jeff easily fails to be either a hero or a villain. Some even call him a quitter, although I think that this is an unfair assessment. Now it could be argued that him wanting to get rid of himself since he thought that staying in the game would only weaken his already weak tribe is a heroic move, but I don’t see it as such. I could call Ashlee a hero if I wanted to as well, but that doesn’t fit them.

Willard is likable among the rest of his tribe and various fans of Survivor. Some would wonder if he actually fits in a category. I’d ultimately say that he’s a hero. That may be debatable and neither category might be a better fit. But I think that hero makes the most sense for him.

Angie might be close enough to being a hero that I can classify her as that. I’m not sure if she is or not. She seems to have some heroic attributes such as being targeted because a twist made the true target immune and she was then sacrificed as a result.

James means that we’ve finally gotten to the first villain of the season. While he’s a lovable guy, he’s most undoubtedly a villain when he played. With a lot of his time in the game spent warring with another player, he seems to fit the villain type perfectly.

Ibrehem fails to fit into either category. One can get offended that a player as bad as him got as far as he did. But I shouldn’t go around insulting people. I don’t see him as being heroic as he just stumbled through the game until he was ultimately voted out. And there was nothing resembling a villain in his game play or he might have stood out more.

Bobby Jon is easily a hero to me. What else could he be? He helps fight to the very end of Ulong only to lose at a random fire making tie-breaker that wasn’t at the final four that he supposedly won before it had to be redone. (Jolanda said this in a Survivor Oz interview. Unfortunately, she failed to go into much detail about this.) But he seemed pretty heroic from what I remember.

Coby, for me, is likable regardless of how you would classify him. In my mind, he’s a villain. That’s easy for me to see since he caused a lot of drama in the game that got him voted out. That’s easy for me to see, although the case for him being a hero wouldn’t be that hard to see.

Janu may seem like a random idea by me as to what type of player she was. I say that she was a villain. Why do I say that? Well, her biggest move in the game was basically to screw with other people and mess up their plans. That seems like a villain move to me and how I would define her.

Stephenie is someone whose status regarding hero/villain has changed based on what season she was in. Since I am only talking about her time on Palau in this blog post, I would have to say that she is a hero for outlasting her tribe yet still staying on top of the game.

Gregg may not be remembered by everyone, but I remember him. I believe that he was a hero. He seemed to do stuff in the game that resembled that of a hero. It might be hard to come up with a good example, but a hero he remains to me.

Caryn stirred the pot a lot when she played the game. She may not have been the best player who has done that. But, she helped cause a lot of drama in the game. Even at her last tribal council, she was still causing lots of drama. So, she’s a villain to me.

Jenn probably has a lot of fans nowadays. I’m certainly a fan of hers. She may not have been seen much throughout the game, but I saw enough to see her as a hero. She fought hard for her spot in the game and made it pretty far. The way she did it was pretty heroic.

Ian is all over the place. At times, he has characteristics of hero. He sticks with his friends throughout the game and is pretty well likable. But, he also displays characteristics of a villain as well. The way he was planning on turning on his friends to further his own standings was pretty villainous. He didn’t get much of a chance to be a villain, but he tired. I’ll have to say that ultimately, he’s not on either side.

Katie fails to be either a hero or villain. One could make the case for her being a hero, but you might not have much of a case. For someone who didn’t do a lot besides letting others make moves for her. She benefitted by this by making it to the end, but she didn’t do much on her own measures to bring herself there. So, I say that she’s not a hero or villain.

Tom was put on the hero tribe in heroes versus villains. Was that a far assessment? Did they put him on the right tribe? The answer is yes. He was most undoubtedly a hero when he played Palau. From leading his tribe to dominate Ulong to winning a (shared) record of individual immunity challenges, he was most certainly a hero when he played.

The Cast: Jonathan- neither, Wanda- hero, Jolanda- hero, Ashlee- neither, Kim- neither, Jeff- neither, Willard- hero, Angie- hero, James- villain, Ibrehem- neither, Bobby Jon- hero, Coby- villain, Janu- villain, Stephenie- hero, Gregg- hero, Caryn- villain, Jenn- hero, Ian- neither, Katie- neither, Tom- hero.

Well, I hope that you liked my assessment of players from Palau. I hope that you agreed with me as to whether or not they were heroes or villains. Did I get anything wrong? I hope not. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Survivor: Rematch

The theme of the season Redemption Island was primarily, at first at least, a rematch of two main contestants that had a notable rivalry. A lot of people said that the rivalry rematch of that season didn’t turn out as well as it was supposed to. But it does make you wonder who else would work in a rivalry season. Since there are far too many rivalries to do a one returnee per tribe season with them, it makes much more sense to do an all-star season based off of rivalries.

Now how does one do the casting for a season like this? Well, I’m personally only going to choose people if I think that both of them would return to Survivor. Plus, I don’t know how they’d divide tribes in a season like this. Would it be better for the rivals to be on opposite tribes to better support the premerge game? Or would it be better for them to be on the same tribe and thus interact with each other? Ultimately, I won’t choose tribes, but I will think of a gender equivalency. I will have three male/male pairs, three female/female pairs, and three male/female pairs. Hopefully, I can pick good rivals for this season.

Aras/Terry is the first pair that I would bring back. You see, this is one of the most bitter rivalries in the history of Survivor. The way that these two players fought against each other was something that was quite interesting. You’d want these people from Panama to fight against each other again just to see what might be in store for a reboot of these two players going at it.

Marty/Jane is a match-up that I thought would be nice to see brought back. While Nicaragua was airing and before we knew about the twist for Redemption Island regarding which two players would be brought back, pretty much everyone already knew that those two players would be having a rematch. And I thought to myself that seeing these two players having a rematch would be nice to see. Do you know how badly Jane and Marty got along? Jane kept voting against Marty until a majority of people finally joined with her and he was voted out. (Terry tried this unsuccessfully against Aras.) Who wouldn’t want to see this two face off again?

Eliza/Twila pretty much didn’t get along when they played together. I forget why they didn’t like each other that much. It seemed like it might be one way of Eliza not liking Twila. But a lot of people would love to see Twila return and Eliza always seems like a fun person to have on the show. They seem like the type of people who you’d want to see together again.

Bobby Jon/Jamie fought a lot in Guatemala. And we really do need an original player from Guatemala to return to play the game again at some point. (That’s something I’ll complain about until it happens.) I remember that they butted heads a lot. There was one point even where they just plain yelled at each other during a challenge. It wasn’t even words. So while this may seem like a strange choice, I still think that they’d be great rivals to have a rematch with.

Lex/Kelly may only be on here because earlier classic rivalries either wouldn’t work (like Kelly and Sue), were just a single fight (like Alicia and Kimmi), or have been overused throughout the years (like Jerri and Colby). So this then becomes the best classic rivalry to bring back. Still, though, you’d want to see a good old fashioned rivalry, right?

Josh/Jeremy is one of the newer rivalries that could work in a rematch season. It’s interesting to note just how close these people went out to each other, something that typically doesn’t happen with rivalries. But they fought a lot and would probably want to face off against each other again.

Coach/Sierra is an example of the time when I used to hate Coach. The way that Coach hated Sierra made me despise him the first time around. But I’d love to see a rematch of these players because I liked Sierra a lot that season. And now that I no longer hate Coach, maybe he’s a better person this time around when they fight against each other again.

Alicia/Christina may have also been another one-sided rivalry that was mostly just one person hating on another person. But I personally think that they could have an interesting reignited rematch on a future season like this.

Abi-Maria/RC might not actually want to play again with each other due to how heated their rivalry was. Regardless, I’m still listing them in this section because they would be nice to see fighting against each other. Wouldn’t you want to see them go at it again?

Alternates: male/male pairs: Sean/Paschal from Marquesas, Ibrehem/James from Palau, Coby/Tom also from Palau, Brad/John from Blood versus Water; female/female pairs: Alicia/Kimmi from Australia, Shii Ann/Penny from Thailand; male/female pairs: Jonathan/Cirie from Micronesia, Shane/Courtney from Panama, Phillip/Corrine from Caramoan

Well, those are my picks for a Survivor rivalry series. I know that just like every other blog post, whether it be mine, at www.survivoroz.com, or some other blog, that this type of season may never actually happen. But, it is still fun to cast seasons like this anyways. Who knows? Maybe someday, one of us bloggers could influence a Survivor season. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.

Survivor Second Chance: On Those Not Chosen

When they announced that the second chance season was going to happen, we knew that there would be some people that would not be chosen. This blog post of mine will be about those contestants that did not win the vote and my general thoughts on them as well as why I think that they should probably return to play again at some point.

Thoughts on Teresa from Africa: Here’s an interesting tidbit: no member of the original Samburu tribe has returned for a future season. Chronologically, it is the first tribe to not have a returning player come from it. It’s a shame that Teresa wasn’t voted into the game or she could have been that player. Now she was a pot-stirrer and made Lex go crazy by casting a minority vote against him. I liked her which is why I voted for her. But she ultimately didn’t make it back in for that season. I do think, however, that she might return in some future season and I hope that she does.

Thoughts on Brad from Blood versus Water: Of all the potential returning players who could return to play the game again on Cambodia, he is the one who ranked lowest out of everyone on his original season. I imagine that it is possible that he returns to the game again and I do want him to return along with all the other players from Blood versus Water. (Well, all of them except the dead one and the quitter, since they can’t play again anyways.)

Thoughts on Max from Worlds Apart: I liked Max in a way. He’s kind of a lovable goof. He may not know how to play the game well, but he’s still fun to watch. He probably will have learned from his mistakes the first time to do better a second time. So please, have Max back.

Thoughts on Mike from Worlds Apart: Unlike all the other players who didn’t get enough votes to return to the game again, Mike did get enough. But, unlike all the other players, he actual one the first season he played on and was this discounted in the votes. You’d think that the producers of Survivor would have known that he would win and thus shouldn’t have put him on the list of potential people. Maybe they did that just so that Carolyn could be on the list. But we don’t know. I do think that he will return for a future season.

Thoughts on Shane from Panama: This is a crazy person that most people tend to enjoy. Sadly, not enough people voted for him to return to the game to play again. He has been cut from other seasons in the past. It’s a shame too. I say that he’s probably going to return at some point, hopefully. It’s unknown if he will, but I think that it’s bound to happen.

Thoughts on Jim from South Pacific: I can’t remember much about Jim. I know that he had an alliance with Ozzy and the most interesting thing that happened to him was edited out of the show in question. I’m not sure if he’ll return or not.

Thoughts on Carolyn from Worlds Apart: She was a great contender for the win, but didn’t get enough votes to win. She also failed to get enough votes to play the game again. I think that we’ll see here again as she made it all the way to second place.

Thoughts on Troyzan from One World: He may have been a bit of a crazy person when he played, but Troyzan was a very interesting contestant on his season. He’s been an alternate before who got cut from previous seasons. I hope that he returns in the future sometime.

Thoughts on Natalie from Redemption Island: I don’t really have much to say about this player. She was loyal to Rob to a fault. That fault, of course, was that she kept him in the game for far too long and he ended up winning. She might be on a future season, although I wouldn’t care if she never reappeared on Survivor again.

Thoughts on Sabrina from One World: It’s possible that my love of this contestant is only due to the type of person that she is on facebook. Outside of that, she’s still a wonderful player whose only failure was the love of the person who ended up winning and the lack of a bitter jury. Let’s face it, any of the final three of One World could have won, but they faced too much great competition in each other, that it was a blowout for the one who made the most moves. I do hope that Sabrina comes back in the future sometime just because there’s a lot of great players like her that haven’t returned.

Thoughts on Stephanie from Redemption Island: I wouldn’t say that I hate this player per say. I’m just baffled by why she thought that joining an alliance with Russell Hantz was a good idea. She’d probably be a good and likable person without him so I hope that she actually returns.

Thoughts on Mikayla from South Pacific: This player is one that I like because I absolutely despise the player who got rid of her. There was no logical reason why she should be voted out. And maybe her being too unknown was why she didn’t win the poll. But I really hope that she can return and do well on a future season.

Well, I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this blog post of mine. Maybe I should have done a recap of who these people were. But, I’m just mentioning my general thoughts on them and why I feel that all of them should probably be on a future season. This could also be my last post about the Cambodia season before it actually starts airing. I still don’t know if I’ll do a cast assessment or not. There’s really not a reason to since I did a previous post that pretty much had predictions in it. I will still do random blog posts until the season starts. Hopefully, my watching of Survivor: Borneo will bring two new blog posts about that season in general. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.