Survivor: Caramoan Power Rankings
Episode 3
By Ben Willoughby
February 26, 2013
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1. Corinne
Phillip is a strong contender for the #1 spot here. He has put together an alliance of six players, which at this stage doesn’t seem to have any cracks, and could easily Pagong out the three outsiders of Brenda, Brandon and Erik. But what control is Phillip going to have over the future direction of Stealth R Us? Not much. Everyone in his alliance is humoring him. So who’s closest to Phillip? I’m going with Corinne.
She was the first to be brought in by Phillip, so he probably trusts her the most and therefore she has the most influence over him. She’s completely shifted her gameplay from the Gabon season, from mean-spirited tactician to the friendly “hey, whatever you say” Amber strategy. I suspect she has already built sub-alliances with Andrea and possibly Malcolm. This puts her at the top for this week.
2. Phillip
There’s been a lot of talk about how Phillip is playing a Boston Rob game – organizing a dominant alliance that crushes enemies within the tribe before the merge and then everyone else afterwards, and then managing how the alliance eats itself so that only you maintain the respect of everyone on the jury. But realistically, he’s playing a game more like Russell Hantz or Coach. Phillip has the organizing of the alliance down, but not the respect of the people he is playing with.
Maybe Phillip thinks the Boston Rob strategy is the best play for him. But there are two big problems with this plan. Like Coach at the end of the Tocantins season, Phillip was a walking joke who didn’t really have anyone’s respect – not personally and not for how he played the game. Compare that with Boston Rob, who came into his fourth season with all this mythology about being “the ultimate Survivor mastermind who had never won."
The second problem is that Phillip is playing this strategy in a returnee season, where the players know a lot more about what it takes to win Survivor than the hapless noobs. As Russell in the Heroes vs Villains season believed Parvati, Danielle and later Sandra were weak, Russell-dependent players that he could beat at the end, we are seeing Phillip take a similar path with players Andrea and Corinne.
But all that is a long way down the road. Phillip does have a lot of power in the game right now. If he shouts at his alliance while wearing a feather, they’ll probably do whatever he says.
3. Andrea
Andrea is playing a similar game to Corinne. But she’s also more likely to be dismissed as a non-player than Corinne. Everyone knows Corinne’s just pretending to be sweet, while they actually believe Andrea is sweet.
4. Dawn
Dawn has a pretty strong-looking sub-alliance of two with Cochran. I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone else on the tribe, though.
5. Cochran
Cochran’s alliance with Dawn lands him here. Being part of a known two-person alliance has its good points, as a bloc of two can make a useful swing vote come crunch time. But also, everyone is planning to break the two of you up some day.
6. Malcolm
I’ve put Malcolm in at #6 only because he was the last one brought into Stealth R Us and we haven't really seen much of him strategy-wise. I suspect he has a sub-alliance with Corinne which would bump him up higher if confirmed, but he’s playing a very quiet game right now.
7. Brenda
Of the three outside the majority island, Brenda’s probably the best able to find a way out of her predicament.
8. Erik
Erik’s been pretty much a non-entity so far. He’s still not a good player – as shown by his unwillingness to play along when Phillip came to threaten him.
9. Brandon
Middle-management sucks. But in light of his threats to burn the camp down, he’s more like a 21-year-old Milton Waddams after Lumberg took his contraband red stapler.
Next on Survivor: Shamar shouts a lot. Brandon makes empty threats. So you won't miss anything we haven’t already seen.
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