Strategy in survivor has three distinct phases.

1. The Competitive Phase
The important aspect of this phase is that every episode has a winning team and a losing team, and winning immunity as a tribe is good for all members of that tribe. For a brief period, leaders and athletes have a hey-day as their talents are appreciated for the good of the team.


2. The Bottleneck
As the number of chairs in the game is reduced one at a time, not losing as an individual dominates any concept of team strategy and schemers flirts and oddballs stir things up while followers and nobodies shift their allegiances to stay away from the axe.

3. The Endgame
In this phase, players generally have to revert to whatever their strongest role is - strategies and alliances become less useful as numbers decrease and sheer self interest combined with immunity challenges decide the fate of all.


What roles do the Survivors take on?
In the early days of Survivor--way back in 2002--Mark Burnett wrote about the different strategic roles Survivors exhibited: The Flirt, the Leader, the Underdog, the Entertainer, the Mother, etc.

Survivor has changed over the years, and so have the strategies.

* What are the best strategies being used today?
* What current or former Survivor is the best example of each?
* Which strategy is the most successful? (Analyze the top three from each season.)


Individual Strategic Roles

Players switch roles all the time - almost every week, but for most contestants there range is naturally limited. Flirts can't really become nobodies. Oddballs can't become athletes. On the other hand, anyone can become a follower or a schemer. To win a player has to keep track of what role each other player is currently adopting, and mainly avoid being in the crosshairs - being either too weak or too threatening. Trying to be in control is a temporarily effective strategy, but taking power more than twice is usally enough to get labeled as threat.



The Captain
Required Ability: Leadership
Advantage: Having followers.
Vulnerability: Being Feared, Competition for leader.
Natural Ally: The Follower
Sworn Enemy: The schemer.

In FvsF, Mikey, who tried to play Captain too much too early. A fast exit was the price. He could have played Nobody, but their problem is that they have a hard time sitting back and watching other people screw up. By playing captain, and allying with a flirt he forced Rupert, who started out playing athlete, into the role of schemer.

The Oddball
Required ability: Eccentricity or being disliked or being useless.
Advantage: Being ignored.
Vulnerability: Being a liability to the team.
Natural Ally: The Nobody.
Sworn Enemy: The Athlete

In FvsF there was a brief but wonderful dominance by "Oddball nation" Two oddballs (Kathy, Chet) made common cause with nobodies (Tracy) and schemers (Rupert) to destroy a Captain-Flirt-Follower alliance.

The Fool
Required ability: To make people laugh.
Advantage: Being liked, but not feared.
Vulnerability: Not being trusted. Unable to sway.
Natural Ally: The Follower
Sworn Enemy: None

Dreamz got to the final two playing the fool, it was a natural fit, too natural because he couldnt switch out of it when he got to the final four.

The Flirt
Required Ability: Attractiveness.
Advantage: Being desired.
Vulnerability: Betrayal
Natural Ally: The Athlete
Sworn Enemy: The Nobody

The Nobody
Required ability: Being forgettable.
Advantage: Under the radar.
Vulnerability: Being expendable.
Natural Ally: The Schemer
Sworn enemy: The Flirt

The Athlete
Required Ability: Athletic skill
Advantage: Winning immunity
Vulnerability: Being a target.
Natural Ally: The flirt.
Sworn Enemy: The Follower
Week 9 Jason switches (perhaps not intentionally) from Nobody to athlete, waiting to be taken advantage of by a flirt.

Follower:
Required Ability: Loyalty
Advantage: Being in an alliance.
Vulnerability: Being in an alliance.
Natural Ally: The Captian
Sworn Enemy: The Oddball

Erik in FvsF switched from nobody to schemer to follower.

Schemer
Required ability: Cleverness
Advantage: Playing the Angles
Vulnerability: Being hated.
Natual Ally: The Athlete
Sworn Enemy: The Captain

The problem with schemers is they can't coordinate well. Their alliances are two fragile, but on the other hand where strong alliances form by non-schemers, the schemer has a ripe opportunity to bust it.


1. The Exhibitionist: Richard Hatch! , Julie Berry
2. The Mother: Tina Wesson, Jan Gentry, Teresa Cooper, Lydia Morales
3. The Sweetheart: Colleen Haskell, Elisabeth Filarski-Hasselbeck, Amber Brkich (seas. 2), Amanda Kimmel
4. The Redneck: Tom Buccanan, Susan Hawk, Travis Sampson aka Bubba, James Miller, Twila Tanner
5. The Loudmouth/Loose Canon: Shane Powers, James Reid aka "Rocky", Judd Sergeant, Eliza Orlins
6. Captain America: Tom Westman, Terry Dietz, Gary Hogeboom, Colby Donaldson and Ozzy Lusth
7. The Flirt: Jenna Morasca, Julie Berry, Amber Brkich, Parvarti(seas. 8)......the list goes on!
8. The Nerd: Yul Kwon, Yau-Man Chan, Ryan Shoulders, Sean Kenniff, Ian Rosenberger
9. The Pretty Boy: Colby Donaldson, Alex Bell, Adam Gentry, Ian Rosenberger, Erik Huffman
10. The Ancient: Rudy Boesch, Paschal English, Jake Billingsley, Jim Lynch, Willard Smith, Scout Cloud Lee
11. The Puppetmaster: Rob Cesternino, Rob Mariano, Brian Heidik, Brian Corridan, John Carroll, Todd Hezhog, Cirie Fields.
12. The Stealth Player: Vecepia Towery, Jennifer Lyon, Sandra Diaz-Twine, Denise Martin, Erik Huffman
13. The Independent Thinker: Christy Smith, Sean Kenniff, Amanda Kimmel, Peih Gee Law
14. The Not-all-with-it: Courtney Marit, Lex van den Berghe, Matthew von Ertfelda, Shane Powers, Denise Martin
15. The Weak attached with the strong: Amber Brkich, Becky Lee, Tina Wesson, Katie Gallagher, Courtney Yates, Denise Martin
16. The Lovable: Cassandra Franklin, Cirie Fields, Sundra Oakley, Amanda Kimmel, Ethan

Some of these "roles" hardly seem strategic. Flirting is a strategy, Redneck is not.
Group/Alliance Strategies:
The weakest link
Voting off the strongest members
Think short-term or long-term?
Allying weak member with strong member (Tina and Colby, Katie and Ian, Becky and Yul)
Vote off Weak, then Strong, then Weak, then Strong

It can all come down to the Final Immunity, where some Survivors are made or broken. Look at the picks for the Final 2.

When push comes to shove, Survivor is all about lasting long enough to make the end game and having a jury that likes you (as Earl did) and / or does not like the other player (as Chris pulled off). You need to figure out how to make the end game, with whom ON the jury or NOT on the jury, with whom FACING the jury, how to get you BOTH there, and how to avoid losing those votes you already have. That's it. And yes, the makeup of the jury DOES matter.

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