Alright, Survivors. It all comes down to this.
Vote 1:
As usual in anonymous survivor, there were a lot of shifting alliances but the finalists were the ones that had the most solid alliance. Excellent games by both Pie and Gaspar, I think you both deserve your spot at the final table.
I vote for Gaspar to win. He played a top tier game when his team wasn’t in a position of power. And then he played a very good game when he was in a position of power. While the Gaspar/Pie alliance no doubt had strategic contributions from both, Gaspar seemed more active in the strategy part of the game that involved other players.
Vote 2:
Eats a Lot of Pie
Hey Eatsy!
You’re wrong. You deserve to win.
Love ya!
Vote 3:
First, Pie. I had a lot of fun playing with you, and I’m glad to see that you seem to have enjoyed your time with the game. You did good. In keeping people on the side and showing patience, you proved that you’re going to be a force to be reckoned with in future games. Thanks for the good times.
Now, on to Gaspar (who has my vote, if that weren’t already obvious). We’ve been allied in pretty much every game the two of us have played, and I knew it would eventually come to this. I had hoped that there would be some thrilling involved in our endgame, with us scrambling in a mad dash to take each other out, but it wasn’t to be. Still, it was an absolute blast to watch your game from the sidelines. I know you were pretty concerned when I went, but you absolutely owned the game the whole way. Top-tier win, my friend. Beers are on me next time we meet.
Vote 4:
Congrats, Pie, on making it to the final two. It seems like that was your goal, so way to go! It’s not an easy game to maneuver and you managed to keep the paranoia at bay and make strong alliances. However, I cannot vote for you if you don’t want to win. I understand loyalty, but if you were playing to win, you would have gotten rid of Gaspar before the end. Gaspar would have understood that. It is NOT, after all, Gods and Mortals. That being said, it really doesn’t make a difference as clearly Gaspar played the stronger, more strategic game.
So my vote goes to Gaspar, but I do love me some Pie.
Vote 5:
Gaspar: He fought the good fight. And if Pie wants us to vote that way, even more of a reason!
Vote 6:
“Hey… Hey don’t you walk away from me! You don’t know who you’re dealing with! Don’t ever tell me what I can’t do, ever! This is destiny, this is destiny… This is my destiny! I’m supposed to do this, dammit! Don’t tell me what I can’t do! Don’t tell me what I can’t do! ”
Get up out of that wheelchair and claim your victory, John. I never doubted you.
Vote Gaspar Fopsworth Von Belsig
Vote 7:
Gaspar
Vote 8:
Rules were meant to be broken anyway. Well played and well deserved Gaspar.
Vote 9:
My vote is for Gaspar. Amazing quiz skills- damn you! (as I raise my arm and shake my little sandwich fist in outrage…….several minutes later, I sigh and shake my head.) Damn. Amazing game amigo.
Second place in Spookymilk Survivor XIV is: Eats A Lot Of Pie- CHRISTINA “PROM DATE” PEPPER.
And your winner of Spookymilk Survivor XIV is GASPAR FOPSWORTH VON BELSIG aka DAN “THE PROFESSIONAL” KAUTZ.
Pie played a fantastic game, not just for a rookie, but for anyone. Several times throughout the game she indicated to me that she felt lost. My response was always the same: You’re doing just fine, trust your instincts. Sure enough, those instincts led her to the end.
As for DK? Funny story: it was like pulling teeth to get Dan to play this game. Then, he hated the chat site so much he flirted with quitting (and may have, technically, at one point?). Then, he played one of the best all-around games I can imagine. He won challenges and had fantastic mini-game strategy. He put together incredibly strong alliances. He pitted threats against each other. The “best player never to win” has finally won. Congratulations, DK.
Here’s the link to the longest game’s longest game notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XVhhVJ8tTzKspTeAAbs-w6rag_YtpmBue4dJGnZtQM8/edit?usp=sharing
Casa de Leche 
24 comments
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March 25, 2014 at 10:12 pm
christinapepper
This game is done,
I cannot lie!
And DK won!
He’s quite a guy!
Survivor!
Survivor!
Yayyyyyyyyy Survivor!
March 25, 2014 at 10:51 pm
nibbish
I’ve missed this.
March 25, 2014 at 10:40 pm
adobery
Congrats, sir.
March 25, 2014 at 10:43 pm
spookymilk
Top-shelf Survivorshipping, DK. Now there’s an opening in the “best player never to win” position here at the Casa. Hmm.
Uh-oh. Now I have a lot of spreadsheet-updating to do.
March 25, 2014 at 10:59 pm
nibbish
Congrats, DK! I was literally cheering out loud when you won the final challenge.
March 26, 2014 at 10:10 am
dkautz
Dude. DUDE. We’re having a big winner party next time the Official Band of the DK-nibbish Alliance rolls into this state! Brooks can come 18 times. Matt can come, but only in Frozen Novak Head form (he doesn’t like that band anyway).
March 26, 2014 at 10:53 am
mbnovak
I don’t dislike them, I just don’t love them the way you guys do.
March 25, 2014 at 11:20 pm
Beau
Does this erase the pain of Greek’s non-sub?
March 26, 2014 at 9:58 am
dkautz
I think so. I’ll always think of what might’ve been, since I was so close there, but writing’s less my thing than reading (and, I guess, strategy) anyway, so this is sweeter.
March 25, 2014 at 11:37 pm
Can of Corn
Ho – lee – crap what a finish! WELL DONE DK!
March 26, 2014 at 10:01 am
dkautz
Dude, thanks! Seems I owe you an apology – you got framed up pretty good for what we were sure was your vote against me. That means I actually did break our deal first. I thought everything you said after that vote was a lie, so I wanted you out bad. If that hadn’t happened like that (which is to say, if I had still somehow been in the game instead of Math and yet that extra vote wasn’t hanging out there) I certainly might’ve actually gone after Humberto first. I guess I can’t complain too much, but I owe you a beer sometime for breaking that deal at least!
March 26, 2014 at 12:54 am
todahshy
Very happy to see DK/Gaspar win. I really loved the old Synergy team and I was so glad to see two of us make it to the end.
March 26, 2014 at 10:07 am
dkautz
Thank you! That means a lot. I loved our team too and it killed me that we couldn’t keep it together for at least a while after the merge. My own perspective is (apart from what anyone else involved might have wanted), I definitely intended you to fill Mitosis’ slot in the old Nucleus and I wanted to go very far in the game with you. Of course, I had absolutely no idea you were you, so that probably wouldn’t have worked out well for me in the end!
March 26, 2014 at 11:39 am
todahshy
I was a big Gaspar fan in the game and then when I got voted out and saw you were Gaspar you had my rooting interest 100%. Especially since Brooks broke my heart as usual in these games 😦
But I still love him!
March 26, 2014 at 12:28 pm
daneekasghost
In my defense, I’ve never known that it was you.
March 26, 2014 at 12:13 pm
nibbish
I enjoyed our alliance a lot and had hoped that it would go for a lot longer than it ended up.
March 26, 2014 at 1:14 am
kg2005
Congrats DK, and game well modded, Novak.
March 26, 2014 at 9:50 am
dkautz
Wow. I still can’t think of much to say other than it was a total blast, and thank you so much to all the players, especially Pie, and Novak for making it such. I don’t know what to say about the game off the top of my head that I didn’t already deal with in my expansively long jury answers, but if anybody has questions or wants to berate for one of the myriad offenses I committed against you, you probably know my email. It has my first and last names and a dot in it. And we can talk about stuff here, of course, if you prod me, and hopefully in a podcast soon.
I do think I ought to stick up for Pie sticking with me at the end. It’s obviously also self-serving, since it was good for me, but I think voting with me at final four was her best way to get to the end. At least looking in retrospect at the final challenge (and based on history, it would’ve been reasonable to expect that to be the final challenge beforehand) if Cutty was there instead of me, all due respect to the guy, but he probably wouldn’t have done quite as amazing as Humberto did. So then, Humberto can speak for herself, but I’ll hazard the guess that she would’ve picked Cutty to go to the finals over Pie. If Pie had turned on me earlier, same problem: she’d most likely have ended up in a situation where she’d be out next while Emile and Humberto either stick together or fight over who takes Cutty to the end.
Survivor has seen several examples (Gervase this last season, for anyone who knows what I’m talking about, is a perfect one) of players who play really great games that happen to get them to a position where their biggest threat to winning is also their best bet to get to the end. If they don’t take that threat out, they probably won’t win, but if they do, they probably won’t make the finals, and you can’t win if you don’t get there. Another of the many tough, and wonderful, things about Survivor.
March 26, 2014 at 10:24 am
christinapepper
Aw, DK, we pretty much share a brain at this point! I was thinking the exact same thing that if I’d voted you out Humberto would have undoubtedly won the final challenge and taken Cutty along. Although I did to a bit of work to try to make Humberto like me a little extra toward the end of the Zookeeper challenge to distract her from how hard I was working to try to overtake her.
So, Humberto, please tell us what you would’ve done!
March 26, 2014 at 11:08 am
spookymilk
This is kind of the answer I was hoping to see you give to the jury, Pepper.
March 26, 2014 at 11:03 pm
mmmmhumberto
Pie-
I would have been seriously tempted to take you to the final two with me-mostly because I enjoyed playing with you and had an extreme dislike for Cutty.
Ultimately though, I would have taken Cutty. It’s the smarter move, especially considering the cutthroat strategy I employed in the game. I believe you played a stronger game than Cutty, you were certainly better liked than Cutty (and myself), and you had burned less bridges, making it all the more likely that you’d win over the jury. And Cutty- he’s a head case, so who knows what outrageous things he’d say or even if he’d show up 😉
March 26, 2014 at 1:34 pm
AMR
Because I’ve been prodded, I’ll share the why of Glitter’s minority vote.
This was not a vote to be daft and funny It was a vote for Eatsy.
During game play, Pie seemed alternately lost and lucky to me, blowing in the wind and buoyed by fortunate connections and never doing anything obviously wrong. I would have never pegged her as a threat or any degree of a schemer. Then I learned that she organized Synergy’s demise via Cutty while keeping herself completely out of the target of anyone.
From the sounds of everyone else, Glitter may have been the only person that Gaspy was dismissive to. When I picked him as the Synergist to vote against, that was why. He never tried to even feign inclusion of Glitter in his plans, and he rarely communicated directly to Glitter towards strategy, particularly after the merge. Someone in the Ponderosa said something about winners needing to manage the feelings of those ousted into the jury, and Gaspar left Glitter feeling very cold.
I just scanned the game notes and it sounds like Gidge might have poisoned that well. How could you, Gidge?
Plus, he was lucky that Eatsy’s planning with Cutty didn’t spike him earlier.
One of the big things against Eatsy in the Ponderosa was picking Gaspar over Cutty in the 4-down-to-3 vote. I totally get that she picked someone she could trust to get her into the final two. And that was at least correct post hoc. Not to say whether Cutty or Humby would have taken her to the final as well.
If anything caused me pause about the vote is was Eatsy’s own statement that Gaspy deserved to win. I thought that was some unnecessarily modest self-deprecation. I disregarded it as thus and so decided to counter that a small statement with the vote, delivered in character.
Please direct any further questions about this vote here or to my personal email address.
March 26, 2014 at 7:33 pm
daneekasghost
To Mod Novak:
Thanks for running this game. For all the hilarious jokes about how long it went, your enthusiasm never flagged, and you came up with some really good challenges. I think this game certainly had your stamp on it (particularly in the types of challenges chosen) and that was generally a good thing.
I had fun playing and hanging out in the jury room, so in that sense it was a great success. Thanks again for doing it and putting up with all of us.
March 26, 2014 at 8:19 pm
nettebarr
I second that. Thanks very much. Considering you have a job and a million family members, I don’t know when you got to sleep.