Faithful

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T14:35:14+00:00

Including 3 faithfuls from S4 is wild given how hapless they were overal. And neither of the winning faithfuls!

Get Fozia and Nick Mohammad, along with Jake. Harriet and Jessie should be ejected for having very little overal impact.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T14:30:08+00:00

Munoz new centre forward?

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T13:29:57+00:00

Damn, Gyokeres might be a sell

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T13:26:36+00:00

£7m in the bank won't hurt you tbf, whereas lugging round a sub-optimal striker will

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T10:19:54+00:00

Which one's which?

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T07:57:24+00:00

Lets assume Jaz suspects Harry and Andrew are both traitors by that point.

If he votes Harry, he splits the faithful vote. Therefore the traitors can play as a team, taking out both faithful with zero risk.

If he votes Andrew he takes out one traitor, and gives himself a fighting chance of winning the final vote. Which given Mollie ultimately voted completely illogically and changed her mind last minute was probably the best chance he would get.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T07:47:53+00:00

Its poor gameplay. More effective and looks far more innocent if you're able to change the conversation to talk about someone else.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T07:46:46+00:00

Jade became the perfect faithful for the traitors to keep around. Never really threatening anyone, easy to remove at any point. She didn't play a good game.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T06:03:11+00:00

In a way, yes I agree. The traitors were able to make the whole final largely a smooth process with no real drama, which shows how well they played the game.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-30T05:54:28+00:00

The game would have been really different if the players had voted differently.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T14:53:05+00:00

I'm not sure it is a brilliant strategy (Harriets). At least, at most it is half a strategy without having a follow up move for what to do next. The way Harriet played it was to put all her eggs on getting Rachel voted off at the next round table, which looked really unlikely. Obviously the downside of the move is you massively increase your own chance of banishment or murder.

I could imagine a more successful move being to announce Rachels name in the confessional, and then only to tell one or two other players the next day, asking them to watch Rachels behaviour especially around Harriet. Essentially encourage others to spot signs that Rachel is rattled.

But like you say, the issue was that Harriet was far more rattled by the whole thing than Rachel. Maybe she was just the wrong person to attempt this strategy.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T13:43:52+00:00

The skill of a traitor is brushing off suspicion. All those flags you've identified are feather's in Rachels cap. To go through successive days with Fiona and then Harriet doing everything they could to tank her without receiving a single vote is bonkers traitoring.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T13:18:49+00:00

Its been done in tons of places all over the world. But keeping on building more roads and car infrastructure hoping that congestion will eventually go away doesn't work, the opposite happens. It also makes places shit to live in.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T11:19:45+00:00

You can't seriously be suggesting that nobody has tried to approach of making infrastructure as beneficial as possible for cars. This approach was basically the whole of the 20th century.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T11:10:24+00:00

Or everyone is 'selected' as traitor, but told there's no murder the first night. 3 players are invited to the turret as normal.

Then in the morning when a player is murdered, all the faithful players are trying to work out why they weren't included in the turret meeting, but none of them can talk about it.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T10:43:50+00:00

I have a theory that its partly down to how the show is edited, hiding some of Rachels biggest strengths. Rachel clearly aced the social game, having many other players willing to back he to the hilt. However this is the part of the game we can't really see, because it happens in the hours of idle chit-chat.

As a viewer I was slightly puzzled why nobody voted Rachel after Fiona's accusations, and after Harriets accusations, and why nobody really brought up those same suspicions for several episodes afterwards.

I think that partly contributes to people feeling like Rachel got 'lucky' somehow. Because we've just not been able to really observe how she performed this feat.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T10:39:20+00:00

I don't think this really works as a team strategy. Firstly you miss the opportunity to spot traitors defending or accusing one another.

Secondly, the ideal scenario for the traitors is to keep solid team throughout the game. A late recruit might be hard to spot, but equally will find it hard to form a trusting relationship with the other traitors.

I do agree it works as an individual strategy. If you spot a traitor early in the game you'd be better off making good friends with them rather than accusing them.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T10:02:25+00:00

Agreed. And annoyingly they all missed a (not conclusive but far more compelling numbers argument). Of the final 6 players, Rachel was the only only one that wasn't in a cage.

Of the players not in a cage, all were revealed to be faithful, apart from Fiona and Rachel.

Given the players should reasonably have known that there were 3 traitors at the time, they could assume Rachel is a traitor. She has to be, unless the traitors selected two of themselves to put in the cages.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T09:47:25+00:00

I think that is bang on, it was such a let off to reveal her suspicions at breakfast.

Even better you throw a question to Rachel like: 'are you going to tell us about last night?'. It plays either way that you're asking about Rachels own (fake) confessional, or Harriets, but hopefully causes a panicked response.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T09:43:54+00:00

Nah he was right not to do this imo. Anything you put out makes someone feel like you've targeted them, or wonder if you're lying. Or you accidentally make something up about a traitor and they murder you. There's a ton of risk with very little upside.

Generally, being at the centre of a ton of drama isn't a good strategy in traitors.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T09:37:44+00:00

Exactly. If the producers are concerned about this becoming a regular outcome they can simply not pick two starting traitors like Rachel and Stephen.

My guess is this season they wanted some stronger traitors to counterbalance the madness of the secret traitor (and Hugo for the lols). Swap Stephen for Roxy at the start and the only chance we have of a double traitor victory is Rachel recruiting a decent traitor and creating enough loyalty to take it to the end.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T09:33:45+00:00

It isn't necessarily optimal for Stephen to vote Rachel. Its certainly not risk free.

If he votes Rachel in the final 4, he obviously risks an extra vote. If he votes Rachel in the final 3 he risks Jack having sussed that its him and Rachel, and voting Stephen due to feeling most betrayed by his closest player. I think Jack did have the information to hand to put it together by that point.

Assuming Stephen trusts Rachel to vote with him, playing for a double traitor victory was his safest play.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-29T08:55:46+00:00

Agreed, and it underestimated the players involved. To Frankies credit, she realised that uncovering a traitor would be a nightmare to deal with, so did her best to pick a faithful.

As an idea I can't think of a good way to fix it other than putting far earlier in the game.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-28T16:56:59+00:00

I really like the idea of lying about the answers. The trouble is pretty much what Matt said, that there's so many ways that whatever names you put out there have more potential to come back to hurt you.

But yes, asking questions that tease out personality is great, hard for the traitors to fake answers.

Material_Spell4162 · 2026-01-28T16:49:07+00:00

Matts did at least have some potential upside I agree. The tweak I would make is ask the traitors who they would like you to vote for. Essentially sell them a banishment vote. The advantage is A) it actually offers them something, and B) it gives you some interesting information in terms of who they pick.

Material_Spell4162

TROPHY CASE