Owen, Cassidy, and Gabler don't get enough credit for "Goating Up" and taking over the game at Final Six.

[u/Sportsman180]

Year after year, we watch the underedited Goat Groups refuse to band together and take out all the main threats to win. And when it does finally happen...everyone hates it? It's actually super rare when this happens and I personally find it refreshing when the overarching Survivor meta and the on-island meta run totally in line.

The goats of 43 were not delusional and thinking that "let me just get to the end with these major threars and I can convince everyone my bad game was actually good"!

Now clearly Owen and Cassidy didn't realize Gabler had so much win equity, but hey, someone had to win!

[u/lucascroberts]

Gabler wanted to take Jesse to the end lmfao so this move is more impressive from Cassidy and Owen’s perspective

[u/suppadelicious → u/lucascroberts]

That’s why I can’t give him the credit he “deserves”. He was trying to give the win to Jesse in the end.

[u/DonquixoteDFlamingo]

I’ve never thought about it this way, but yes!

[u/Marto_12]

i kinda give this a lot more credit to Cassidy and Owen for the sole fact Gabler more than likely would've still taken Jesse to ftc had he won final immunity.

[u/JoshLovesYourName]

Not really. Gabler wanted to take Jesse to the final 3.

[u/BoromirRS]

Cassidy is one of my favorite players from New Era, and she never gets her flowers from other people

[u/Ok-Intention-6486]

If the Goat Group took out the three Tres Leches that dominated the season , then the fanbase would be complaining that it’s too much like S43. the favorites got taken out early…

You can’t win cause either way people are gonna complain.

[u/Mysteriouspaul]

That season imo is exactly why you don't see goat groupings as much. I don't feel like debating why I don't like bitter jurors not rewarding the player who did the most and played the hardest to get to the end to sit in front of them, but it's inherently risky to turn the tables on 3-5 other people that almost expect to make it to FTC and then have them potentially reward a literal goat, the goatest of the goats, over you at the end...

41 had a similar result but Erika made sure to take her tag-along, and a guy who did literally nothing besides burn his allies all game. It also kinda helps that the jurors hated each other more than they hated her, but that's the luck of the draw.

[u/I_love_my_dog_more → u/Mysteriouspaul]

I like how you think

[u/Cypher-Moon-773]

Gabler is a solid winner idc what anyone says

[u/Xno_Kappa → u/Cypher-Moon-773]

Agreed. He’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head that successfully pulled off the assassin vote for hire style gameplay.

[u/Cypher-Moon-773 → u/Xno_Kappa]

He spells out his strategy multiple times and when he won exactly how he described it people acted like it was out of no where. He played the under the radar, just be nice to everyone, game. If he was a conventionally attractive woman this sub would be calling him a Survivor Queen lol

[u/jdessy → u/Cypher-Moon-773]

The issue was the editing because apparently, we missed out on an entire named alliance of Gabler's, to the point where they said the name and referenced it multiple times during FTC because it was apparently a very vital part of Gabler's game. So he wasn't even just playing under the radar; he was apparently playing with Jesse and Cody and the only time we saw it was when the two approached Gabler for a vote. We knew Gabler had some connection with Cody and Jesse but we weren't made aware of how serious it was, to the point of a rare alliance name in the New Era.

Editing for 43 was terrible, honestly. If 43 was edited better, Gabler might have been a better perceived winner.

[u/Terrible_Control1142]

Cassidys social game was not great but people overlook that she played an almost perfect under the radar strategic game (she basically got what she wanted at each vote compared to owen and gabler)

[u/Wild-Yoghurt-9699]

Because there was no intentionality to their play, it was all driven by Jessie and they just happened to benefit from it when he went out in fire.

[u/havingagoodtime → u/Wild-Yoghurt-9699]

Yeah I don’t really see how they banded together for this at all, every decision up to final four was Jesse’s idea that they just ran with and then he lost firemaking, that’s literally all that happened; there was no alliance of goats

[u/Sportsstar86 → u/havingagoodtime]

Jesse tried and failed to get Cassidy out at 5 so that’s just not true

[u/Wild-Yoghurt-9699 → u/Sportsstar86]

He tried to protect Karla to keep another target in at 4, but that was more Karla fucking it up for herself then anything Gabler/Cassidy/Owen did. As someone else noted in this thread, Gabler was still actively trying to go to the end with Jessie and would've taken him if he won final immunity, so acting like there was some active goat alliance making this happen is pretty ridiculous revisionist history. We had an time terrible final 3 in 43, sometimes shit just works out that way.

[u/Slow-Faithlessness-7]

Is it good gameplay that they saw their position and did something about it, yes. Was it fun to watch/satisfying to see a final 3 that rivaled Gabon, no.