Top Ten Best Survivor Tribes

Well, you’ve seen my list of the ten dumbest Survivor tribes and the ten worst tribes. So, it’s about time that I finally get to the ten best tribes in Survivor history (of the writing of this post at least). There are some tribes that went above and beyond the standard for being a good tribe. I’ll be sure to include every tribe that I think was the best and hopefully I didn’t forget to mention any good tribe. Well, I might have intentionally not included some tribes that others think were good. This is a good time to mention the rules that I have.

Rules: #1 I can only pick one tribe from a single season. Would there really be more than one good tribe from the same season? #2 While this is not a requirement per say, I would like to pick tribes that produced the winner of the season. That’s why a tribe like Rotu won’t be on the list. I will make at least one exception. #3 I’m only picking tribes that did well both premerge and postmerge. A tribe like Tagi isn’t on the list because it did poorly premerge. A tribe like Galu isn’t on the list because it did poorly postmerge. #4 Since the merge rule is on the list, I’m also going to include a rule regarding the tribe swap. Makal, for instance, won’t be on the list due to how poorly it was postswap. There might be an exception here and there, but I’ll normally only pick tribes that were good regardless of how they fared before and after a tribe swap. #5 I’m not going to include Moto on the list because it was only good due to a highly unfair twist. Plus, it had two members in the final three, both of which failed to receive a jury vote to win. So I don’t think that it’s much of a difficult choice.

Now that I’ve done all the rules that I can think of, I might as well mention the honorable mentions to this list. I’ll also mention why they weren’t included on the main list. Fei Long was good, but only seemed to work well due to an unfair tribe swap. La Flor was mostly good just because of an age advantage on the other tribe. Ometepe succeeded too well in my mind. They never had to worry about people having an advantage against them. Salani was pretty good, especially after the merge, although it mostly was just good due to how dumb the men that season were. Galang, in my mind, wasn’t good enough out of the ten that I chose. Hunahpu was mostly good, but I believe that I picked better tribes on the list in the end, ones that didn’t make terrible decisions despite their good winning streak. Anyways, on to the actual top ten.

#10 Bikal (Caramoan): I feel that number ten is the best place for it on this list. This tribe of returning players dominated against the tribe of fans. Now some may feel that favorites would trump fans in most scenarios and you’d be right. Hence the fact that it is only number ten. But, I still think that it is one of the best tribes in Survivor history.

#9 Chauy Gahn (Thailand): This is on here due to my tendency to always have the first of something chronologically on my top ten lists. This was the first tribe in my mind to be really good both before and after the merge. While it may have only lasted long due to having the advantage of a fake merge (without which, the tribe would have still probably come out ahead) and it might not have stood out that much beforehand, it is still a good tribe in my mind.

#8 Tandang (Philippines): Here we come across the only of the best tribes on this list that didn’t produce the winner of the season. You see, this tribe still deserves to be on the list because it made the merge without ever having to attend tribal council. While the three tribe format may have helped that come to be, I still feel that this tribe was pretty good in the end.

#7 Chapera (All-Stars): It’s hard to believe that such a tribe of odd characters that had no former winners on it could wind up doing so well in the game. It was somehow the best tribe in the first all returning player season when there were two other tribes against it or just one. It dominated in challenges and was pretty good throughout most of the game.

#6 Escameca (Worlds Apart): There’s a reason that a tribe of all blue collar workers ended up doing well. You see, it wasn’t just strength that made this a great tribe. Most people on this tribe knew how to work well with each other and could dominate the game that way. They worked far better than any other tribe their season at least, and a lot better than most other tribes from other seasons.

#5 Aparri (Cagayan): Sometimes a tribe of strength is all you need while you have other characteristics helping you out along the way. While you can probably think that other tribes could have done good that season, this tribe went over and beyond the status that most good tribes have. They stuck together at all times and typically made good decisions for themselves in the long run.

#4 Kota (Gabon): This might be an exception that I have to the tribe swap rule, although it is hard to make sense of a lot of this season with its many tribe swaps. But I still think that this tribe pretty much dominated the game when it played. It only lost two immunity challenges and produced the winner of the season, so I think that it did pretty well in my book.

#3 Villains (Heroes versus Villains): Considering my known hatred of the Heroes tribe, one can only believe that the Villains tribe would find its way to this list. Well, here it is. Full of wonderful characters and great players, the Villains tribe made you glad that evil was winning. They dominated throughout the game and even knew how to get the heroes to help them along the way. There’s a reason that they all made it to the final four in the end.

#2 Drake (Pearl Islands): I love this tribe a lot, even if throwing a challenge could have winded up costing them the game. For once, the clear dominate premerge tribe managed to actually produce the winner of the season. This was unusual since either the minority tribe would pull out ahead or there wasn’t a clear majority for a while until after the merge. But the point is, this tribe had some of the best players and contestants of a tribe in any season of the show. They were clearly good, but there is one that I think is better.

What do I have mentioned as the best tribe? Some of you may have good guesses, since there’s clearly a great tribe that’s not on the list yet. In my mind, only one tribe can qualify as absolute best and I’m not sure if it can ever be beaten.

#1 Koror (Palau): Pop quiz! Name a Survivor tribe besides Koror that existed for both the premerge and postmerge part of the game. Wait a second. There wasn’t one, was there? This tribe was so dominate that the other tribe just had one single player left when it came time to start the individual part of the game. That’s highly usual. By winning every immunity challenge and negating the need for a merge, I fail to see why any other tribe should be number one.

Well, that’s about all for the blog post. I hope that you liked my list and weren’t offended by any of my choices. Should I have included a tribe like Rotu? I hope that I didn’t miss any good tribes or include any tribes that shouldn’t be on the list. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.