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This discussion isn't really Edgic, but it is interesting as far as the dynamic of the worth of Russell's strategy versus the worth of Natalie's. This dynamic has existed for a long time.

S1 - Richard over Kelly. Richard clearly was the strategist here, and while he exuded an air of arrogance, he did not rub his "superiority" in the faces of the jury in the manner that Russell did. Kelly, meanwhile, tried to have her cake and eat it too, relying on the alliance to take out the competition while she distanced herself down the stretch. The problem was that she didn't really come off as authentic and angered her former allies in the process. Richard managed to get Kelly to do his dirty work in removing Sue and Rudy down the stretch, and thus he only needed one Pagong to reward his play over hers, namely Greg's. Note though that it still was a close vote.

S2 - Tina over Colby. Tina definitely had the edge over Colby in forming personal relationships. Colby may have thought his own dominance over the physical aspect of the game would give him the edge at the end (and it almost did), but at least some on the jury recognized that Tina had outmaneuvered him strategically by getting him to bring her along. There's definitely a parallel to the Russell/Natalie relationship there.

S3 - Ethan over Kim J. Neither were particularly dominant strategically - Lex was the perceived strategist. Ethan was better liked and seen as more deserving.

S4 - Vecepia over Neleh. The parallels are constrained with this twosome. The best I can come up with is that the Rotus felt they had dragged along Neleh for the first half of the game only for her to turn on them. While Neleh seemed like a sweet young girl, there was evidence that her personality grated on a number of players that season, especially when they could label her as a hypocrite - rightly or wrongly.

S5 - Brian over Clay. Russell was basically playing Brian's game without the smoothness. Natalie was playing Clay's with a better social game. The difference? Brian hid his antisocial tendencies until after the game, and Clay alienated one juror too many (namely Jake). Again, the vote was surprisingly close.

S6 - Jenna over Matt. Obviously, Jenna and Matt were never closely aligned, and she snuck into the final by winning immunity twice. The real parallel is in the relationship between Rob and Matt. Rob, like Russell, underestimated Matt, thinking he was using him when all along, the using went both ways. Rob never saw Matt's final manuever, tanking the final IC, coming. Of course, Matt severely underplayed the social aspect, unlike Natalie. In some respects, that was unavoidable, since Rob, unlike Russell, was looking ahead to position in front of the jury and was using Matt precisely because he did not have strong personal ties to anyone else. Matt understood this and realized his best chance was underplaying his threat, but he was not well positioned to face Jenna in the finals.

S7 - Sandra over Lillian. Lillian actually played a pretty decent strategic game (once she got her second chance), knowing when to dump Rupert and then when to turn the tables on Burton. But her social game was terrible - on the level of Shambo. No one wanted to award her the money.

S8 - Amber over Rob M. The parallel here is obvious though no one would suggest that Natalie fell for Russell during the game. In some respects, however, Russell poisoned the jury much more needlessly than Rob did. Rob had pre-existing relationships with the other players that exacerbated his actions over the course of the game, making it much harder to separate the game from real life. Rob tried to be nice to people's faces, but he couldn't prevent them from feeling deeply betrayed. Russell just never bothered to be nice at all. To be fair, I think Natalie was able to play a much fuller social game than Amber did since Amber was much more closely tied to Rob than Natalie seemed to be with Russell.

S9 - Chris over Twila. Letting Chris get to the end was a mistake on its face, but Twila's real problem was a lack of good relationships with the jury. Her contentious jury session didn't help matters.

S10 - Tom over Katie. Hey, Katie played the tagalong strategy, just like Natalie. How come it didn't work for her? Well, the obvious thing is that Katie neglected the social game badly. She stuck to her clique and set her sights on being dragged to the end as a non-threat. That left her nothing to argue at the end. Sure, her arguments sounded similar to Natalie's, but there was no substance behind them because she had given no one any reason to vote for her over Tom. Tom was disliked by some, but respected by all. Nobody particularly liked Katie, at least not more than Tom, and she hadn't garnered much if any respect.

S11 - Danni over Stephenie. Danni worked the social game so much so that the ruling alliance actually cut out their own to allow her to stay in the game longer. Then it bit them in the rear. Stephenie was also not a particularly good social player, making enemies pretty much all the way to the end. If Rafe had managed to oust Danni at F3, he likely would have taken advantage with his superior relationships (though his were somewhat shaky as well).

S12 - Aras over Danielle. The strategy of Casaya was diffuse, but the lead strategist probably turned out to be Cirie, who didn't make the end. (Else, we may have ended up with Tina/Colby redux.) But Danielle clearly had not built up goodwill amongst her fellow players, not even as much as Aras, who wasn't perfect in this regard either, but at least had respect for competing hard against Terry throughout the game.

S13 - Yul over Ozzy and Becky. First, poor Becky was a victim of perceptions, not to mention the disastrous F4 tiebreak. She was more or less an equal partner with Yul throughout the game, but it wasn't perceived that way. That's in some respect her own fault though. The three way dynamic also hurt her because any votes she received would have benefited Ozzy most, reducing the likelihood that she would receive any. Ozzy did make good relationships, even with those being voted out of the game, but Yul never conceded the social game the way that Russell did, and he won just enough votes to eke out the victory.

S14 - Earl over Cassandra and Dreamz. Dreamz was about as bad a social player as Russell, and he clearly was not perceived as a strategic genius either so it is not really surprising he was not a factor. The closer parallel may be between Earl and Cassandra, but Cassandra did not do a good job of building relationships like Natalie did. She was not respected, and she couldn't have expected the jury to vote against Earl the way they did against Russell. To her credit, she did try a coup at F6 that failed when Yau Man played his idol. Without that success, she was left in a position where she couldn't out-"nice" Earl, and she had nothing else to fall back on.

S15 - Todd over Courtney and Amanda. This is another season held up as a parallel to the current one, but Todd was not nearly as abrasive as Russell, and Amanda was no Natalie. (Courtney, of course, didn't bother to make many friends and didn't seem to care where she finished. No wonder she didn't win, but she did receive a few protest votes.) Amanda played lip service to the social game, telling everyone how sorry she was to have to vote them off, but none of it came off as genuine. Without real relationships with the jurors, she had nothing to distinguish herself from Todd, who had taken the outward charge of strategy and handled himself much better in the jury phase. Even so, Todd didn't dominate the vote, which is evidence that the heavily strategic backstabbing game has its disadvantages. If Natalie was in the Amanda role, would she have beaten Todd? It is a good question - I bet it would have been close, but then again Todd didn't sabotage himself in the way that Russell did.

S16 - Parvati over Amanda. OK, Amanda did a better job this time around, but it still wasn't good enough. She obviously made a real relationship with Ozzy, and she already had one with James thanks to the prior season. Still, she clearly didn't make many friends beyond that, including amongst people who didn't really like Parvati either. Another poor jury performance left her relying on the goodwill of the jurors, and she just didn't have enough of it, especially when Parvati could point to some big strategic moves and had friendships among certain jurors.

S17 - Bob over Susie and Sugar. This season would have a lot more relevance had Bob somehow made it to the end with Corinne and Randy. Still, people on his original tribe liked Bob, at least to some extent, and obviously Sugar did too. Once he made the final, there wasn't any real doubt he would win despite having very little he could point to strategically. The best strategic players had overplayed their hands earlier in the game and gotten themselves voted out, leaving the game in the control of Sugar. While there is no denying that Sugar made the biggest moves down the stretch, they were of questionable worth, and they made a lot of enemies. And it is clear that she was not a great social player given that most of the rest of the cast despised her even before she betrayed them. Susie's betrayal of Kota probably doomed her in front of the jury (though she would never have made the jury sticking with them), but although she tried to be friendly to all, her personality was annoying to many, limiting the effectiveness of her social game. Even so, she was seen as the least bad option for the former Fangs and made things close.

S18 - J. T. over Stephen. Stephen clearly took the strategic lead, but he couldn't differentiate his decisions from those of J. T., and people just liked him better, especially after Stephen imploded in front of the jury. The social game was a huge factor in J. T.'s win, and it obviously helped both J. T. and Stephen after the merge when everyone preferred to work with the underdogs than with their own tribemates.