Championship Strategies
 

After our last competition, I started watching for what strategies are going to end up winning on Einstein.
I am still not sure if a full offensive alliance is the way to go. To you go with a cycle robot, a level three climb and dumper, and a full court shooter on one alliance. Or do you go with two robots that can climb and a defensive robot that can still get their auto points.
I am not sure whats going to happen at champs and if defense is going to be a big factor, but what ever happens i think we will all be in for a surprise with what that third pick will end up being for the World Champion Alliance.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I wouldn't be surprised to see both types of alliances on Einstien. Now which one would prevail, is anyones guess. Maybe we will see a preview of it at the MAR championship and MSC this weekend.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I agree, these will be great areas to watch strategies unfold. Both in the finals as well as qualifications. I am personally leaning towards a FCS as well as a good ground pickup with a cycle bot on the side. Use the cycle bot to either score more points or to block for the FCS. If one is fast enough to climb/dumb could work as well more for defense until end. Only a few teams (1114 and such) could overcome these strategies.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I think it will be a perfected 7 disk autonomous ground pickup shooter that can climb to 30 and score the colored disks picks seeds first then picks a accurate hybrid full court shooter/pyramid shooter with a powerful drive train. The third pick will be the most important. A defense robot that can push to protect the full court shooter and also have a 84 inch blocker.

In this game any robot that has a tendency to tip will be taken out with a big hit.

It will be a shoot out with the most accurate shooters winning and no Frisbee's left on the floor at the buzzer.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

Um, where is this robot you're speaking of? I'm assuming we would've heard about them by now;) I do agree with all the strategies you stated, but having three robots on one alliance who can do all these things will be difficult.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I don't think that your first seed exists. Or rather, I hope it doesn't exist outside my nightmares. I think that a more reasonable option is if the first seed doesn't dump (ie 254) or possibly only has a 10 point climb, and the first pick is another floor pickup robot who can do centerline disks and is effective at cycling. The 3rd robot could be a tall full court shooter, which could also defend depending on the situation.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

1918 is close, does 5 and climbs for 30pts with a dump.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

The day that Overkill goes back to a 10 point climber is the day I stop watching American regionals to see climbers.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

We've been in finals at 3 regionals as a 2nd pick defensive robot and coached a rookie team through finals as a 2nd pick defensive robot at a fourth regional this year. This will be our first trip to champs, and we've messed with different kinds of blockers, but I can tell you the best way to block shots is to never let the full-court shooter get to the feed station in the first place ;)

We were hoping to show up to champs as a solid defensive robot and hoping for the best, but we've been told repeatedly by people we respect that without an autonomous that's at least double-digits, we shouldn't expect to play past quals. Our good friends at 4063 were gracious enough to help us get a shooter going for St. Louis, so hopefully, we'll be able to show well at the end of the month with a 3 disc autonomous and our defensive play. We're really looking forward to finding out just how good our defense is on this level of play, as well as seeing how far smart defense can get us.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

Our team has done 3 tournaments.
If i had the chance to choose 1 alliance partner first from any division, I'd take 1114 in a heartbeat.
And there are many reasons why to do so despite the lack of a ground intake.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I don't think your first seed exists,
-987 has 7 shot auto, ground pick up, but only a 10 point climb and no dump

-254 will probably have a 7 shot auto, has ground pick up, a 30 point climb, but no dump

-1986 has a 7 shot auto, ground pick up, 30 point climb, but again no dump

-2056 will probably have a 7 shot auto, has ground pick up, but only a 10 point climb and no dump

-1114 has no ground pick up, 3 shot auto, but they have a 30 point climb and dump for 20

-118 has a 7 shot auto, ground pick up, 30 point climb, but no dump

I would bet your first seed would be a robot like one of these, they're alliance will then go one of two ways, full court shooter + ground-pick up to score missed disks, or a feeder station bot (e.g. 1114) and a ground pick-up to score missed shots, the 3 rd robot will completely depend on which of several strategic roles they want such as straight up defense, or a 50 point climb/dumper.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

Sorry, worded that badly. What I meant to say was either a robot like overkill that has the additional 30pt climb or maybe one with just a 10pt climb.

I could watch that robot climb over and over again and it will never get old.:)

Re: Championship Strategies
 

118 only had a 10 pt climb at each of their regionals.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

The robot that will come close to doing everything is 842.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I believe that successful alliances will consist of (1 picking 2 or 2 picking 1 will really depend on the scheduling gods):
1. Alliance Captain/First pick
- Ground Pickup
- 10 point climb (30 for a very very select few)

2. First pick/ Alliance captain
- lap bot (ground pickup a bonus but not required)
- 10 or 30 point climb (30 for a select few)

3. Second Pick
- Defense Bot
- Powerful drivetrain with defensive wall
- Consistent auto and 10 point hang

I think that after auton all of the offensive scoring will be done through laps, as the shot percentage by champs elimination will be close to 90%. Floor pickup and full court shooting will become largely irrelevant due to this fact as well as defensive pressure, however, there will be at least one alliance that will try using 2 full court shooters.
Whatever the alliances, good luck to all teams!

Re: Championship Strategies
 

Haha. We're working on it. No guarantees yet though. We might be able to get a 7 or 5 disk working in a week though. ;)

Re: Championship Strategies
 

While I think defensive robots are useful at the regional level, I doubt that they are going to be useful enough at champs to be worth considering. I think if a defensive robot makes it onto Einstein it's going to need be effective against cycle shooters as well. The alliances are probably going to be composed of two cycle shooters and a full court.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

That doesn't mean that they can't climb for 30 though, there's a lot of teams that will be doing things at champs that we haven't seen yet.

This is exactly what I was thinking, I would bet that most of the alliances if not all of them will have one feeder station bot doing laps and one ground pick-up.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

Challenge accepted ;)

We've found a few tricks for slowing down 2 opposing pyramid cyclers...on one occasion helping to upset an alliance that had two awesome teams that are on the FRC Top 25. In the two regionals we've won this year we were allied with a pyramid cycler, a full court shooter, and us playing defense. I think that would be our ideal combo, but I'm curious to see the dynamics of other combinations as well.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

A little story:

A few years ago (2006), there was a bet between a mentor of 1114 and a mentor of 148 (or was JVN still on 229?). The bet regarded the makeup of the Einstein winner--3x offense, or 2x offense and 1x defense (with defense defined as scoring under 10 points, I think per match but it's been a while).

JVN went offense, and after the "defender" scored the fourth shot in the Aim High high goal, collected. Now, in spirit, he did not win--the defender did spend a lot of the time playing defense--but under the terms of the bet, he won fair and square, with the entire CD community as a witness.

All that to say: There will be defenders on Einstein. I will guarantee that. However, I will NEVER be so oblivious as to say that defense is all they do; they WILL score points in their own right, and quite a few of them. The defense may be opportunistic rather than strategized, and may be even more effective that way. A defensive robot on Einstein will always be able to rack up points if called on to do so, unless the game is best played with a purely defensive robot on the alliance.

Re: Championship Strategies
 

I think that a lot of people are jumping to the defensive bot thinking way too quickly. Every year since I can remember the winning alliance has consisted of 2 powerhouse scorers and one very niche robot that didn't develop its goal until the championships. This robot also always happens to be at least a regional powerhouse that by some miracle falls through the alliance selections to the 21-24th pick.

I think that the championships will be the alliance that builds a brilliant game plan and executes it. The best robots don't win, the best alliances do. For instance, this year you can't exactly take scoring objects from your opponents (16, 4334 last year), but you can still manage them in unique ways, floor pickup defensive robot that steals the other alliances misses and shoots them over for another floor pickup to use maybe? I think that as always Einstein will be won on the alliance selection field, if the teams out there let that niche team fall to the late second round and get picked up by the high scoring duo that's looking for them then it's game over. As to what that strategy may be I have some ideas.

*All alliances must have at least one robot capable of a 7 disc auto*

1. FCS
2. Cycle
3. Floor pickup defensive
The third pick is the rarest and luckiest to get, for the first minute the cylcer and the FCS pound away at the 3 point goal until they run out of frisbees, the cycler or the FCS then must have a full court shooter and proceed to clean up all the misses with the defensive floor pickup, while the other rushes to play defense on the other alliance.

1. Cycle
2. Cycle
3. Cycle
It's crazy, but if one of those has a 7 disc auto and another a 30 point climb and dump, it wouldn't be hard to imagine this alliance draining a feeder station and putting up scores over 200 every time they hit the field.

I still expect a niche to develop at championship that we have yet to see, but if past years are any indication, I wouldn't be surprised if Spam-Filter climbers are that niche, tall enough to block an FCS, a decent driver, a 30 point climb, a good auto, and that's one deadly 3rd pick for a high ranked team, because every alliance will need a way to deal with FCS's, I don't expect some of the more high profile robots of that genre (148, 180, 67, 469, etc.) to be missing much of the 3 pointers by the time Saturday afternoon rolls around.