unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Now that the 2014 robotics season has come to an end. Many people like me, may be looking back at match videos reminiscing at the good times we had.
Our team has played in a whopping 65 matches, therefore we have been apart of nearly 65 different strategies (no one strategy is the same.)Knowing that there have been 10665 total matches played im sure there have been ALOT of strategies deployed.

at our most recent offseason event, (battle cry) we were the 19th alliance (716,181,2468) going against the number 2 Alliance, of (125,195,1474) if you are familiar with the number two alliance robots' then you know that they are a regional winning alliance for sure.
During our discussion of strategy our alliance partner came up with doing a one assist cycle and stopping them on defense with the other two robots.
I was skeptical at first, as the 2 alliance is capable of putting up big point quickly, but we were down one and had to try something so I said "lets do it"
To my surprise it worked, 181 would in-bound/truss/ score in the top all by itself. while 2648 and 716 would play the defense roll. At the end of the match we won 95-90 with the foul points subtracted (there was a total of three technical foul 1 on our alliance two on opponents alliance):yikes:
we came back with the same approach in quarter final 3-3 and took that match by 20 points with a Tec foul against us. They were brutal matches to say the least but it surprised me to see this strategy worked.


What other UNIQUE strategies have you used??

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Defense... See attached. That's the result of that defense on a cable that is buried deep inside our robot. Imagine that, breaking your opponents via burying a claw deep inside their bot is a winning strategy

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Which is why I think the large amounts of technical fouls were called in those matches... I think you're going a bit far by implying that the strategy that the other alliance used was to break your alliances robots. Things break when defense is played... Fouls are called

Back on subject, I think that one of the most effective things I saw was the "pass back" to a human player but bouncing the ball off a robot, or throwing it into a robot and having the robot spit it right back out.

Another team effectively set up the equivalent of a "full court shot" for this years game by inbounding straight to a truss shot that would land near the far wall every time. Freed up the last robot to always play defense.

As for the strategy you guys used, I think that the number of offensive versus defensive robots each side chose to use in a match was almost like a Rock Paper Scissors game. The team with the lower chance of winning needs to switch things up because head to head, they wouldn't stand a chance. I saw a match earlier in the season with an autonomous mode followed by a 3 man defense for the win. All depends on the situation

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

This happened at battlecry? I must have missed it. Ouch. How does that even happen? We had a match in quals early on where our air dump valve was hit during a match, dumping all air, and rendering our shooter and intake useless. This year is a tough year from a defense perspective.


I think one of the best strategies I've seen all year is using the human player to quickly pass the ball between alliance robots. At Champs, certain teams would intake the ball and then quickly spit it back out to the human player so they could then inboud it to another robot and pick up a quicker assist.

I don't recall the particular alliance at the moment, but at champs one alliance was inbounding, then quickly shooting cross field to their other human player to get around defense and using the other human player to get the ball into their alliance partner's robot to pick up the assist and score.

It was extrmely effective and enjoyable to watch.

Edit: Chinmay beat me to it. That "pass back" strategy was awesome. And Just for the record, I agree with them whole heartedly about choosing your words wisely.

I do not believe any damage was due to malice intent. Esp at BattleCry. BattleCry is one of the friendliest events I have the privelege to attend with some of the most gracious and world-class teams around. I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124547&highlight=how+viable+is+fu ll+court

I think full court assisting proved to be very effective. Team 900 and many other teams did very well with the strategy. A long shot to the human player shortened cycle times, was extremely difficult to defend and worked with any combination of alliance partners. At the Minnesota State Championship all 4607 did throughout the entire event was FCA to the human player and we ended up captaining the #2 alliance to the Finals.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I heard that isolating your opponents ball works great too.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Yeah, in our first match at CMP our kill-switch got hit by one of 5291's protrusions. We put some lexan on that face of the robot after that.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

We knew we were screwed for our last couple of quals matches at Palmetto this year, so on Friday night, I was tossing around strategies with some of the other mentors and students. We came up with this strategy that we call "the magic school bus", which was a formation where the three robots surrounded the ball, and just kept in formation while running down the field, gathering the 3 assists, and finally scoring it. We thought it would be stupid and crazy enough to work.

Crappy visualization:

R1 0 R2
... R3

Basically, inbound it so the ball lands in the middle of this robot cluster, R3 pushes the ball against the wall for the first assisst, then the formation moves the length of the field, with R2 pushing the ball, and at the final zone, R1 would pick the ball up and score.

The strategy never came to fruition, and I don't remember why, but I think everyone's minds would've been blown at the event if we unveiled it on the field.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Brutal is one way to describe those matches... :rolleyes:

One of my favorite strategies I saw being used this year was at CMP in Archimedes. 33 would inbound, truss it to their first HP who would inbound it to 1671. 1671 would shoot it horizontally across the field to their second HP. Finally, the second HP would inbound to 1625 to finish the cycle in the high goal.

Very cool to watch.

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014arc_qm109

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

This was actually done in eliminations in the Curie division, with 573 inbounding and trussing to human player, and then either 1718 or 2451 taking it and shooting across the field to the robot left over. Great strategy, they ended up finalists only losing to the poofs' alliance. I also like the give back to human player strategy utilized by 2590, 1477, and 1625 in Archimedes elims and Einstein.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I guess now that the season is over I may as well reveal the strategy that we wanted to use, but didn't. FYI, we knew it would have taken a really good shooter to execute, and would only work when partnered with a special few robots (probably 2-4 at any given competition). We were going to make sure that we could play the game the "normal" way before we could play it this way.

The prerequisite is a partner robot that can catch and can shoot into either the high or low goal from directly in front of the low goal (obviously high goal is better). They would stay in that position for the entire match. Your robot, which is a tall shooter, would park in the low goal corner on the opposite end of the field, get fed a ball from the HP, pass it full court to your partner robot, and they score it. The 3rd robot would play defense.

10pts truss
10pts catch
10pts 2 assists
1/10pts score
= 31/40pts per cycle

Now, the full court pass may sound crazy, but we were getting well more than 54ft of distance with our flywheel shooter during our robot's early stages (later changes unintentionally decreased that distance dramatically). The real question is whether you can get the accuracy, but I think that a good team could have tuned it enough to be reasonable (I would say you need 66% accuracy for this strategy to be really effective). Game breaking strategy, we just didn't have the capacity to execute it.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Definitely my favorite match from state

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Take a look at how alliance #8 beat #1 in Archimedes Quarters. They almost put up 400 points without fouls.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

we would never deploy a strategy to intentionally damage another robot. playing defense always increases the chance of damage, and that was just a victim of the defense level. it's unfortunate that we won the match with you goes out, but we have all had issues like this.(glad that you made it back out in time for match 3-3) In our semi finals 2-3 we got hit which reset the CRIo and we take preventative measures against this and since I have been on the team it has never happened until that one match. making the loss deficient a lot larger then what it might have been.

we deployed this in the 16th finals and although it only actually happened once it worked great for a real quick three assist cycle. the strategy was to only do it if both robots were available and the opponent was inbounding.

I find this strategy interesting and I really want to try it, unfortunately our robot does not have the distance on its shot to do it but I can see it being very effective.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

[/quote]
I don't even remember what match robot or alliance our air valve was hit in, because it wasn't important, it was no ones fault. We've all been doing this for many year. These things happen. It is not intentional, and I would never even hint that it was.[/quote]

I love battlecry and I agree with you completely. I was just cautioning against making a rush judgement in a "strategy" thread about heavy defense or isolating a ball as intentional/strategic. Read carefully (not your post) and I think you'll see what I'm talking about


There was a robot or team I remember from earlier this season called secret sauce or got sauce or something about sauces (I know I'm making a bit of a fool of myself here but I wanted to remind people about that robot). They posted videos of the full court assists way back in the early weeks and I was amazed at how accurate they could be. I am pretty sure they inbounded and just hucked the ball to their other human player across the truss across the field.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The team was 900 The Zebracorns. They did full court assisting better than anybody.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

That was us. :) The Secret sauce strategy won us the NC regional and got us the creativity award at Archimedes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjSUAmLFnwY

We even added automatic vision targeting for championships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT2OmzrAhPI

We on team 900 love our sauce .. our competition robot was named Hot Sauce and our practice robot was called Not Sauce.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

This was the only elimination match I missed on Archimedes prior to us getting eliminated. I came back to the stands, saw the score briefly and asked a mentor sitting beside me, "Did they really score 390 points against 2056?" His response was, "Yeah, the ball never really touched the ground. It was very impressive."

I'm surprised there weren't more bots that could preform the role 1918 did.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Wow. I didn't know if I was making things up but I remembered both hot sauce and secret sauce and I'm glad it was right :) congrats on a great season! Lots of ppl can learn from that strategy for remaining offseason events

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

yes.

And yes. This was unpenalized as well...after we were penalized for a similar foul in the same match. I'm still shocked the sidecar and the printer cable were able to be replaced in less than 10 minutes.

Its safe to say one alliance was allowed to play defense, and the other wasn't.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

It's funny you should mention that because both strategies were actually things that 1625 and 2451 had a chance to practice in the weeks leading up to worlds. We were lucky enough to have a fun bunch Illinois teams down to our shop to practice several different strategies including the ones mentioned above. Based off our practice we had a pretty good feeling that these strategies would come into play but to what degree we weren't sure. In Archimedes the giveback strategy was utilized by many teams in the qualification rounds. 27 was rocking that strategy almost exclusively in qualification matches and were extremely successful with it(1010 assist points, 8-2 record, 3rd seed). A similar form of that strategy was also used by the Galileo alliance in the semis on Einstein.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

We also discussed (and had plans to utilize if necessary) a no-movement strategy as well. Both 469 and 2848 had full court HP assist shots; 74, 254, and 2848 both had right-back-to-HP cheeky passes (and 2848 had a giant brake pad making them virtually unmoveable); and 469 and 254 could both load and finish from right in front of the low goal. There were a variety of ways we could have made it work.

It would have been a very risky strategy, though. You are basically giving up on playing defense and betting the other alliance that you can out-execute them. As it turned out, we played a murderer's row of tough alliances in Curie and on Einstein and never had a chance to try it (or 469 catching, for that matter).

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The all Illinois team practice we got with you guys definitely factored into our push to run what we came to call the "z" in elims on Curie. Scrimmaging with you guys as well as all of the other teams in attendance was definitely time well spent.

Watching your elimination alliance play on Curie I was actually surprised that you guys weren't utilizing a strategy along the lines of what either 1625/2590/1477 or our alliance were running. Given 469's great inbounding and long trussing ability I was fairly certain we were going to see them inbound and truss over to your HP and then see some robot-HP-robot or HP-robot-robot action for the second and third assists. Instead you stuck to the basics, and I can't imagine you're at all disappointed with the results.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I don't know if it was better than anybody. 203 + 25 would give them a run for their money. (Ignoring, of course, consistency.)
Bit of MAR pride here, look at the last cycle for the blue alliance:

http://www.thebluealliance.com/match/2014mrcmp_qm47

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Our team had a last minute design so we didn't get to do much refining to make it better, but our strategy seemed to do pretty well for the resources and experience we had. We made a robot that is just under 5', and made it open up the full 20 inches on both side and had a sloped net in it. Needless to say it was great to develop strategies with because we could catch easily providing the 3rd assist, and we could block just about any shooter there was just by being in front of them. While catching wouldn't have been the best strategy on einstien for sure, it was still very useful at our regional and we got picked 8th because of it. It was somewhat surprising how in all of our matches we had pretty much the same strategy and that was a 60 point cycle or us playing defense and alliance members scoring. I can only imagine how much better it would've been if our robot did reboot every 20 seconds!

In all reality though, our robot's design coupled with an outstanding 6 CIM drivetrain could've really been a great defender. We were able to really get inside our opponents heads some matches because we wouldn't let them score any missed auto balls and that would throw of their game.

A strategy I really wish we could've used was in the Arkansas elims, we were on the 8th seed alliance and were going against 16, 3937, and 4500. 4500 was not working right, but 16 and 3937 were still a great offensive power. Our alliance chose to try to out score them by running 60 point cycles. What I wish we had done was spend the first 45 seconds of the match making it extremely difficult for the other alliance to score, getting in their heads and making them get frustrated by playing hard defense, then trying to score as much as possible while still slowing down their alliance. Our robot rebooted early in the match, but towards the end we were able to play a little defense on bomb squad and block a last minute truss.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I'll second this. 203 was a really fun robot to play with at MAR Champs. We ran a similar strategy with them in Quals Match 8 (without catching) and it worked very well. 900 may have a little bit of an edge though because they can make it over to the human player, so they don't need to rely on niche catchers or even just robots that can catch well to not have to sacrifice time and ball control by just launching downfield

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

900 also is taller. Their height and shot trajectory is such that they cannot be blocked.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

1718, 2451, and 573 did the same thing on curie. 573 would inbound and truss, 1718 would pick it up and shoot it across the field to a human player, who would load it into 2451 and they would shoot.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

There were a few that could park in the corner, catch the ball from the HP, and score without moving (254, 469, 2771 for example - 2771 was the only one that I saw really using it). Perhaps we were best suited for it since we were tall and didn't have any parts hanging out that could be exploited to interfere with the shot. This wasn't something we specifically designed our robot to do, but we realized it was a capability early on. We never had many opportunities to try it during the season, and it never worked as well as it did with 51 and 2485 - they were the key that made it work.

It was a very interesting strategy, but it had its problems. The fact that we lost in the semi's is proof that it isn't a game lock strategy. As Jared Russell pointed out, it takes one robot out of the defense role and it requires clean execution. Our HP was the one feeding our bot, and it really took a toll on his nerves. A few missed shots into the bot cost us cycle time we coudn't afford to lose. The fact that we were parked in the corner instead of playing defense made it harder for 51 & 2485 to get the ball to the forward HP & easier for our opponents to run their cycle.

In hindsight, I think it would have been possible for us to take a more active role in the match and still be in the corner when we needed to be. We still have the MARC and the WMRI coming up. Perhaps we will get some chances to try it again!

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

You nailed it here. Later after being eliminated, I told Ken Patton that I blew it. Every time you guys left the corner to track down a loose ball, you always made it back to the corner - even when defended. I told Ken that I should've made that strategy adjustment in the semis. I thought about it, but I was too afraid to make the call to do it. All I saw was the 390 and I thought to myself, "if we make that change and lose, then I'll have to live with the 'why did you go away from what worked?' questions." I beat myself up that night about that.

What really kills me is that in both of the semi-final matches that we lost, the opposing alliance missed an auton shot and we had the opportunity to to try to shut them down at the start of the match, but we were too focused on getting the cycle started because "hey, we scored 390 in the first match". In retrospect, putting up a score that high in the first match was probably the worst thing to happen to us. After our first loss in the semis, I should've had us go 2 bot cycles for as long as we could defend them from clearing their missed auton ball to build a little lead before starting the 3-bot cycle. Then I thought, "but we scored 390" and chickened out. Oh well. Then again, the alliance we lost to was really great so there's a good chance we would've lost anyway. Ifs and buts, candy and nuts, and all that stuff. I guess I can't complain.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

But the consequence of that defense was damage that apparently was NOT called as a foul. And we saw some teams intentionally pursue damaging defensive strategies on the chance that they would NOT be called for a foul. So I believe that 125 has a legitimate gripe and 716 shouldn't be extolling its achievement.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

In the Newton final, 971 tried that against our alliance in the first match and they found that they had to give up too much offense and we were still able to put up a cycle. They switched to a more standard strategy in the next match but still lost. The defense had to be truly impenetrable to work.

Of course the introduction of the goalie bots into the elims in the Worlds was the other big innovation. They hadn't been of consequence until then. Getting 254 to miss 2 auton shots in match 2 affected match 3 too.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The issue with long trussing is that you have to get 2 robots possessing in 2 zones after the truss shot, so you have to load in the white and then pass to another in the colored zone. We discussed that strategy but felt the pass in the front court was more vulnerable than the backcourt pass.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

If you watch the video of that match no one was near them when they died so no one knows for sure who caused that damage.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

That cable was fine prior to the match. This means that damage happened during the match. There were two robots with the capability to do that damage. You and 195. 195's arm geometry is incapable of hitting the point where that cable (and the intake motors that also had their leads sheared off) is located. Your claw is capable of it.

If you accept the premise that this damage did not spontaneously appear via divine will, your bot did the damage.

So yes. Your strategy of take advantage of the fact that the refs didn't call the various flagrant fouls you were committing (possession of our ball for the majority of two matches, contact inside perimeter, damaging contact, repeated high speed ramming) works. If the refs had been halfway competent your alliance would have been red carded in match 2 for repeated and strategic possession of the opposing alliances ball.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Except our claw never went down during that match so it was impossible that we could have done that to you guys and even if it was us we had no intentions of causing any harm.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

prior to those matches, not once did we say anything about damaging the opponent, trapping the ball, or ramming. The only thing we said was play good defense. we were not trapping the ball, because we were in motion along the full length of the field, we were just preventing you from getting to the other side of our robot, that's not trapping that defense. the video shows absolutely no evidence of 2648 claw going into your robot. therefore to accuse them of intentionally damaging your robot is ungracious.
Also calling the referees incompetent is very disrespectful, they put in there time to help out at an event. they are the reason we were both able to compete at battle-cry, therefore I am going to say thank you to all the volunteers for putting forth much effort to manage the event.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Hate to join into this, but I felt I had to after that. At our UNH district, Northeaster District, DCMP, Worlds and even Battle Cry, 3467 fell to many penalties like this. Having two-sided pickups are great, but it almost doubles the chance for contact inside the bumper zone. There have been quite a few times where we are either taking a shot which requires one of our arm to be out, or picking up a ball and backing off from defense and another robot has intentionally hit us causing our arm to go inside their bumper zone. Most of the time. we could get out of the situation cleanly, but there were times where our arm caught on pneumatic tubing, surgical tubing, etc, and caused damage to their robot. WE NEVER INITIATED CONTACT, NOR DID WE HAVE INTENTIONS TO HARM THEM. Even when I would try to explain to refs that they had rammed us while we were stationary or that their design is asking for this to happen, most of the time we would loose the fight and end up losing the match. Never once did we intend to cause any damage, and never did saying that get us out of the penalty. 2648 (or whoever for that matter) may not have even caused 125's damage, but saying that it was not intentional will NEVER get you out of the penalty and out you in the clear.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Let's get away from the incidents at Battlecry (use another thread or PM each other please), and continue talking about unique strategies. One that we tried at Battlecry was to try and stop 125, who uses the low goal to line up. Our inbounder 3958 would inbound in front of one low goal and would spit it out to us, and we would quickly truss it to our scorer, and then us and 3958 would each sit in front of the low goals to make 125 shoot away from the box. Unfortunately neither of us could push 125 when they went to shoot in the center of the goals, and 3958 stopped moving halfway through the match, but it was interesting defensive strategy to say the least.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I'm not saying we did or did not deserve a penalty. I'm not a ref so I Don't decide the penalties I just don't want my team blamed for you not getting the penalties that you should or should not have gotten. In the end I am sorry about this situation and I understand why you guys are mad, just please stop putting the blame on my team, Thank you

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

Anyone actually have the videos of the matches? I can't find them in the normal places.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

The NE FIRST livestream page for Battlecry(on my phone so I can't link it) has it kinda... It cuts in and out a lot, unfortunately not showing the "key moments" in this discussion.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

If you drop the quality down it doesn't skip

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I was not there but watched that match over and over. Andrew your teams robot worked perfectly for autonomous and then a ball got stuck after the human player loaded it. At that point 195 put its horns into your robot. Go look again at the video. As for the fouls it was one against us 716 for trapping a ball and two against 195. 2648 did not cause any damage to your robot. The only answer and the video shows it is your own alliance partner caused the damage. Sorry

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

So yes 716 should be proud of its achievement along with 2648 and 181. This alliance was able to shutdown the strongest alliance at BC. (IMO) any one that believes that the damage to 125 was caused purposefully by its opposing alliance needs to have their eyes checked. Go watch the video.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

To get away from the Battlecry debate-

Multiple people have mentioned the 33-1625-1671 match where they ran a somewhat unique strategy.

Their opponents were also trying to do something crazy that match (which unfortunately failed- not that anyone was watching us).

Our alliance of 20-2502-5299 needed to somehow outscore an alliance of those three powerful teams. If you don't know these three robots, both 2502 and 5299 have forklift-style ball pickups. 5299 is a dedicated inbounder.
We assumed 33 would be playing forward and wanted to play constant defense on them. So instead of running the intuitive strategy of Inbounder-Trusser-Forward in some form, we tried something a little different.

2502 would get the ball over the truss to the human player. The human player would put the ball into 20's robot, who would pass it right back (a give-and-go), then the human player would put the ball into the 5299 machine who would score it in the low goal. This would put 20 on constant defense on 33 (in theory).
Unfortunately after one cycle, 5299's forklift broke and they could no longer human load the ball, and multiple missed autonomous balls sealed the match for us. It also didn't help that our opponents had 33 playing the long trusser role instead of the forward.

It was unfortunate, but our alliance needed to try something if we wanted to have a chance of beating that powerful alliance.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

At FLR we were playing an alliance of 341, 1126, and 1405. 1126 had won our previous regional as the #1 seed. 341 had won a district already and our data showed they were among the top 3 finishers at the event. 1405 had been playing fairly solid D. Our alliance partners included 1551, a decent trusser, and 5349, a rookie team who had yet to score points at the event due to technical problems. We (2791) primarily played the role of the truss robot and rarely scored in the high goal at all at that point.

We knew the 341 alliance would have no problems finding three assists, and we knew that no one on our alliance could score in the high goal well enough to go for a rapid 2-assist strategy. I met with 5349 at the practice field to try and figure out ways to squeeze an assist out of them. Their robot was a Boom Done clone and they couldn't spit out of their intake. They ended up showing me a low power shot they could do which basically dropped the ball right behind their robot. That gave me enough confidence to push for a 3 assist cycle. 1551 had a longer truss shot than us and didn't really feel confident in the high goal. We had scored in the high goal a few times that weekend and we were confident we could rebound into the low goal fairly quickly if it came down to it.

Defense was tricky. 1126 was a long range arm shooter and 341 had a deadly point blank shot. We decided to focus mostly on 1126 as they had the more vulnerable pickup and the line drive shot could be spun off course.

When the actual match began, the assist strategy changed a little. FLR refs were very generous with assists (honestly, I preferred the game played this way), so the HP ended up chucking the ball at 5349 and having them bump it once or twice for the first zone assist. 1551 picked up the ball through the scrum and truss it, while 2791 played defense and scored when the opportunity opened up. Even though none of us were doing exactly what we were used to, we managed to hold off 1126 and keep pace with their cycles, scoring twice in the high goal. A last second two assist cycle finish by us ended up sealing the win by less than 10 points.

Not the craziest strategy in the world, but when I looked at the schedule I didn't expect that match to even be close. Winning that match was a great way to start Saturday, and I'd like to think it helped convince 341 that they'd rather play with us than against us. I'll try and get video of this up at some point.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

A unique strategy during F3 at FLR that I thought worked well was executed by teams 1507 and 378. 1507's robot usually shot from right behind the low goal (like many robots this year). When 1507 was under heavy defense, team 378 (who's robot is about the same length as the low goal) would go up against the wall and 1507 would use them to line up instead.

Here's a video of it in action.

Re: unique strategies that worked....... or didn't
 

I remember watching this from the sidelines. At first I was all "2056 will crush, hands down." like everyone else. As the match progressed I was just in pure shock! when the match ended and the scores went up, my jaw dropped to the floor:eek: :ahh: . I looked at one of my teammates and we couldn't believe that someone had just put up that many points right off the bat in elims.