[OScubed]

Ok folks - just another little point here which I haven't seen introduced, in defense of FIRST. Reach outside your own team. ANYONE can construct a minibot, and you may deploy a minibot from any team on your robot. If you are constricted by budget - TEAM UP WITH AN FTC Team and make one together. The entire idea of the MiniBot (at least from what I was able to gather) was to increase the awareness of this low-cost robot building competition so that FRC teams could do for FTC what they've done successfully for FLL. Not every high school can afford the FRC program, or find enough mentors - so help start an FTC team or work with an existing one to build your robot. Maybe they have the kids or the funds to build, but not the engineering - team up with them and work together. Or pool money with another team that can't afford the build all by themselves and build one to share. Only 2 teams out of 3 even CAN deploy a bot in any one match. Even if you end up on the same alliance one of the two of you can deploy and the other can hang.