[Gdeaver]

Many of you may have watched Some of the Philly regional. I have to say it was a weird one compared to the others I watched. There was some very effective defensive strategy unleashed by many teams. We were on both sides of it. We were defend and bashed severely and we also adopted a defensive strategy in some elimination rounds. We had our claw sheared off. Luckily a small piece of metal stopped it from detaching on to the field and getting a penalty. Several times we took sever impacts that messed up our mini bot so we could not deploy. On Friday early on I was at the field level and saw a robot come out of Auto, fly across the field and smash an opposing teams robot head on. The robot was launched back about 18 to 20" and was air borne. Their arm thrashed around at a sever angle. They were not effective the rest of the match. Think of the impact load and G forces that robot endured. The problem is this happens all day and the effects are cumulative. Drive trains get loose and sloppy. The arm or lift gets sloppy or binds and then a robot that was 100% hanging a ubertube now is marginal. The human players are smarter and do not flood the field with tubes. So when one does come out its a sprint to get to it. Even if you get to it first, is you grabber strong enough to pull it out of the grasp of the opposition that just grabbed on too? If you win the fight for the tube, there is another robot between you and the rack. With today's robots you can not plow through them, It's a jog and dance to get by them to put a tube up with a worn robot. Elapsed time - allot. Then It's back through the defender to do it all over again. The result is low tube hanging scores. The end game has also matured and defense is very effective. Putting allot of tubes around a post works and blocking that supper fast mini bot is critical. Being able to align and deploy in your protected zone can really help. Of course defense also carries the risk of penalties. Yellow and red cards can destroy your chances. I saw allot of teams that were very smart at defense and new how to push it and at the same time avoid going too far and get penalties. Yes a team can play offense and defense in the same match. When your coming out after hanging a tube take a second and whack that defender so your alliance partner can get threw with a tube. Defense is fun. That offensive team is totally focused on getting a tube. They never see you lining them up and coming. One good whack and they are thrown off their game. Then go hit another bot. Come back and whack them again. He, He defense is fun. Yes, defense changes the game. Our first regional was offensive and we did not do well. We are not the best offensive team. Our minibot and deployment is OK but not supper fast. We can hang ubertubes but not 100%. We are very agile with swerve drive. Our robot, arm and grabber proved to be very durable and could be fixed fast. Our alliance partners also were on the same page, adaptive and executed very well. In the end our alliance adapted and executed superbly to over come one crisis after another. We won by surviving attrition. Defense changes the game. Yes, Philly was weird. Going forward can your team deal with heavy defensive strategies?