We made two minibots from pieces in the FTC kit of parts, a piece of PVC we already had, one extra motor, and an extra battery. We never had a sub 1 second minibot, nor one that would win every race. But when we DID deploy, we got our minibot to the tower before the 9 second mark, and hit the top every time. We made it up in around 3 seconds, but unless we were rammed during deployment, our minibot went up. Money wise, we only bought the extra battery and motor. The rest was made from the FTC kit of parts. While I think FIRST was encouraging creativity in the minibots, I think they also wanted to see what we would do with the parts we were given, and how we could manipulate that to our advantage.

Personally, I think this year's endgame was alright. Not bad, but not the best I've seen. On the down side, it's the only endgame I know of where an opposing alliance can legally stop you from receiving points. On the up side, it gave teams something new and different to consider when designing their robots, with the whole deployment and rules effecting deployment.