[smistthegreat]

I definitely agree with what seems to be the general consensus here, that teamwork, well, works. This point was definitely highlighted in 2009, as many of the elite teams in the world fell to a well thought out and well executed strategy. The 254 example has already been brought up, but another example of this was when 1507, 121, and 177 (the 5 seed) took down 1625, 234, and 768, the one seed, on our way to winning Newton. The only reason we were able to do that was a very, very well executed strategy carried out by all 3 robots, with a healthy dose of luck. 1625 and 234 were definitely, in my opinion, better robots than us, but we were able to squeak out a win by executing our strategy to perfection. (the no pinning rule helped a bit too).

In my opinion, the lesson learned here is that it is not necessarily the best robots that win, but the alliance that can work together flawlessly as a singly entity, with each robot playing their part by carrying out a well thought out strategy.