[ayeckley]

We won Buckeye in 2010 (as alliance captain) using mechanums. During the balance of the season we never felt that we were at any real disadvantage against pusher-bots. In fact, we even successfully stuffed a reasonably-competitive 4WD tank opponent into the goal once. We put a lot of time, effort and $ into the control system to make driving as intuitive as possible however (closed loop on all four wheels, strategic assignment of user I/O, etc.). That, combined with a good driver and a practice bot made us successful, at least at the Regional level which was good enough for us. I don't think we would have been as successful with a traditional drive.

Just another data point...