[Kims Robot]

Its funny, I've always been one to really nitpick the rules and dig things apart to make sure that we fully understand them.

This year (maybe because Im not locally mentoring a team), I've found I'm taking a 10,000 foot approach to the rules.

This one seems easy to me. Their intent is that the bridge is balanced and not supported by anything other than the balance. If an opponent causes issue with it, it still counts as balanced. I was at first impressed that their point structure seemed to make a lot of sense. The values of the bridge made it worth it, but not overwhelming. So I am again going to assume that they intended our original read.

I expect the fretting to be over nothing. My guess is that they will clarify the wording (again), to make it such that it is worded more closely to the intent. I think we all know the likely intent, so I would craft a Q&A to get it clarified, but I wouldn't waste too much time worrying over it. Now if they do really change the meaning of the points, that would be a whole different ball game, but I have to assume their original intent was for the balance points to be worth doing, but not overwhelming.

Ultimately, I keep looking back at the "launch the minibot" scenario from last year. Yes, actual detailed reading of the initial rules allowed for it, but to me, it was fairly clear that the intent was to have the minibot climb the pole... sure enough, the GDC clarified that. I would expect this to end up the same.