I love this game.
- Incredible flexibility in design (dumpers, shooters, 'placers')
- Incredible flexibility in strategy (dance around the key, bump vs bridge, all-star vs support)
- Defense built into Offense (like 2010 -- gobble their balls up and fire them to your side)
- Anti-aggressive rules regarding defense (key/alley) so we don't need drive trains that push
I keep thinking of new strategy tidbits every day.
The only thing that I question is the automatic and irreversible real-time penalty system, which will probably subject more than a few matches to subjectivity and selective memories across the 3,000+ qual matches.