[Siri]

We were a non-scoring bot for our win in elims at Hatboro-Horsham. Fender defense is great for dunkers and even short-range shooters (sorry 709). It's pretty easy for 1-on-1, even if they can theoretically score front and side. It may get trickier when alliances put more thought towards G28 being transitive, though, depending on how Refs call G45-G28. Overall, I definitely felt safer pulling this at a Week 1 than I will/would have at a Week 4.

"Inbound Chicken" is a great triple-threat against alliances with no strong feeder. Block the inbounder and easily hoard balls for your alliance. When the prospective feeder comes over, play chicken with Key-Ally mirror fouling. You tie them up, remove a (in our case, their main) scorer, and bottleneck their supply chain. Just make sure there's no way for them to get balls to stay on your robot. (We faced our close hopper away from them just in case.) Also, regardless of where the opposing alliance is, only 1 of your robots in their ally at a time. It's easy to get jammed up and have an opposing robot rush their Bridge, causing major fouls.

Defense was pretty low during quals at Week 1, but I still kept an eye on our Ally. We cross the barrier quick enough that I could pull us back to top load pretty quickly, unfortunately for any opposing bots in the way. That won us one match and helped in another.

Balance blocking is another smart move, though dangerous if you're low traction. This was undervalued a lot from what I saw, but I think 118 and 448 changed that. Albeit continued legality pending, but unofficially G23 refers to blockading the court, not double-teaming a robot.

Finally, I think a lot of alliances, especially in quals, are underestimating the value of Inbounder hoarding. I saw several alliances win Hybrid and lose the match because they immediately returned all balls to the court. Some alliances would even have been better off with Inbounders holding 5-6 and each robot basically holding 3. This was especially true when the opposing alliance couldn't lower the bridge, a ratio which will hopefully change significantly in the coming weeks. It takes educated human players (a sadly underrepresented group at Week 1), reasonable scouting or at least coaching, and smart playing, though. I suspect the advantages of this will diminish as the weeks continue, but at least Week 2 should keep it in mind.