[EricH]

Originally Posted by Jhultink

3 Alliances

Hate to break it to you, but that is essentially the one thing that will never happen again. NEVER. Matter of fact, any odd number of alliances will pretty much be out (even numbers remain an option). And here's why.

Before 1999, alliances were one team apiece, three alliances on the field. Somewhere along the line, quite a number of teams used the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" strategy, and knocked some pretty good teams down the rankings a lot by essentially playing 2v1. Collusion could not be proved (and most likely there wasn't any intentional collaboration), but FIRST decided that it could also not be prevented, so therefore it must be required. Enter the alliance system, problem solved. Until...

The #1 game on the least-liked game list was one alliance of 4 teams versus the clock. Rack up the points before time runs out, multipliers for stopping really fast. No defense. This was in 2001. (OK, maybe a few teams liked it. But if it's not #1, then it's #2, right behind regolith in Lunacy.)

Now, you could have 5 alliances... or 7 alliances... but then the fields get ridiculously large, and you don't deal with any of the mismatch in number of teams. But if you had 4 alliances of 2 on the field... Maybe you end up with 2 alliances of 4, or maybe you end up with 6v2. Or maybe you get 8v0 unintentionally.