[Chris is me]

If you really wanted to, you could consider doing eight two-robot alliances and two backup teams. It would be an interesting twist on this game certainly, but that's the kind of thing the teams going would probably have to agree on.

Six alliances seems like the way to do it. Four would be better if it didn't exclude a third of the already small event - seems to make more sense to have 3v6 and 4v5, then the winners of those matches go onto regular semi-finals, giving 1 and 2 a bye.

I feel this is a particularly good solution with the serpentine, as it gives the alliances that made the last two picks of the draft extra time to potentially repair or modify their alliance partner.