[ToddF]

Upon further reflection, and a good night's sleep...

This year, the game IS defense.

Defense against shooters isn't blocking their shots, like in 2013 and 2012. Blocking shots is only necessary if the shooters have safe zones from which to park, aim, and shoot. In 2014, defense against shooters is hitting them while they are trying to shoot. The 2014 game is football where the quarterback has no offensive line to protect him, and pass interference against receivers is permitted.

From a strategic point of view, consider how much harder it is to construct an accurate shooter than a robot that just pushes the balls around. Much of that extra effort is negated when it's legal to ram a shooter as they are shooting. Any scoring action (high goal scoring, the over-the-truss caught pass) that requires precise shooting becomes easy to defend against. The uncaught over-the-truss toss slightly less so, because it requires less precision. For teams with limited resources, I would suggest that those same resources and effort be spent to build two simple pusher bots very quickly, and then those bots be used to practice rapid exchanges and scoring quickly into the low goals. (With occasional detours to ram shooters).

If an alliance has a higher score, effort spent denying the other alliance from scoring is just as valuable as scoring yourself. There is only one ball at a time after auto. If you are ahead, and prevent that ball from being scored, you win. No further scoring on your part is necessary.

And, in the blessed event that one of those fancy shooters gets a ball stuck inside (how often did that happen with basketballs in 2012 and disks in 2013?), you have it made.

In recent games, the multitude of scoring pieces made defense tough. The math was simple. Two good offensive bots beat one good defensive bot because the defensive bot could only hinder one scorer at once. This year, even an alliance with three good offensive bots can be stopped by a single good defender, because after the initial 3 auto balls, there is only one game piece in play at a time.