[Andy Baker]

Every year, the best strategy and method to play the game is not always clear at first. This year is no exception.

This thread has been very interesting, and it all really is about deciding a way to play the game based on strategy.

This is smart, but there is another reason that teams pick the way they "play". For lack of a better word, it is also the sort of "mentality" that a team wants to play the game that depicts their robot design.

For instance, team 47 usually comes up with a very smooth-running robot which is targeted at scoring points offensively (collecting balls in 02, scoring and descoring balls in 00, manipulating the puck in 99, etc.). Their mentality has mainly been to pick the thing that is difficult to do in the game and they do it.

Every year, there is usually an "offensive" and a "defensive" way to play the game. This year, stacking seems to be the "offensive" way to score, while playing king of the hill akin to playing "defense".

For us... we waiver back and forth with the mentality for how we play the game. 99 was defense, 00 was offense, 02 was offense, 03 is defense... from what I can remember, no one really wanted to stack from our team this year... maybe it was simply because we played offense last year. I'm not sure if this is true... but from my experience, it is really fun to play defense really well. I just hope that things work out like we planned.

Andy B.