[magnets]

Here's my ranked list of the top 4 games:
For me, there are three main goals for each game. In no particular order, they are excitement to watch/play, quality of game (variety of robots, balanced scoring, no really dumb rules), and easy to understand/explain quickly.

1). 2013- Ultimate Ascent
This game was the second most exciting game I have ever watched and had a huge variety of roles for teams to fill. Only a small minority of teams could actually do everything, and almost everybody had to make tradeoff decisions. Teams could be cyclers, floor loaders, full court shooters, 30 point climbers, dumpers, 10 point climbers, defense, blockers, or any combination of the roles. The game itself was very simple - frisbees in goals give you points with more points for the higher goal and climbing the tower gives you points. Defense was a little risky to play due to safe zones and strict climb interference penalties, so many teams focused on scoring points.

2). 2014- Aerial Assist
This was really one of the best games that FIRST has come up with. It's super simple, has tons of strategy, and was incredible to watch in St. Louis. I spent a ton of time just watching matches this year. Every weekend, I watched events, and you wouldn't have been able to pull me away from watching the matches in St. Louis. It's so far ahead of all the other games in many ways, but sadly had three huge flaws - it was not well refereed, had ridiculous penalties, and did not play very well with lower tier teams.

3). 2012- Rebound Rumble
Einstein was terrible this year, but the Archimedes finals with the Canadian alliance and 67's alliance was incredible to watch. This game just worked. It's hard to explain why exactly, but I felt that the GDC spent many hours working through how the game would be played at each level of competition and adjusted point values, the difficulty of balancing, the difficulty of crossing the field, and the number of balls so that every event would be exciting.

4). 2006- Aim High
This ranks below Rebound Rumble simply because it didn't have as good of flow. The game periods and weird offense/defense rules weren't my favorite, but I really liked the idea of shooting balls.

This year's game isn't a favorite of mine yet. I haven't seen it played yet, but the seniors on our team aren't too happy with it yet. They've been anxious to get a game that doesn't include collecting round things from the floor and throwing them into to hole located above the opposing teams alliance station, but this was not the arm/stacking game they were looking for.

However, I'd love to be proved wrong about this year, but robot to robot interaction just seems like such a critical part of FIRST that I can't imagine a game without it!