[Anupam Goli]

Another year, another Peachtree Regional is done. This region is sending a grand total of 11 teams to championships, with winners of previous competitions, and Peachtree's winners, RAS, RCA, and EI award winners. That's a solid representation of southern USA teams at the championships.

Anyway, i wanted to share some thoughts and give some shoutouts for peachtree. First, some positive thoughts:

The second iteration of GameTime was even better than before, with some nice talks on strategic design, match and game strategy, and insights into gameplay. I'm hoping GameTime returns again.

The competition this year was great. This year's regional was deeper than it has been ever. Most teams that made eliminations had already played once before. Clearly, having 2 events in Georgia is making a difference in the level of play as the season goes on.

The full size practice field is one of those things that makes GA events great too. Other regionals can't provide more than a half of the field to practice on, and yet we have a full size field with most of the game pieces.

Now, let's go onto some things that I didn't particularly like:

The pit space. Our individual pits were fine, but with a size of venue we had, why were all of the pits crammed into one corner? FIRST hosted 2 divisions + FLL and FTC pits in the size of venue we had (that's 200+teams). There was no reason to have essentially, the same overall pit space as the 42-team Southern Classic regional, and crowd 66 teams into that space when we have a venue that can handle much more. Southern Classic's venue was much smaller, yet much more comfortable. I felt crowded whenever i went from the stands to the pits.

The stands. The stands were pretty unimpressive. they were far from the field and were really low. The stands at southern classic were so much better. We need high risers for scouting and getting a good view of the action.

The pit announcer was kind of annoying with his "robot robot" spiel, though it might have been because we were near the speaker. It got so bad that our pit mentor mandated the students to wear earplugs in the pit.

Also I realize we were wayyy of schedule thanks to Dean giving us an inspirational speech, but having only a 20 minute lunch break before we had to queue up in eliminations left us almost no time to even formulate a strategy and get a game plan in mind. Also, only 8 matches per team in quals was kind of a downer too, especially to teams who can only go to 1 event every year. Maybe our venue can handle 66 teams, but if our staff can't put 9 matches + per team, it may not be worth it to go above 60 teams.

Anyway, let's not bog down on the negatives too much. I want to give some shoutouts to:

4468: Your team has grown so much in the last 2 years, and it's great to see you guys finally make it not only to the eliminations, but to move onto the finals. I'm so glad you will be coming to worlds. I'm hoping we'll be in the same subdivision! Well deserved finalist medal and EI!

4509 We ended up on the same alliance together again, but we got knocked out in quarters again. Your teams designs are always creative and unique, and continue to inspire me. Hopefully we can figure out the voodoo preventing us from advancing in elims next year.

Anyways, we may see you again next year at Peachtree!