[Alpha Beta]

Cincinnati is a fantastic town with a tremendous tournament. Thank you to all the staff and volunteers that made the Queen City Regional a great event. The venue is one of my favorites. Great sight lines, good webcast, and dedicated volunteers. Having half the pits split away from the field was a bit of a nuisance, but thankfully a few other teams closer to the field helped keep our laptop battery charged as we made abundant use of the practice day. Everyone was extremely welcoming and it was nice to venture a little farther east than our normal haunts.

We had a definite strategy going into alliance selection and were ecstatic with the picks we were able to get in the draft. 233, The Pink Team knows how to live every moment as a celebration. Taking the only other 20 point auto and getting a team that can handle the tipped over can gave us a tremendous amount of flexibility. This team gets better every event and I can't wait to see what champs brings for them. 4575, The Tin Mints were a steal for our alliance with the 24th pick. They put up base stacks faster than we could cap them. The only reason I can fathom they were still available to us is that the other alliances couldn't spare a human station with their last selection. For us they were perfect. We 1986, Team Titanium finally got to put our can stealers through an extended test. 7 consecutive matches, 100% can recovery. Showing off our versatility at the slot was also a nice bonus for our drive team.

To the finalists... Well played. 120 was the model of consistency, putting up 2 stacks more often than not. It is great to see the hall of fame teams continuing to produce quality machines. 144 and 533 were great compliments to the alliance and a pleasure to work with all weekend.

To those who wonder how a qualification match schedule can influence your seeding... We played on the same alliance with only 1 (#6 - 4213) out of the next 10 most highly ranked robots in the tournament. Only one other robot on our entire qualification schedule got selected in the top half of the draft. One of our matches even featured a partner literally on fire. More than one local team commented to us on the tough draw. Huge shout out to the scouts and strategists on the team who found a way to make every partner an important part of the alliance plan. It was fun helping every robot find some success.