[MrJohnston]

For what it's worth.... My kids saw the Rhino treads on AndyMark a couple days before the reveal video. (Yes, I have nerds on my team who spend their hours day-dreaming and reading about the newest robot parts as an entertaining way to pass time...) They were speculating that AndyMark had created them specifically for this game and wanted me to purchase them early -before the rush....Not wanting to drop $400 x 2 x 2 robots = $1600 for something we might not lose, I said we had to wait until we knew the game and our strategy and design teams had a chance to weigh in. Besides we had spent much of the training season perfecting our abilities to build a great mecanum system and had already invested in all the parts we might need to build either a 6 wheel tank drive or a mecanum drive - either with varying wheel sizes.

Of course.... Our strategy team passed the recommendation on to the designers that we wanted the Rhinos and the design team agreed... Checking online, it was now a potential 3 week delay. A lot happens on Saturday. We weighed the risks and agreed to pursue our other aspects of the robot first - besides there are quite a few game elements to build. Saturday night, we ordered the Rhinos for both our competition bot and the practice bot....

They arrived today?! It was like a second Christmas.....

Maybe we'll have a mecanum system next year...