[holygrail]

First off, I'd like to thank the Lee's Summit R7 Alliance of 1730, 1986, and 1987 for hosting teams from the Kansas City area today. They were gracious hosts as always and the pulled pork sandwiches were tasty.

A few observations.
1) Stuff breaks...a lot. The defenses are punishing, especially the ramparts, rock wall, and moat. The rough terrain isn't too bad, but if you have an arm, lift it up first. You pretty much have to hit them with speed and the robot takes a bit of a beating. We built about the toughest drive train we ever have and it was still hard on the robot... And that was without defense. Better have a good pit crew.

2) High goals are difficult and rare, but impressive when a team can pull it off. I say this on observation and not from experience because we decided to focus on the low goal.

3) Scaling seems very difficult. We didn't see any scaling today but there were bots that were planning on it. If other teams are like ours, it is just tough to work out all the kinks, especially if you have a low bar robot.

4) It seems like this game has become unexpectedly tough later in the build season. It was hard to ignore the fact that fewer teams than usual were present and ready to go today. Maybe they all just have their own practice facilities now, but I suspect teams just weren't ready. The devil is in the details and with so many compact robots, space becomes an issue. That said, for us it was absolute gold to be able to get on a well built practice field and give it a go.

5) It is going to be a war of attrition. Teams who have robots that are built tough and easy to repair will have a definite advantage. Reliability and consistency are about the two most important things, and they may be hard to come by in this game.

6) Stronghold will be fun to watch. There is a lot for the robots to do and a lot of room for oohs, aahhhhs, wows, and oooooh no's!

Good luck to all teams!