[Brian Maher]

This year, 1257 was the third pick of the second alliance on Archimedes. I never got the impression at any point that we were thought of as a backup. All four teams were involved in developing the strategy of our alliance.

Our captain/first pick used their second pick to choose a robot that played defense throughout qualifications, as they were confident they could play defense. They then selected us in the third round due to the versatility of our robot: we could score up to 7 low goals, feed balls for shooters, or play defense. Our captain had heard that we played effective defense at MAR CMP, but had not had a chance to see it on Archimedes.

It was decided that we would play in our first quarterfinal match and our second pick would play in the next, to see which was more effective. However, our robot played the role well in that match, and the decision was made by our alliance for us to continue to play defense. In fact, our second pick never made it to the field on Saturday (I hope there are no hard feelings there).

This shows one strategic use of the fourth robot: making a risky pick while also having a safe contingency plan. They hadn't seen us play defense on Archimedes, so they hedged their bet in us by picking a team they had seen do it. We almost made it to division finals, losing SF2-3 by a mere five points.