Most of the Friday matches I saw at Newton were like elimination matches, Clear the boxes, battle for the top and then try to beat your opponent 25 or 50 to nothing. I saw this tactic even if only one robot showed up or became disabled. I saw 67 (Hot) in a qualifier in one match where there opponents got tangled up on their side with 1 minute left to go with both blue robots on the platform 67 proceeded to clear out any remaining boxes I think they ended up with about 4 extra QP's. I asked the mentor what
the heck they were doing and he answered 'winning'. Maybe he was smarter than me because they did get finalists at Newton.

I saw another match in which the loser deliberately threw away their 25 points in the last 3 seconds of the match just to spite their opponents, who had not done anything particularly egregious to them. They left them some crate points, and left plenty of room in the middle of the platform for them to drive on.

In general on Saturday AM the play was much better - it was hard and rough, but purposefully so.


There certainly was no collusion in the elimination rounds.