[hansTP2S]

Originally Posted by Billfred

The only thing is, alliance swapping has two key problems:

1) It will confuse the tar out of a civilian spectator. To the average joe who heard "robots," "free," and "contest" in the same sentence in the paper, an alliance stays as such.
2) It'd create a defensefest, as you don't know how you end up. That, or you effectively end up with a 4v0 game again, as all of the teams want to cover their backsides should it be them who's switching alliances.

Personally, I'd be partial to just giving teams the four team numbers on the pairings. Then when the teams are queued, they draw colors. Kinda Survivor-y, I know, but it'd require teams to be fast with the strategy, or make it an open book.

Gee, I hope that I make sense at 11:30 at night...

you make sense, but you couldnt have random alliances in the finals, for obvious reasons