[Swampdude]

A little luck is always important. Luck this year will come in the form of not gathering penalties either by your self or your alliances. If 2 or 3 matches you get allied with a team that draws penalties, there goes a few wins just on that fact alone, not to mention your going to simply get outscored by the other teams now and then also. So in the end you'll wind up 50/50 with most of it out of your hands. So one team alone can't win this thing when there's 5 other bots on the field that can make a Big impact on the 1. So alliances are everything no matter how good you are.

With that in mind, how you employ those alliance strategies as a team is critical. You can talk to folks about strategy all you want, but if they don't stick to it. Or are incapable of certain things - it's just out of your hands. Not to say the other team is also dealing with the same dynamics. But overall statistically with 6 teams on the field - no 1 team can make as big a difference as in the past.

If this thread were titled what will the winning alliance have? I think it's almost always going to be the #1 seed. Unless they have blinders on, they're going to pick the best/fastest consistent capper. They being the #1 seed will likely be good at organizing strategy and staying away from trouble and scoring rows well or just plain lucky. You put those 2 teams together, the second seed is already picking the second, third or fourth best capper. If you're in the 3-8 alliance I personally think your not going to have much of a chance.

I'm sure your going to see awesome teams that score like crazy deep in the seeding charts at the end of the day. Only because of the huge penalty risks that alliances will draw and that you can't come back from.

I hope people don't get too bent out of shape when they're asked to stay out of trouble as a strategy...