[David66]

A little recap with my own twist...

This game is indeed scouting dependant. SO much so that at the Great Lakes Regional Team 66 decided to write its own program and invest huge amounts of time in scouting and writing the actual program.. From start to finish the program took about 5 hours, and man hours into scouting equals about 72, just for a regional with 42 teams. Our program automatically ranked all 42 teams. 20 of our Top 24 were selected for the finals. 2 of the Top 8 did not even make our list-the "luck" factor of random alliance pairing

Strategy is Critical At the West Michigan Regionals in the finals our alliance (66, 93, 107) were challenged by what was viewed by many as a stronger alliance. However, with three separate strategies in three separate matches (saving the best for last of course) our alliance was able to keep them guessing, and come out on top. So yes, it is possible for the "little guy" to come out on top.

The game changes Team 66 won two regionals (side note, only 2 GM teams won 2 regionals each, and they are also all from the wining alliance at GLR 66, 67, 68-I also believe each of us has won at least one other award, 67 winning the WMR Chairman's Award). The strategy from the Great Lakes Regional was vastly different from the Srategies we used with our alliance partnersd at the West Michigan Regionals. The best teams leave their options open until they have gotten to know their opponents. WHich again leads back to the importance of scouting.

Just my $.02