[nifty]

i don't know if i can speak for the herders, since the onle ones (my team's bot included) at the BAE were herders by necessity and not choice - when multiple systems leave you hanging, sometimes its all you can do. my team designed our bot to be a collecter/low shooter, but ran into problems with our shooting mechanism and ball release mechanism, so we ended up doing a lot of herding.

dumpers on the other hand, totally win my approval. i know team 97 and 213 (did i get the number right? i know they were the "dirty birds") both made it to the elimination rounds at BAE, and gave our team a lot of trouble whenever they were on an opposing allicance. our driver was great at defensive manouvering, but we just couldn't effectively stop the two teams i mentioned. this is a lot coming from a team whose bot held teams like cocoa beach and the t-hawks to almost nothing in our defensive rounds.

at the beginning of the build season, i wanted to build a six wheeled dumper, but we went with a more complicated design instead which proved to be our downfall, but that's life. props to 213 for their omnis, too. they were my favorite bot at BAE.