[Fred Sayre]

Team 488 played against team 492 every match from the beginning of thursday to the end of qualifiers on Saturday. We ended up winning most of our matches, but not all because sure enough, two robots do not decide the outcome of a 3v3 match. Not only that, but if a team gets the opportunity to play against the same alliance every single match they will be forced to come up with some unique and creative strategies to change the outcome.

We lost a match due to the (at the time) brand new tactic of deploying a ramp in the alley beside the rack to completely prevent us from getting back to our home zone to deploy and lift. This definitely caught us off guard. After this strategy started popping up and with how powerful lifting points became more and more teams started playing heavy defense. This is what lead to our two low points ties at the end of qualifiers and having both 1540 and 948 (two of the best pnw ringers) both play defense against us nearly the entire time during two of our elimination matches.