[EricH]

Originally Posted by AdamHeard

The quality of defense at the regionals determines the dominant strategies as mentioned above.

At LA, they were not very many good defensive robots/drivers. They were a lot of teams that played defense because they had no choice (I'll admit my team did that for a while; but atleast we had a nice enough drivetrain to back it up, and a sense of defensive play). Most teams would go out and try to play defense, but they just couldn't do it. We were a good defender in comparison to most, when we should not have been at all (2 small CIMs geared @10 fps, no pushing power).

Pretty off topic by now, but if you are a veteran team... please explain to your partners what effective defense is and how to play it. Many teams had capable defensive robots, but just didn't use them correctly.

4 doesn't fall into this category. Taking off the arm to play defense in the finals was a good move (lower CG and lower profile--the "What hit the robot?" effect). Plus, they know how to play smart defense. Given a target, they will give that target a hard time scoring. Ask 188 about that (SF2, matches 2 and 3).