[LightWaves1636]

Originally Posted by Mr. Freeman

I don't think informing the top teams of your robot's ability is a bad thing. It might sound "desperate", but if you do it right it might actually be really helpful.
At the Colorado regional there was some team (sorry, forgot the number) that made a really helpful scouting booklet of all the teams at the regional.
During the alliance selections, alliances 1-8 picked pretty quickly, they knew who they wanted to choose. But alliance 8 took a really long time to make their second choice, and I saw almost every single other alliance on the field flipping through that scouting manual like crazy while teams 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, made their decision.
I think some of the selection decisions were rushed simply because the alliances weren't aware of which teams were both A) not already picked, and B) preformed well but were ranked low enough that no one really noticed them (from what I've heard, this seems to be fairly common).
Talking to the high ranked teams could, if nothing else, give them a team to pick if their first few choices are taken by other the alliances.

I believe it was 1861, The S.H.A.R.C. team. that was so cool they did that for us, it really helped out in strategy. But yeah, it seemed at Colorado the alliance pickings were really rushed, me and the rest of Team 1636 were just sitting there waiting for someone to pick us or 1583. Luckily 555 did and we're grateful for it, very grateful(Love you guys-thanks for the buttons and the shirt). A lot of the alliances I thought could have been more thought out but the top 8 weren't given anytime to figure out what they really wanted like they did with us last year. Of course I don't know why I didn't mention this, but buddy yourselves up with a good bot that will most likely be picked up is another good plan, risky, but it may work.(1636 and 1583)