[EricH]

Originally Posted by smurfgirl

I'm also surprised that at both the UTC CT Regional, which I attended, and at the many regionals whose webcasts I watched, I never saw anyone removing a spoiler. I'm beginning to wonder if people forget about the fact that they can remove them, since none of the other tubes may be removed. Just like how people forget to play them since they don't begin on the field.

L.A. and San Diego were not webcast, unfortunately--although teams there used the spoilers a bit, few spoilers even made it to the rack, let alone onto the rack. I can think of maybe two or three that made it on, and only one stayed on. (Trying to spoil one of 968's tubes that they just placed resulted in a flying spoiler within 5 seconds, if that. The one that stayed on did not affect the outcome of the match.) San Diego finals: Blue plays a spoiler, or starts to. Before the robot is within it's arm's length from the rack, one of the Red hybrids was all over it. The spoiler left the blue robot rather than face the Red defense.