[CJV648]

Since teams still improve their robots throughout the competition I will make no predictions about which robot will win as part of what alliance, but I will predict that the winning alliance will have two robots that are specialists that play pretty much the same role in each match (e.g. scorer, blocker, or ramp) and one robot that is a hybrid in the sense that it plays different roles in different matches (eg. blocker one match, scorer the next) depending on match ups vs. the opposition. Scouting for that third robot is likely to be hard--driver quality and strength of drivetrain are harder to evaluate than tubes scored and robots raised. The "specialists" may have other good qualities in qualifying that are used at most rarely in elims.

I also think there has been too little consideration of autonomous scoring. Alliances that don't score (at least) one in autonomous consistently seem unlikely to win Einstein. An alliance that scored three in auton would be hard to beat if it could be assembled.

Alliance building will be fun to watch at the World Championship Event.

BTW watch for 111 coming out of one the other divisions--they are good, maybe the best I've seen for scoring vs defense, they may benefit from playing less conservatively in ATL.