[XXShadowXX]

Great Lakes should be a good regional. With many impressive bot's beeing feilded there is sure to be a lot of competion. Personall I believe that the chickens(217) will get there 3rd regional (there bot is a force of nature ranked with; fire, wind, water, air, earth, thunder...chickens).
The thing to look for at these regionals should be defense, many teams with a regional or two under their belt will look to defense as a way to stop powerful scoring machines in their tracks. With all honesty most hurdlers are not that good with out a trackball, most are very slow, and with out the ability to score every few lap (or every) a team's offense is ground to a hault. So if a robot breaks it will most likely be playing defense since one defense robot can (sometimes) halve an oppent's alliance score. Also the new alliance selections i think will be selected the powerful hurdlers; first pick another hurdler, second a good defensive robot.
Also I hate to say it but now that the competion season is grinding down (only new york left after saturday) the finals will be dirty at west michigan I saw around 1 or 2 per match interfering with the hurdler I expect to see 2 to 3 this week per finals match (after semi-finals). This is many teams last shot at atlanta and I expect that many will be playing like it fighting tooth and nail for every lap, hurdle, and trackball that they can get.

just an opinion to disreguard as quickly as others
cody.

p.s. winning alliance great lakes regional; 217, 27, 1718 (all very good and all can play good defense and offense).