[commodoredl]

Last year we didn't do a mock "kickoff," to be precise, but did an engineering game involving getting a ping pong ball into a can using only rubber band power and household materials.
In the previous year we did one for Stack Attack, but I'm not sure if everyone got the concept well enough. We're trying to work things around slightly to be more successful in the mock kickoff this year.
This year we have been holding round-robin style training to teach everyone about all the subteams, and once subteams are set will begin training more in-depth. As we approach the kickoff, we'll spend one meeting doing a mock kickoff brainstorming session (this year we'll be doing it for Zone Zeal), and another meeting basically explaining to the newbies what they should expect and doing more strategizing.