[Chris is me]

1114's an interesting example. They were upset in the quarters of Midwest by some pretty great defensive teams, and in the semis of Archimedes by a high scoring alliance. Their robot certainly wasn't bad by any means. It seems that this is a game where any alliance could potentially be beaten, any strategy has a counter basically. And the teams that did the most well were the ones that could best form an alliance that covered weaknesses and had diverse styles of scoring and play. I haven't watched (m)any of 1114's matches, but they're proof that one great machine and team can't win matches alone, and no matter how great an alliance is you can be outplayed.

This is drifting off topic, but it seems the best strategies (and robots) are the ones that are hardest to work around. Robots with extremely fast shooters (ThunderChickens) or power dumpers that could get dozens of balls in seconds punish mistakes; robots with high capacity but slower shooters and dumpers won't be able to capitalize on a bad move by the opponent's as easily; I think this was the downfall for many shooter oriented designs.

(oh if you were wondering this was why i asked teams how many balls per second you could fire)