[Ian Curtis]

I'm gonna go ahead and say an average week one score will be 5. I think a decent alliance will score 6 balls in during a match, and get a hanger or two up. I think there will also be a lot of penalties. Teams have a propensity to skim the rule book, and there are lots of penalties that will result from this, I think. I bet lots of robots get caught up on balls and get hammered with the 3" penalty. So, I expect a fair number of zero matches.

I think this is similar to Overdrive (2008). At BAE, which is a week 1 regional. The top tier (10 robots-ish) averaged 2+ hurdles over Friday's qualifying matches. Corralling trackballs was hard. I think corralling these soccer balls will be just as difficult. In the most recent with soccer ball sized items, there were lots of them (2004, 2006, 2009), so it wasn't too hard to come into a clump of them. This year will be different.

I don't think suspending robots will be the bees knees until eliminations. During qualifications it'll be hard to get good partners who are reliable hangers. And I think most teams won't have the guts to build a robot with an emphasis on suspending (though five bucks says 190 does it). I suspect the ones that do it well will be top picks (and one of them will be on the winning alliance in ATL).