Divisions 2012

[Nawaid Ladak]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Newton 2006 was IMHO the most stacked division I can remember in my 10 years in FIRST.

Newton ended up being finalists...

25, 254, 968, 987, 1503 (can't forget those triplets), 111, 229, and on and on. that division was stacked.

Now on to this year's Divisions

I think Newton is clearly the strongest division with 469 and 1717 clearly being the top of the food chain. The same thing is true for Archimedes with 2056, 67, and 1114. The other two divisions seem lacking in overall quality when matched up on paper to the two divisions i mentioned above. but that doesn't mean they can't win. as we learned in the finals in 2010 (and 2006 IMO to a lesser extent), anything is possible.

I think to get first place come noontime on Saturday, your going to have to treat the qualification matches more like a long race rather than individual matches. Every #1 seed on each division will have at least 33 ranking points (in nine matches played) when all is said and done. Getting the coopertition bonus will be less important than missing an opportunity to get the coopertition bonus. The skill level of your opponents will matter more this year than in previous years, the same thing holds somewhat true in reverse to your alliance partners.

All i can say is that this is going to be one very fun championship to cover and see who walks away with the gold Saturday evening.

[PAR_WIG1350]

In 2010, we put our robot down on curie and it was all down hill from there. *so many mechanical failures O_0*

[Cory]

Originally Posted by dodar

Curie also almost won in 2008 but ran into probably the greatest alliance ever combined at Champs, SimChickenWranglers a.k.a. 1114, 217, 148. Yes, for those who dont know, 148 was the last pick of the division.

Curie got blown out in the finals. If anything Newton almost won, as they gave 1114 and company their only real challenge in the elims.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Cory

Curie got blown out in the finals. If anything Newton almost won, as they gave 1114 and company their only real challenge in the elims.

This is spot on. The Curie alliance made it through the semi-by the skin of there teeth in the worst round ever played on Einstein. The Archmedes vs. Curie matches that year were aweful. 16's swerve stopped working for that round. and 348 got caught on our robot which sucked the carpet into the drivetrain because it was never tapped down over the divider in the middle of the field. Uberbots auton switches broke so their robot never exectuted there awesome auton. HOT and Kilobytes were the only fully functional robots on the field in the second match.

[eli2410]

Did anyone else open the mobile championship website that was on Bill's Blog on a laptop, then went to playing fields? Because on there with the four divisions and Einstein is da Vinci. Is it a new field that's coming soon, or a FTC/FLL field?

[JABot67]

Originally Posted by Cory

Curie got blown out in the finals. If anything Newton almost won, as they gave 1114 and company their only real challenge in the elims.

Originally Posted by Peter Matteson

This is spot on. The Curie alliance made it through the semi-by the skin of there teeth in the worst round ever played on Einstein. The Archmedes vs. Curie matches that year were aweful. 16's swerve stopped working for that round. and 348 got caught on our robot which sucked the carpet into the drivetrain because it was never tapped down over the divider in the middle of the field. Uberbots auton switches broke so their robot never exectuted there awesome auton. HOT and Kilobytes were the only fully functional robots on the field in the second match.

67 caught 1124's arm fabric and tipped over in that second semifinals match, destroying our arm potentiometer. In the finals matches we were manually positioning the arm which was far trickier than pressing a button to go to a set position, and we couldn't even run an autonomous that removed balls from the overpass. Facing 1114, 217, and 148 in that situation, we were toast.

I really want to blame the Curie Curse for 2008, but if I did that I would have to acknowledge that it's perfectly reasonable for others to blame 2010 on it. So, I'll just say I don't believe in curses. Curie will win one of these years!

[Adam Freeman]

Cory is correct, we were completely blown away during our two Einstein finals matches in 2008. After going through the division tournament and getting pulled over by 1124 in the Semi-finals, our machine was barely functioning.

We did destroy a potentiometer during the SF, which we had a backup installed...unfortunately it was wired incorrectly, causing the arm to drive the opposite direction than it was supposed too. After figuring out that debacle (deciding to go manual), we did not have time to swap out the side plates on the ball collector. So, our normally dead lock grip on a ball was compromised...leaving us vulnerable to 148's awesome defense.

Needless to say we were destroyed by the super alliance of 1114, 217, and 148.

I will say we had an awesome SF1 match, scoring about 100pts on our own, while 16 was having issues. Which gave us a lot of hope for the Finals.

Fully functional, I think we might have had a shot with perfect execution. But, we were fighting against the curse and one of the best robots in FIRST history...so it probably wouldn't have mattered.

[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by JABot67

67 caught 1124's arm fabric and tipped over in that second semifinals match, destroying our arm potentiometer. In the finals matches we were manually positioning the arm which was far trickier than pressing a button to go to a set position, and we couldn't even run an autonomous that removed balls from the overpass. Facing 1114, 217, and 148 in that situation, we were toast.

I really want to blame the Curie Curse for 2008, but if I did that I would have to acknowledge that it's perfectly reasonable for others to blame 2010 on it. So, I'll just say I don't believe in curses. Curie will win one of these years!

I suspected that something like that happened but I couldn't remember if I actually got the whole story from anyone on your team. It was was an ugly semi-final in general that I wouldn't mind having stricken from the record.

That finals was also the begining of one of the greatest championship runs by any team when HOT had three Championship finals appearances in a row. I have to give HOT a lot of credit for being the only team to ever do that. I feel people generally don't appreciate that enough.

[Kim Masi]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

Newton 2006 was IMHO the most stacked division I can remember in my 10 years in FIRST.

Newton ended up being finalists...

Yup, I agree. And 176's strategic alliance-breaking alliance selection was one of the more brilliant moves I've seen in my FIRST memory.

[nuggetsyl]

Originally Posted by Kim Masi

Yup, I agree. And 176's strategic alliance-breaking alliance selection was one of the more brilliant moves I've seen in my FIRST memory.

thank 111 for that

[jwfoss]

Originally Posted by nuggetsyl

thank 111 for that

I respectfully disagree. Although we couldn't have been happier with 111 as our alliance partner.

[nuggetsyl]

Originally Posted by jwfoss

I respectfully disagree. Although we couldn't have been happier with 111 as our alliance partner.

Just ask Raul how it went down. It was a great strategic move.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by eli2410

Did anyone else open the mobile championship website that was on Bill's Blog on a laptop, then went to playing fields? Because on there with the four divisions and Einstein is da Vinci. Is it a new field that's coming soon, or a FTC/FLL field?

da Vinci is the division name used for FTC. da Vinci is broken into Edison and Franklin divisions, IIRC.

Einstein is used for FLL competition until it's needed for FRC eliminations. Then it gets the 12-member Einstein division, with fixed alliances and losses dropping you out of contention. (Einstein can expand to 16--but that's never happened.)

[Racer26]

Predicting:

A v N for all the marbles

any 2 of(67, 2056, 1114) v 469/1717

[Nawaid Ladak]

hmm, this is strange

I'm loading up teh FRC Spyder app for Android and it's saying that 402 teams are attending while the FIRST website only shows 400

the two added teams are 955 and 2969. The teams don't seem to be assigned to specific divisions yet. Maybe this team list isn't the final one and we may see some more additions...