What has surprised you this year?

[JesseK]

Strategy-wise I think I nailed it on Day 1.

• For an alliance, there are 180 (almost) guaranteed points, yet the difficulty required for designs to get all 180 is well beyond 99.9% of teams
• A solid dead-reckoned autonomous with 4 cycles and a 10-pt hang puts many teams in the upper echelon this year
• Doing a 5 or 7-disc autonomous is HUGE, but requires ground pickup and under-pyramid heights
• Going under the pyramid opens up 2 entire zones of play, regardless of alliance

My only real surprise was that we couldn't get a good disc delivery mechanism from the floor to the hopper, given the talent on my team. Meh.

One thing that surprised me was how much more advantageous mid-field autonomous routines are for Quals, since I didn't realize that leftover discs were on the center line

Was surprised about being allowed > 60" for the start of the match

Nothing major though. We scrapped floor pickup last night since it was causing an over-complexity in our hopper. Now the discs don't jam one bit. Was a bit surprised that we could shove 7 discs through in under 7 seconds with no jams, for once .