If you only have 18 teams, I would run as many matches as you can, but maybe increase the delay time between matches (I forget what it was this year, maybe it was 12 minutes?) add 2 minutes or so and see how many matches that gets each team in your schedule.
The good news is 18 is divisible by 3, so you can have even alliances for elims (if no one breaks badly). With 6 alliances there are a variety of ways to do it...
1v6, 2v5, 3v4, and then some sort of round robin with the 3 remaining alliances to see who your winner is.
Another possiblity is to basically use the normal bracket but give alliances 1 & 2 a bye directly into the semi finals (since there are no 7 & 8 alliances). This is the easiest if you are using some sort of FMS, as they aren't terribly easy to manipulate. But does mean Alliances 1 & 2 play 2 or 3 fewer matches than the other alliances.
You can also go back to the old days of FIRST and do some sort
double elimination type bracket with alliances... so that instead of teams you have alliances. That could be fun & interesting, but would have to be manually tracked and not done on an FMS (I think).
Have a great time!
if we can't rely on experience and the human mind from time to time, then we're in trouble, aren't we? - Adam McLeod [more] 
15-08-2013, 10:01
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