The best matches of Ultimate Ascent

[Kevin Leonard]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

Certinally a few come to mind right away. I'm going to post this for all of the nonvideo watching members that might not know these are there I think these showcase this years game pretty well.
The finals at IRI http://www.youtube.com/user/IndianaRobotics These matches propbablly showcase UA the closest way that the GDC dreamed of. The finals (F-1 and F-2) showcased 3 multidisk autonomous routines, 3 3-level climbers with pyrmaid dumps, and a FCS plus defense of that said shooter.
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The finals at IRI were absolutely brilliant, and I think the absolute most electrifying matches of an overall electrifying year.
Really exciting also were all the divisional finals matches. Every single alliance in the divisional finals showcased different strategies, but some were really good for other reasons:

Archimedes Finals: The autonomous battles between 469 and 987 were especially awesome. The strategy of the 33-469-1519 alliance overpowered the statistically better 2415-987-2959 alliance en route to an Einstein showing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nURaHgJYP10&t=34m0s

Newton Finals: The underdog alliance vs. the stacked #1 alliance
Everything clicked for the underdog alliance, while everything fell apart for the number 1 alliance. 303's full-court shooting overpowered 217's, 3476's gorgeous autonomous equaled or exceeded the massive auto from 1538 and 1986, and 1640's climb finally worked right. It was a perfect storm for some intensely competitive Newton finals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF9ApPlaNKY&t=32m32s

Curie Finals: Oh my goodness was Curie insane. On one hand, you have the non-scorched #1 alliance of 1678-148-862, whose power was too much for any other scorched alliance to handle. On the other hand, you had a rookie-captained alliance on 4814-67-1918 with two climbs, ridiculous full-court shooting, and awe-inspiring defense. Both alliances only had a 5-disc auto to boot. And the two best full-court shooters in the world faced off. THEN, to top it all off, a poor tech foul and red card were assessed, giving the underdog alliance an edge out of the gate. It was incredible and suspenseful, and despite the scorching, the Curie alliance put on a good show on Einstein.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyMHvoxtWrQ&t=36m46s

AND the Galileo finals, where the future world champs made a case for themselves. The opposing alliance was one of the strangest at championships. Outside of autonomous, the only real scoring done was by 2169, an extremely good full-court shooter. 2175 played enforcer, and scored 3-5 in auto. And 3284 scored 3 in auto, then played defense. Then, in Finals-1, 2169 couldn't line up for their full-court shot/loading issues/jammed or something, so their alliance scored a meager 59 points. The eventual world champions stunned everyone by putting up huge numbers just cycling, even though all three robots were capable of full-court shooting, and 1477 could play floor-pickup. The result was a dynamic and interesting finals match. (Although many would argue that the semi-final upset was better):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW87dF5Bp4U&t=43m0s

Also worth watching are the Michigan State Championship finals, ALL of the IRI eliminations, Waterloo finals, Crossroads finals, CT finals (),Battlecry finals, and I'm sure a number of others I'm forgetting that were fantastic and competitive.