Serpentine Draft

[scottandme]

As the person who said this to the OP, might as well add a few thoughts.

Firstly, the idea was more or less a joke - it's pretty obviously an untenable solution without making large and odd changes to the alliance selection process.

The thought was just borne out of the problem that this game dynamic highly disincentivizes picking from the #1 seed, at least at smaller district events. Obviously the game dynamic has been picked apart in many threads already, so no need to rehash it heavily. But having a relatively "flat" field of teams, where the scoring tasks are relatively simple - you're better off with 2 "average" teammates to make a run in elims. We seeded 1st at both events we attended, and that was the last place I wanted to pick from (ignoring the district points, etc).

The penalty of seeding high obviously varies based on the size and depth of the field, it was just especially pronounced this year - where many of the "scoring" robots are evenly matched, and there's a larger gap between the #16 and #9 picks than the #8 and #1 picks. Unless you're at an event with a small number of clear-cut powerhouses, or a really deep field of teams, it's a struggle.

So the thought was - if seeding #1 is a disadvantage, how could it be made back into an advantage? Short of going to the IRI style non-serpentine, that idea was about all I could come up with.

I think we'll see the same dynamic at MARCMP, the #2 and #3 seeds didn't advance out of the quarterfinals in 2012 or 2013, what chance do they have this year?