Aerial Assault - The Robot Card Game

[JesseK]

What I really liked about what I saw is that there are multiple types of implementations of multiple subsystems for building during the season. Then, during the game play, there are multiple types of movements during the game.

For young teams, the relative 'cost' of the subsystem cards in the 'build season' phase of the game should give them an idea of level of effort with respect to finite resources. The game play phase will then give them an idea of level of reward in a multi-robot environment. This might help them realize that the more important decisions they have to make as a team are about what to focus on rather than what the coolest mechanism is.

For my team in particular, the organization of the game play phase actually parallels how we've organized our scouting (accidentally...) in the last few years. "Who is the best at X" -- rather than focusing on individual robots, it's usually easier (and more fun) for our scouts to pay attention to specific movements on the field which would lead a team to being the best at 'X'. We then try to get the top 5 of each of our categories, find overlap and choose accordingly.

So the card game, even if it isn't a perfect mirror to the season, provides another fun and engaging way to get students (and stubborn mentors...) trained on an effective way to strategize and scout for a game.