Playing well with others while scaling the tower

[Racer26]

Originally Posted by XaulZan11

For what it's worth, of the final 8 alliances (division finalist and winners), half had a robot that climbed above the first rung (two alliances actually had two). There were a lot of really good robots that won a lot of events/matches by climbing in 2013. I actually think this year will be similar to 2013 in that there will be several viable strategies or alliance compositions that will win.

This was precisely the reason that 1114 initially shocked everyone in 2013 by not having a floor pickup in favour of having a 30pt climber.

They knew that:

a) They were Pre-Qualified as an Einstein team in 2012, and as such didn't need to win a regional to qualify
b) 7 disc autos were a thing that only one team on an alliance could do, and having 2 7disc autos on your alliance was of no benefit.
c) 7 disc autos would be fairly common among top seeded teams at CMP
d) Reliable, fast, 30pt climbers would be rare, and thus of high value to a 7disc auto alliance captain.

Their plan worked, too. They were the #1 alliance captain's first pick. They just ran into some bad luck between there and Einstein.