2005 Midwest Regional

[AmyPrib]

I thought the event site was good. The staff was a little bit nazi about the staircases, but honestly that's fine.. frustrating but fine. It is a safety issue, and to keep the aisles clear. One of my pet peeves is when people stand around on the staircases for no reason, so that people can't get through or can't see around them. It was pretty crowded during awards and final rounds, but there were seats around - maybe not with your team, but there were seats. The food was expensive, but not as outrageous as they could have been. There are options around that. I think most of the volunteers (that I interacted with) were friendly, so that's a plus. There were a few field problems that really delayed things, but we can blame that all on the cowboy

As far as the game itself:
Seems there were many inconsistent calls on penalties, i.e. one match a robot blatantly dangled high over the wall and did not get disabled, but later on, "pure breaking the plane" was a disablement. Did I miss the update, or rule stating that? The aggressive play penalties seemed to get out of hand nearing the end. Some were called for running into a robot from 2ft away or less - I hardly consider that ramming at high speed. The only defense that appeared legal was pure blocking - forget about trying to bump a robot out of position. One robot was penalized for it during elim rounds, and I couldn't believe it.. I watched them the entire match, and couldn't figure out where the overly aggressive play happened.
There were some disables for accidental tipping, even though the rules clearly state that that could be part of normal game play, but yet other was tipped with clear intentional interaction, and nothing was called. (not saying the tipping was intentional, but the robot interaction was intentional, whereas it really wasn't in the following case). One robot simply turned around with their arm out to go to their auto loadzone, while another robot was sitting behind them and fell over when the other arm whacked into them. The first guy was disabled....
I feel like the "over the wall" should have been forseen with such a knowingly vertical game. But I guess, just be careful near the wall and don't let anyone push you over the wall.