Great Plays of 2009

[Tetraman]

I think it was at Midwest or buckeye...One of the human players threw a Moon Rock and it landed on top of the trailer's sensor bars. It was there for a few seconds before it was knocked off due to a collision to the wall...

[coldfusion1279]

Originally Posted by NorviewsVeteran

The other alliance could have thrown a super cell, missed, been collected by 118, and all 3 were made in.

But thats just a guess.

So our alliance (1279, 118, and 538) had a pretty dynamic alliance. 118 was our empty cell runner. I don't remember the specific match but it it was usually a tandem of our human player and the human player from 538 (I think) that made the critical super cell shots.

In one match, 1279's human player made 2 super cells, and our other human player made 1. That was really exciting.

KUDOS to our human players, because without them, the matches would have been a lot closer.

[Joe_Widen]

1732 did an awesome job shutting down 1114/71 too when they played defense on them in the quarter finals. Didn't it get to the point where 1000 ended up playing defense on the defense(1732) to try and free up 71 or 1114?

[TotalChaos]

Originally Posted by GBilletdeaux930

1675 beating the undeafeated 1114 in the last qualifying match, twice!

1675 pinned 1114 in the corner the whole match and ended up winning. But then they replayed the match because one of the winning teams alliance partners was never enabled. So they replayed, and they did it again!

I think that is what killed 1114. Before those matches they were unstoppable. Then 1675 showed the rest of the competition that they could be stopped. So they were stopped in the quarterfinals too. Ended up #1 seed losing to #8 seed. Great matches.

The first match 68 was a very interesting one... And great for me to see before our regional as a driver! It's a excellent example of what to do/avoid depending on if you're playing offense or defense.

I'm working on getting the Midwest video I have on TBA, but since 68 was redone and the score of the second match was the one counted I don't think TBA will have a link to the original, so if you want you can watch it here:
http://www.polytechfusion.com/Midwest_Q_68_bad.wmv

- Austin

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by Joe_Widen

1732 did an awesome job shutting down 1114/71 too when they played defense on them in the quarter finals. Didn't it get to the point where 1000 ended up playing defense on the defense(1732) to try and free up 71 or 1114?

I agree. A lot of people are going on about the underdogs beating the top ranks... but I think what is more memorable about that match was the defense and the active movements the robots made. They didn't pull any "run-away" defense, they went head-on, and forced 71 and 1114 to make offensive maneuvers which 1732 and the others on that alliance would take advantage of.

[Fireworks 234]

Originally Posted by jgannon

It wasn't a game-changing play, but a human player at Buckeye launched a moon rock half the length of the field right at the buzzer, and managed to land it perfectly on top of the vision target on the opponent's trailer. It was pretty exciting one-in-a-million occurrence.

Yeah I heard about this, do you know if it was scored at Buckeye?

[Rick]

Little biased, but BAE Finals were awesome.

[AlexD744]

I think it was Buckeye finals #1 where 2 robots pinned another during autonomous in it's starting position. The human player scored and got a 20 point lead going into teleoperated.

[Lord Byron]

As far as individual moments go (not alliance), one of my favorite moments for us was when in our last qualification match, our robot pinned two enemy robots by itself. We wanted to pin the enemy alliance's best scorer, but a rookie team's robot got in between us and them. We proceeded to push the rookie team's robot into the target robot and pin them both to the wall. We then held them both there for somewhere between 1/5 to 1/3 of the match while our human player filled up the target robot's trailer. We knew we had a lot of pushing power, but just knowing we could do that was a amazing moment for us.

To be honest though, it really wasn't that good a strategy. We could only fill up one of their trailers, and the rookie team's robot didn't have the ability to score so pinning it didn't benefit us. Having two robots between us and the wall also put us in the middle of the field making us a good target for their human players. However, we still were excited when we pulled it off.

[Janucik]

I my favorite play is quaters 3 match 2 at BAE when team 20's ROBOT scored a super cell with a secound left (yes i know im biased). Our alliance partner had shot and missed and we just had time to pick it up and shoot before time expired.

http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv...?matchid=11854

Unfortunalty you dont see the shot but you see us pick it up and then it being in the trailer.

[byteit101]

Originally Posted by jgannon

It wasn't a game-changing play, but a human player at Buckeye launched a moon rock half the length of the field right at the buzzer, and managed to land it perfectly on top of the vision target on the opponent's trailer. It was pretty exciting one-in-a-million occurrence.

I saw the field manager take a cell phone pic of that moon rock on the trailer before taking it down. that was cool!

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by GBilletdeaux930

I think that is what killed 1114. Before those matches they were unstoppable. Then 1675 showed the rest of the competition that they could be stopped. So they were stopped in the quarterfinals too. Ended up #1 seed losing to #8 seed. Great matches.

Actually, on Thursday, we (1732) were able to slow down 1114 pretty well. Instead of scoring on 'robotless trailors', our aggressive driver decided to try to score on 1114 and in the process held them to one dump in the two practices matches. While it was only practice, it gave us hope that we could slow them down in the quarterfinals. 1675 was the first to pin them in 'real matches' (if I recall correctly) and probably did a better job than we did.

Anway, thanks for the praise, I'll be sure to pass it along to our drivers. We are just lucky it was a best of 3 (I doubt we could beat them again) and got to 1114 early in the season. Knowing 1114's dedication, I'm sure they are doing everything to get better; there is no way I would want to play them again this season.

[rsisk]

Semi finals and the Finals at San Diego. Check out the defensive play of team 2543. They had the entire arena on their feet as they held 968 pinned to the wall and prevented them from being able to dump. 968 dominated the whole regional.... that is until the met 2543. It was awesome

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Semi finals and the Finals at San Diego. Check out the defensive play of team 2543. They had the entire arena on their feet as they held 968 pinned to the wall and prevented them from being able to dump. 968 dominated the whole regional.... that is until the met 2543. It was awesome

I think the common term a bunch of us used was "968 got 1114'd at San Diego"

It was sick strategy. No offense to them, but 968's partners (IMHO) were not helping out RAWC as much as they should've. Don't get me wrong, they were darn good robots.

[Viper37]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

It was sick strategy. No offense to them, but 968's partners (IMHO) were not helping out RAWC as much as they should've. Don't get me wrong, they were darn good robots.

There really isn't much that can be done when wide robots pin long ones. It was a tactic that really gained popularity at this regional.

Wide robots would use the bumpers to their advantage and pin robots between the kingpin and the trailer. Teams were able to "pin" robots without using the walls, even in the middle of the field. This strategy was demonstrated perfectly by 2543 during the Finals when they pushed the Holy Cow's halfway across the field, sideways, into the drivers station wall. 2543 had quite a machine, as they were able to maintain this pin on more than one team over the course of the regional, for extended periods.

We gave it our best effort to free our Alliance partner, but despite our best efforts, there really was nothing we could do to free 968.

In my opinion, 2543's choice early on to use their robot's low center of gravity and power ramping system to pin other robots, was a brilliant tactical decision. My hat is off to you guys.