Thinking back a few years two teams come to mind:
2006: Team 177 - Bobcat Robotics
Had the honor of being on the same alliance as them at both the CT Regional and Battlecry that year falling victim to their defence. Their base driver was smart and relentless, and there is even a “Greatest Hits” video out there somewhere.
2010: Team 97 - Bionic Beef (then called “The Cow”)
Playing against them in Boston was a challenge, and they were had an absolute brute of a robot.
The most annoying defender was sliced-off kitbot with a net. It just sat in front of my human player station blocking basketballs. Then it balanced.
Team 16’s robot this year seemed to be very effective at CMP elimination rounds with the feeding strategy. It was maneuverable, fast, and from what I’m told relatively strong. Utilizing their beast of a ball acquisition mechanism, they definitely cleaned up the other side of the field.
When I saw Adam spin up the shooter, I knew that he was going to actually try that… And the it happened so fast I wasn’t even sure it worked, and had to watch the video later! It’s fun to see an idea you were just joking about become reality. 
Awwww, thanks! We’re disappointed our shooter never quite worked the way we wanted it to, but it was fun being the pushiest, shoviest robot at FLR and Buckeye. Believe it or not, the Canadian Duck Hunt (above) is my second-favorite moment of the season. My first is when we were playing 191 in the second qualifying game in a row, and as soon as we got in front of the fender their driver shrugged, put his hands on his head, and then went back to driving – but didn’t bother trying to score any more balls.
I think it says something about game strategy that a robot with a near-negative OPR was picked in the first round of selections in both of their regionals… The GDC did an awesome job designing Rebound Rumble, and I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with for next year!
207 was a beastly defender… a great mix of brute force, speed and finesse capable of pushing opponents around yet mobile enough to pick up tons of balls and shoot them back to us on our side. They flew through the air with the greatest of ease (not slowed down by the center bridge turned into a fixed ramp).They were a big part of the success the “Pink Metal Rollers” had this year and we are proud to call them our friends!
Not to toot my own horn, but our robot last year gave team 111 (last year’s world champs) their only two losses at the Midwest Regional by effectively just getting in their way and pushing them around with our super strong 6W tank drive.
I was awestruck that you guys seeded so low at Buckeye. Opr has nothing to do with awesome defensive skills.
I wish we had you guys on our alliance in elims. But 2 defensive robots wouldn’t work in this game very well.
You guys always go to the finals in even years? 2008 2010 2012…
I see a trend coming :ahh:
1218 in the finals match #1 of the MAR Championships successfully stood their ground and barely moved at all against 3 robots pushing against them to get to the bridge. While they incurred too many technical fouls for it to matter it was incredibly exciting to watch.
Nobody has said it but 488’s defense at their first regional was awesome they stopped a triple I love those matches.
Oh I love the old robots.
Team 131, CHAOS from 2000. They would pick balls out of the goals like no ones business
How about 111 from 2003? I mean, they won it all defending that ramp.
Lastly, 1319 from 2007. They were a huge reason that our alliance made it to Einstein that year. Incredible defense and quick enough to get back and deploy their ramps.
If you’d like to see the robot from that year…
Fast forward to 18:30 to see it in action, we were team 35 back then.
EDIT: Fast forward to 1:20:30 to actually see us playing HOT
The point of the design was to keep other robots from scoring by spinning the goal. It worked fairly well. I have a better video of it somewhere with “God Bless Texas” playing in the background ;)… I’ll keep looking for it.
As for that video itself, it seems to be the property of someone on HOT. It’s long but pretty entertaining.
As for this year… hands down my vote goes to 16 for reasons already explained in earlier posts. They were incredible.
Just curious (sorry to derail the thread) but why did the numbers change?
1370 were one of the best solely defensive bots in the early season and in MAR. I was amazed that they were such a late pick at Rutgers. They showed that it is possible to play great defense with mecanum wheels.
New numbers were assigned every year based on where the team sponsor’s name fell alphabetically relative to the rest of the teams in FIRST. I believe E-Systems was our main sponsor then and there still wasn’t a ton of teams in FIRST at the time, thus the low number.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe it was the following year that they locked the numbers that were assigned to teams, again based on sponsor name.
I would find it hard to believe if there wasn’t a thread you could find via search with more information about this topic.
On topic:
Another team we had the pleasure of competing with on Galileo was team 870. For raw, uncompromising, unapologetic defense, it didn’t get much better than them in our division. Too bad they were never picked for elims, they typically put on quite a show.
How about 494 from 2003 - 2004? Their driver is now a mentor for our team and apparently he was one of the most feared defenders of his time playing absolutely brute defense. He got to Einstein both years and won in 2004 so he must have been pretty good. Can anyone from back then confirm this?
1241 played some amazing defense for Semi 2 1 at GTR West. They managed to fend off a triple balance and push 2056 away from the fender on numerous occasions. I’ve been looking for a full video of this everywhere, but the video on YouTube cuts off rather early:
Does anyone have a link to a video made by someone in the stands of this match, possibly? It was fantastic defense they played and I’d enjoy watching that match again.
Here you go. You can’t see much of their amazing defence until you near the end of the video though 
Thanks so much! I’ve been searching for quite some time unable to find that match. Even though 1241 wasn’t within sight for most of that match, I still enjoyed your robot scoring - it was very impressive to see your robot score as well as it did!
I remember wondering to myself if 1241 incurred a penalty as to whether they made contact with the blue bridge or not, and their robot compressed a basketball between them and the bridge really well. Do you recall if they did indeed incur a penalty? Nonetheless, I believe the blue alliance incurred a foul for pinning 1241.
For a team that didn’t score a single ball or tube point over the past two seasons, 2586 has played some MAD Defence. They were a huge factor for their alliance that upset 217/33 at Troy in 2011 (no offence to 1718/3539, who were awesome). This year, they again made it to MSC based almost entirely on defence, though didn’t have as much elimination success.
Here’s one of the Troy matches, but you can see the rest on the same channel: http://youtu.be/gaAxiAO-Nag