I just got a note back from Andy - still no word on when the game pieces will be available for purchase (he had listed today as an estimate on the website). We’ve been very careful with ours so far but things are about to get a little rougher in testing.
It now says the 24th on his site.
Another year, same issue…
One of these years we’ll get a commercially and widely available game-piece.
Hopefully.
I think 2005 was the best year… Teams had to build their game pieces. It worked out real nice.
Last year wasn’t TOO bad, if you didnt mind practicing with a generic soccer ball, as opposed to the official one from DTI.
2005 was also good.
Yay for FIRST choosing a small manufacturer every year that massively underestimates the demand and is swamped come the second week of January.
I think we’d all go a little loopy if there were a FIRST game piece that didn’t immediately become unobtainium. It would be so foreign we wouldn’t know what to do.
Nothing screams sanity quite like finding out the already-obscure gamepiece is no longer in production, forcing you to create it yourself. (I’m looking at you, Lunacy!)
Lunacy was particularly bad, considering that many mechanisms depended on their ability to deal with large numbers (20+) of balls, and the availability of the balls meant that basically no one had access to that many.
That and 2003, Sterlite bins. 
Except for the junction pieces…
Auugh!
Or at least I’d say Auugh! if I were playing the game this year.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
“Hey! Let’s use custom and obscure game pieces that break. Teams will like that THIS year!”
Jason
What I can’t even begin to understand is that unlike many years when AT LEAST a FEW of the game pieces were around and were picked up in the first few days…
This year… game pieces were NOT available even BEFORE KICKOFF… and then not available until at least 2 weeks after kickoff…
Well I do have to give FIRST kudos for putting a set of three in each kit…
Imagine if that hadn’t happened!!!
oh well
I have bigger problems than this… like building a robot…
I think the GDC are hipsters… using obscure objects you’ve never heard of and can’t find anywhere as game pieces, and only use common objects just to be ironic.
Awww, now that would be to easy and against pop culture. I just may be able to stand the wait, but our pieces are already taking beating/need repair.
I just find it ridiculous that the game pieces aren’t available until week 3 for order! I mean its not like they knew what the game pieces were in November or anything! 
Once the GDC lets teams get past the “Where can I get that thing?”, they will say “Now that we have an unlimited supply, how many should we buy?”
Has anyone looked at the FTC game piece. It’s PVC. No [strike]FRC[/strike] FIRST team has ever had trouble getting PVC.
We had PVC game pieces in 2005. Except to make them into tetras you needed to buy these plastic joints from IFI, which had a very nasty habit of cracking. You can’t win!
I think this year is good in that you still only need one of each game piece, and barring serious damage, a little tape will keep it inflated. It’s not like you need 10 or 15 to accurately find out storage dynamics like you did with the Orbit Balls.
I think Dave went into this at some point – even though the GDC knows early if they need a custom game piece, lead times for the manufacturers are even longer.
Edit:
Hmm… can’t find it. I did find this where he talks about how FIRST does try to ensure teams have adequate access to gamepieces.
Ha! 2005 (Triple Play) used tetras made out of PVC pipe and fittings. Each tetra used twelve 1.5" PVC end caps, and most teams decided to build several tetras and goals.
The result? Every Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Sears around us was sold out of those PVC end caps within days of the Kickoff.
This must have set off alarm bells in their computer inventory tracking systems, because about a month later these stores were overflowing with that specific end cap, but by that point teams had already made all the tetras they needed.
I’ve said it elsewhere, but you know… the GDC could have achieved a similar “logo” effect and introduced a new gripping challenge by cutting the pieces out of plywood.
Sure, you wouldn’t want people tossing them over the wall of the driver station, but there are lots of ways to put game pieces in to play.
Or we could have game pieces made of 2x4.
Heck, a random selection of used car tires would make great game pieces. In fact for items intended to be “generic”, like the soccer ball, the GDC could intentionally specify that a random mix of manufacturers products would be used. That way we’d know that there wasn’t some specific characteristic of a game piece that we had failed to consider, because every game piece could be different.
Jason
Hmmmmmmm… 24th has come and almost gone, still not available
Hold on to your game pieces that came in the kit - we may need to bring them to the regional so they have enough to hold a competition.
I sure hope these pieces are on a boat already since The Chinese New Year has China shut down for the next few weeks!
Just think about all of the exercise those of us with full-length fields will get by running back and forth with our 3 KOP pieces! Or, better yet, think of the new local alliances that will be forged by teams sharing game pieces at co-located practice sessions!
Oh the humanity!