I predict
The winning alliance in St. Louis will consist of no fewer than one robot that cannot limbo the low bar, and no fewer than two robots whose primary shooting position is from the outer works.
Bryce Nack has spoken.
PS. Make your last minute bold predictions here. Or just tear mine to shreds and don’t worry about it. 
I predict that defending your tower from incoming boulders will be more difficult than most people here on CD are thinking.
I predict that winning alliances will often consist of at least 1 robot that can do nothing but climb and play defense (and scale the easier defenses), probably with a cheesecaked climber. All 6 bots on einstein will have climbers. The top seed at every regional will be a low bar bot, but the 2nd seed may not be. And I’m willing to bet that 1st seeds will win strong regionals, but weak regionals will not be won by 1st seeds.
2056 will lose their first regional, and win their first championship.
I’ll challenge that with, At least 1 event will have a non-low bar robot as 1 seed captain.
I’ll raise you that no less that 20% of events will be won by an alliance captain that is not low bar capable.
The Portcullis will quickly become the most popular defence to be chosen by alliances and audiences alike.
254 will have a 3 ball auto by championships.
Also championship winning alliance will be 3 cycling robots who all shoot in the high goal from the outerworks.
The top 20 high goal shooters in terms of OPR will all have some form of alignment other than driving manually, i.e. vision targeting
Replace outerworks with batter and I agree.
How do you expect 3 separate robots to efficiently score from the batter? That seems like a nightmare even without a defender. If you add a defender into the mix (which I think we’ll see in nearly all eliminations matchups) the scoring will become abysmal.
Easy, same way that 2/3 bots used the position under the pyramid facing the center high goal in 2013.
To clarify, I mean up the batter against the castle wall as a hard stop, not just getting close to the batter and shooting.
The world champion alliance will not have a high goal shooting robot. ALSO, they will have their division’s best robot at playing defense on the opposing alliance.
there will be at least one time during Einstein play where a robot will become stuck underneath the low bar, or flip itself attempting to traverse one of the other outer works
I think you will see a few things develop over the next few weeks.
I think as scoring of boulders increases and inbounding becomes something that you are forced to do as boulders come in, instead of as your alliance needs them, you will need to have a presence in the secret passage to keep the enemy from short circuiting their cycles and easily running up the score. Therefor, defense will be critical and will be something you see on 6/8 elimination alliances at every regional up until district championships and Saint. Louis.
Tall robots will be the landfill robots of this year (a bit biased… but looking at #1, congestion issues at the batter and in the courtyard in general, and ease of manipulation of category A and C if you built tall, etc.)
Least bold prediction: Climbing will be much more like in 2010 than 2013.
ITT: people predicting that their robot design will win Einstein.
Here’s a bold prediction: the portcullis will be knocked over or broken at least once this year.
The alliance that wins Einstein will have a rookie team that was the first pick by the alliance captain. That same alliance will not have been a #1 seed in its respective division.
At least one low goal will be scored on Einstein.
Not every robot on the winning alliance will hang.