RIP Hopper 2017

God I loved that alliance. All gear scorers.

Sad that they got booted from finals on match points, when their valid strat of 4 rotors + defense necessitated low scoring matches.

It’s always interesting (and not in a good way) when the method for seeding/ranking doesn’t reflect what is important at the next stage in the competition.

Here are some examples off the top of my head. I’m sure someone else can think of more.

  • 2012: Coopertition bridge earned extra RP (as much as a win) and helped teams seed high, but the Coopertition bridge had no meaning in Playoffs.
  • 2015: Coopertition sets/stacks earned bonus points in quals, but not Playoffs

In my opinion, for the case of 2017 Einstein, being able to win a best-of-three (which is required in the finals) is not well represented by five best-of-ones tie broken by total match points.

I do not mean to take anything away from the Houston finalists who clearly had more well-rounded alliances, and the Einstein rules were clear from day 1. I’m just not a fan of seeding systems that favor certain aspects of the game, even when at the end of the day what really matters is a head-to-head win.

I am glad you liked the alliance, we loved it too. We knew that going into those matches we had to prevent them from getting 4 rotors through defense while getting our own 4 rotors and 3 hangs. In both of the matches we lost we were unable to accomplish this. An all gear alliance was only going to work at this level of play with perfect execution and a bit of luck, which we were unable to do against the awesome power house alliances of Newton and Roebling.

We were able to keep both Newton and Roebling to within 30pts of us. These were the 3rd and 4th lowest score differences for all of Einstein the only smaller ones were Match 15 when they played each other (11pts) and Match 11 when Newton lost to Galileo.

Overall 4 Rotors + Defense does work, but the path to gold is going to be easier with a team that has some great shooters and the 4 rotor ability. 2848 is so excited to have played competitively with some of the best teams and robots in the world. While we would have loved to bring home another world championship, playing on Einstein twice in 4 years is something we will never forget.

Congrats to the Hopper winners and for holding us to 3 rotors in match 3 of the semifinals. Many people advised us to scorch the earth. I find this incredibly disrespectful to my team as well as the other teams. We absolutely desserved to be #2 alliance captain and it tarnishes my teams experience to hear “gracious decline”. I suppose we could have forced different elimination alliances, but I am proud of my team and their accomplishments. Semifinalists at worlds aint so bad for a group of misfits from Clifton, NJ.

Misfits my foot! 3314 absolutely deserved to be 2, and you have the record to prove it.

You guys were awesome. Great robot and great team. I had a lot of fun playing with you guys.

And quite honestly, I don’t think any of the top teams would have declined you guys. If they had, they really would have shot themselves in the foot. You ran gears really well and climbed every single time.