http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22023080
skip to 35:10 
In all honesty, I think the decision to go for the isolation thirty in autonomous by the blue team is a prime example of teams using poor strategies in playoffs. The middle twenties and the middle thirty are the most important goals in the game. Owning them is the most critical element of winning a game, with the exception of doubling your isolation thirty. However, there is no rush to fill your isolation thirty. It’s uncontested!
Was it by 720P?
They were extremely good. I enjoyed watching them play 
ya 720p scored 7 pts in the isolation zone, and 1138b scored 5 pts in the interaction zone. (1492A was also on this alliance and played in QF 2-1)
I agree.
However if you know that the other robot will beat you to the 20" goals, then might as well do something you know you can do.
Something we were planning on doing was scoring the center 30" from isolation while the interaction robot blocks the opposing interaction robot from getting to it. You would go for the 20s first, of course, but the center 30" stays empty during autonomous if both teams are going for it, usually, as they hit each other.
No more contested goals in Sack Attack though 
No, but there are plenty of bonus sacks in the center of the field for robots to fight over. And I think many robots are going to want to block/score in the 30" goals.
I would actually disagree with these statements. One of the reasons I believe our team made it to finals was the metagaming in autonomous. It all has to do with efficient use of time (one) and efficient use of game objects (two). First, we understood that almost all top caliber teams would spring forward and cap the 20" goals and most likely score on them, but ONLY after teleop begun. We would use this time to score 5 in the 30" goals, pick up the last two objects and hover over the 20" goals. If we could get the 20" goals, it was almost a guaranteed win; if we didn’t, we were still in decent shape. We knew that if our partners claimed the center 30", our alliance would have two 30"s and two 11.5"s by the time there was about 1:20 left. At this time the opposing alliance has the choice to open the gate or leave it closed. If the gate opened, we would score in the remaining 30" and 11.5" goal because most of iso’s game objects went into the 20"s. If we got these two goals at least partially, the doublers and negators would strongly favor our alliance. Recall that the opponents have the 20" goals. That’s an extremely easy negation, in comparison to negating the 30" on the other side of the field. Our alliance partners could double either the center or the isolation 30" goal. The opponents are pretty much forced to double their 20" goals since they spent their time and game objects filling those up.
tl;dr: We thought it was more efficient time wise, more efficient for doubler/negator, more efficient for claiming goals to forgo the 20" isolation goals. It worked for the most part until 2W ripped us apart with their epic wall bot.
EDIT: Since we were done with isolation (no more objects to score) regardless of whether we claimed the 20" goals or not, we opened the gate anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds after teleop begins. This would help us greatly in aiding our allies and carrying out a variation of what murdomeek calls the “swamp” strategy.
There’s also a bit more in-depth strategy with the 20" goals. Our strategy worked best with the current NZ metagame of going straight to the cover for the 20" goals. They would cap the 20"s and most likely score one in each 20" goal. We would take the last two objects in isolation and score on the far side 20". Our opponents would respond by filling the rest of the close 20" goal. This way, the opponents would have to reach over the fence to score the doubler (easy for us to descore) and we would have an easy 4 point negate.
Notice how in most of our games we win by this narrow 2-7 point margin. Matches to see this carried out include Technology QF2-1, 2-2, SF 1-1, 1-3, F1 (the counterstrategy), F2, F3, Main Arena SF 1-1, 1-2
Are you by chance a Redditor, rampantfang?
I’m going to post a more in depth reply, just wanted to know that first!
I am! Getting that karma is addicting. I’m not sure why you think rampantfang is, though.
He used “tl;dr” and “EDIT” which are both things I immediately associate with Reddit use.
2W’s bot was a doozy, wasn’t it? I am still in shock when I think about the fact that they were the 2nd pick for the fourth seed team. A robot like that was completely game-breaking.
I guess I had always been structuring my playoff strategies around the use of a wallbot. What I like most about winning the 20" goals is that only one can be negated, and even if negated, it costs us far fewer points than losing a 30" goal. By capping both of the twenties, we forced our opponents to place a bare minimum of two objects in a capped goal to tie our score. This is why I always had my drive team score two in our opponent’s 20 and 1 in our 20 once we had a wallbot. If they wanted to tie their twenty, they needed to waste 3 objects to match our 3 points. If they wanted to tie our twenty, they had to use at least 2, and if they used any more than that it was an EXTREMELY easy negation because the negator barrel would be sticking out of the top of a nearby goal. If we win two goals, they can really only negate one, and tying them forced them to waste objects that can be put in that center 30. And, if they ignored the twenties and went for the center thirty, then we would simply negate the center thirty and win with the 20’s. By spreading out the objects, I felt we had a better chance of not losing all of our points.
I think your strategy is much more effective in a 4 NZ bot match. Ours was always at least somewhat built with the idea of us having a wallbot in playoffs. After we won the Cal State University Northridge tournament with 1437X (an amazing wallbot), we all felt that NZ-Wallbot was simply easier to win with than NZ-NZ. Denying a doubler was GG;WP every time. We focused on selecting a wallbot that could not be passed by, and that was why we selected 2W, who we knew had never been passed in autonomous.
There is a vex robotics sub reddit you know
Sorry for irrelevance to topic. Lots of auton points though in that clip, very nice.
Haha, I’m sadly not a huge redditor. It’s a pretty big thing here, I just never got into it (like twitter). Edit: and tl;dr are things I’ve picked up from my redditor friends :P.
That Godly Auton
I definitely agree, 720p’s auton was great. The trouble with it was it could be disrupted by other teams also going for the 20" goals. The fact that it was actually autonomous (as opposed to repositioning) made that more of a problem, unfortunately. On the other hand, it also made it more impressive.
@rampantfang: I agree that baiting a negatable goal on the close 20" goal was a legit strategy. The rest of your post I disagree with. Filling your 30" goal early was not “more efficient” because time was not a constraint. Also, this:
Isn’t really true. Plenty of teams managed to win the 20s and also fill and double their isolation 30" goal. Doing so was pretty much required for a win in high-level games in New Zealand.
It seems to me (I haven’t watched that much high school yet) that a lot of New Zealand teams in isolation lost points because their interaction partners were unwilling or unable to pass them objects, meaning that the isolation 30" didn’t get filled properly.
These have been common on the internet since before forever. :rolleyes:
I found that in many games, we would leave our iso very early on and when we entered the opponent’s iso with our game objects, the 11.5" goal would be there to claim, and there would be 3-4 objects left to score in the 30" goal. What you said about the “unable to pass them objects” is most definitely true, which is what happened in a lot of the games I watched. The 2v1 in interaction is also an advantage for claiming the center 30" goal. I guess the crux of our gameplay rested on the 30"s while that of New Zealand rested on the 20"s. I dunno what happened to the efficiency we saw in the New Zealand World Cup, because there always around 3-5 game objects left at the end of every match.
Now that I think about it, a dumper robot that would put game objects into the closed isolation zone would be extremely powerful.
I guess the biggest mistake teams made was opening the gate before they had their 30" filled. Most probably became overeager and didn’t want to wait for their partners to send objects over (especially if their partner was locked over the center 30" or being pushed around).
Our strategy was based on getting out of the isolation zone first and taking territory earlier on. The idea was that two robots will effectively slow the opponent far more than just one. This also helped with filling the interaction 30’ goal since objects were focused on that goal instead of the 20’s. By getting out of the isolation zone early, we were able to cut off pathways to objects that the interaction zone robot needed. Even if they wanted to pass objects over, they were hard pressed to. In my opinion, the best counterstrategy is to pass over matchloads in autonomous in order to allow the isolation bot to fill up the 20’s and their 30’s quickly and without interruption. At that point, the interaction bot only has to harass and object starve until the isolation robot is ready to come out and transition into a different strategy, like swamping or its counter.
New Zealand’s World Cup had incredibly efficient robots. They were really amazing; however the only reason why they cleaned up the field so insanely fast, besides the great robot build and strong driving skills, was that whenever a robot invaded upon territory, there was no fight. After gates were open, robots weren’t really having major disputes until negators and doublers were introduced. Getting to objects was easier. Whenever there was a dispute, objects were left behind on field. At Worlds, with the increased popularity of defensive and aggressive strategies, objects were being left behind in the interest of protecting dominance in goals. It became more important and easier to defend once one was clearly ahead rather than continue with an offensive scoring strategy.
We weren’t able to execute a strong interaction strategy effectively against 2W’s wallbot. Their strategy prevailed and I’d have to say I love their goal cap. That was a nice idea. Totally ripped our plan apart haha. Good job Gladstone!
Nicely done. That was an awesome autonomous.
We were 3rd pick 
Man your robot was so good!!! Strategy was perfect!!!