During the finals match this weekend at a competition, the opposing team used a defensive strategy that we believed was against the G12 rule to block our alliance. The opposing alliance was a front dumper design that used standoffs as their intake. During both the 1st and the 3rd finals matches, this robot without any scoring objects in its possession, waited for our alliance to go to the fence and try to score. When our alliance went to the fence to score they rammed our alliance with their standoffs. In both matches they entangled their standoffs in our alliance’s claw and stalled out their claw motors. They were hitting our alliance with such force, that in both matches, their standoffs fell off onto our side of the field. No warnings were issued, and it was considered to be a viable strategy by the head ref.
I have edited this post to remove the location of the tournament as well as any comments made by the head ref.
Is this type of strategy permitted?
<G12> Strategies aimed solely at the destruction, damage, tipping over, disruption of Hanging, or Entanglement of Robots are not part of the ethos of the VEX Robotics Competition and are not allowed.
As always, we cannot make rulings based on a description of an event without knowing exactly what happened. That being said what you have described sounds like normal defensive game play. Ramming is typical in VRC games. If the referee determined that the team was simply trying to prevent you from scoring and was not intentionally trying to damage or Entangle your Robot, this would not be a violation of <G12>.