As the post title states, Auckland has just had our first scrimmage of the gateway season.
It was a surprisingly large first event of the season, and all the robots were VERY competitive.
Congratulations go to Lynfield College Robotics (2915a) and Free Range Robotics (2921) who won the competition.
This photo was taken after a finals match. All red objects and the bonus barrels were in their final positions with 20 seconds left in the driver controlled period…
That is all the truth, one of our semi finals matches we scored everything with 30seconds to go… we kinda just stood there going, well what now? 
and we had also stolen our opponents doubler barrel as well 
Overall it was a great day, we ended up with a good alliance and not losing a single game all day!
Good work to those who turned up and we hope to see you all again soon 
Thank you to Kiwibots who organised and ran the scrimmage, with volunteers from both the Massey University (MESS) and Auckland University (AURA) teams.
For those interested, here are some of the stats:
25 Teams competed, and the top four teams were:
The highest scoring match was Final Match 1, with 2915A and 2921 beating 2919 and 2941 33-23.
No skills challenges were played at this scrimmage.
A short article that we’ve written (with some more details) is on our website: http://www.aura.org.nz/archives/688
Great work from our aMESS and AURA volunteers who helped this run so smoothly - especially as we only had one field kit. The field resets and scoring were very quick so we got through a fair number of matches per team even with the limited resources.
Well done Freerange and Lynfield, very impressed with your work.
I anticipate that a few months from now we’re going to be out of game pieces on the field VERY quickly each match.
Great Day, thank you to everyone who worked to make it so
How did you guys get possession of the other doubler barrel?
Possibly the blue alliance losing control of it and the red snatching it up?
Thats true. From this picture were the blue alliance even playing, or were serious?
Our opponents dropped it and we picked it up, and yes there was an opponent in the game in the picture, i believe it was semi finals where we stole the doubler 
and yes we are serious, everything we post is true
The other team were very new to the game and didn’t think about the fact that the other team could take it. They put it right in the middle of their alliance tile with no robot there (I can say that because it was my junior team on blue :P)
Quick thinking on red’s part to grab it though, didn’t take them long
Thats really amazing
I know some people got video, but i dont think some people want it online… or to get around that problem we could blur the robots out in the video? O.o but that would be silly…
Videos and photos are taken at nearly all New Zealand scrimmages and competitions. However, some teams feel that posting this material online threatens our competitiveness, as other teams are then able to copy our robots or take ideas or strategies. Out of respect to those teams, New Zealand teams do not post videos or photos online unless they are of their own robots only.
Yes, although posting the design process is a very helpful thing to some teams who genuinely are interested in learning, there are always teams that will just outright copy robots. Sadly, this type of thing is harmful to the competition as those who try to build robots that are their own get beat by people who just copied. It is quite demoralizing to those teams. I appreciate the fact that you are not fueling the fire.
First of all, we had an awesome scrimmage yesterday and thank you to all the volunteers and Glenfield for hosting the scrimmage. We all had a great time. It was impressive how high the standard was given it is so early in the season and this was the first time we saw the field in person.
It was just sitting on the blue tile looking quite lonely, so I took it (sorry 2919 and 2941).
Thanks Jack! We were really pleased you picked us!
And great match to 2919 and 2941 too. It was an awesome match and I know I was getting nervous after the first match.
Hey everyone.
Yeah, Free Range and Lynfields robots were extremely solid.
I thinkthat picture is from a semis match, not the finals, because I dont think we did that badly XD. Im pretty sure we scored our own doubler, and we definitely scored our own negator.
The first finals match was pretty close, but in the second match one of our claw servos came off and 2919’s intake jammed up, so needless to say we couldn’t do too much. I was able to pick up and score a few objects due to the servo randomly wedging itself in place, but we really stood no chance.
Good games to Lynfield and Freefrange, and thanks to K-force for picking us, because of our super awesome whispered suggestions when they were unsure of who to pick XD.
Would like to upload videos, but I would have to blur out everyones robots or something, which seems like a waste of time. Sorry.
haha the power of whispering!
looking forward to the unofficial scrimmage we have next sat! (for those who didn’t know of this now you do xD)
I will be there, but only to help out with other peoples robots because our new (and improved) robot wont be done by then
Actually it was 2918 (They were playing as 2918c for me (long story, don’t ask), they will usually be 2918e though) and their alliance, my juniors were the ones who put the doubler in and made it lonely
Jack you show off
WAIT WHAT!?!?!?!?!
You are IMPROVING your robot?
I’m not going to ask…
Planning to score all the objects with a minute to go? XD
This is me wishing I lived in Auckland. Can’t go every weekend =(.
you scare me…