Having won five of the six tournaments (coming in as Finalist in the one not won) in my region this season and my four years of experience. I have come to believe that strategy is the dominate aspect of winning. I am a Senior, so this is my last year of VEX. However I maintain that the following is true.
EDIT PART 1-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think it’s important define strategy before going into detail of, I apologize I neglected to do this earlier.
I define the following terms as…
Strategy: The plan with each step meant to answer “How is this {action} going to affect the match?”
Execution: The means in which the plan {strategy} is accomplished.
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Scouting the competition is crucial to preparedness.
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Identifying strengths and weaknesses of your alliance’s robots and your opponents’ robots along with both sides strategies is vitally important.
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“Don’t fix what isn’t broke.” is not a bad saying, but remaining unchanged allows your competition to improve and counter your strategy.
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Good robots are VERY important along with driving, but autonomi can make or break a match. Use them effectively.
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Heterogeneous alliances (alliances made up of robots with different purposes/motor distribution/torque ratios) are stronger than homologous alliances (alliances made of up teams of the same design and purpose). I say this because while homologous alliances are more flexible in what they can do, skills runs show that a single efficient scoring robot can score enough to win a match.
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(Quoting one of the best members of my club) “Large balls are game changers, buckyballs are game winners.” If you take control of both towers, it is very hard to win a match. Autonomous + Hanging can get you quite a few points, but failing to have the towers can easily cost the match.
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(I am probably get some criticism for this) Skills runs do NOT indicate a good competition team. Skills runs indicate teams that…
a. Are good scorers
b. Are comfortable with their robot
c. Practice a lot
d. Understand how to get a lot of points faster
What they do NOT indicate is the following…
a. Understand how to drive defensibly
b. Understand how to defeat other teams
c. Can work well with partners
d. Can adapt to the situation
Too many times I have seen team’s skill scores used to determine who to pick. They can help, but picking all scoring robots does not win you the match, it means that you have the potential to score faster but not to score more. An excellent example of this is Green Egg who I have seen consistently make unique designs that change matches with what they do and what they force their opponents to do.
An example of what happens when none of this is taken into consideration was the entirety of the Sack Attack High School Worlds Finals. I was outright disappointed at the lack of autonomi and strategy. Both alliances went into the match looking to score the most points. When everything was scored, they traded off descoring and rescoring objects. Lo-and-behold when the matches were over, the team with the highest skills score won because they were better scorers. This isn’t to say that either side did anything wrong, but the alliance with a scoring disadvantage could have try pushing one trough and defending it, preventing their opponents from descoring it. Essentially I mean that you can rarely beat someone at their own game when they are the best at what they do. This leads me into my last point.
- There are two ways to effectively run a “successful” strategy. To do what you want to do, or to prevent your opponents from doing what they want to do. To succeed in both is essentially the best way to win a match. Therefore, as your competition develops in response to the winning strategy (in this case taking the towers and hanging in my opinion + autonomous if you can get it) you need to make it your mission to either become the best at the winning strategy (quite difficult) or you can make a strategy that beats the winning one. In Roundup from four years ago, picking up the pylons after scoring them became the winning strategy - something the VEX creators only speculated about. What you need to avoid here is “reinventing the wheel”, you don’t want to just make a worse version of what already exists, make something which counters what already exists with room for the unexpected.
EDIT PART 2-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I feel the need to address more on the in-match factors of strategy that I believe are important.
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Mindgaming your Opponent - Making your opponent nervous or at least uncomfortable is a good way of affecting their driving. Some people are better than others at handling stress, but at some level the drivers care about how well they are doing which is something that can be taken advantage of. There are many ways to accomplish this - aggressive driving and especially aggressive autonomi that “get in your opponent’s face” are quick ways to negatively affect their driving and what they want to do and when they want to do it.
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Remaining Calm - The flipside of mindgaming your opponent is that you need to control your emotions as well. I found that accepting whatever the outcome is before the match is an effective means of controlling your emotions and nerves. Obviously you can still get nervous, but avoiding things like shouting, lone wolfing, and abandoning the plan is the point.
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“Canceling” - What I mean by “canceling” is the idea of using the ‘lesser’ robot or the more ‘defensive’ robot on your alliance and using the to block their better scoring robot. If the remaining robot on your alliance can then outscore your opponent’s remaining robot, you have a much chance at winning. This is more commonly applied when your alliance is considered to be the weaker one, but can be quite effective. In this way, even a chassisbot with a decent partner can beat an alliance with superior drivers.
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Identifying the Best Places to Go on the Fly - During match, no matter what the circumstances may be, it is important to be able to quickly know where to go next. You need to be able to identify what scores you the most points/what gets rid of the most points of your opponents in the most time efficient way.
These are what I have decided is true after my four years of VEX, what are your thoughts?
) With about 35 seconds to go, there was plenty more 2915A could have done to have a more promising score, but the risk was very high with Lucas (2941A) being able to swoop in any moment and take the whole trough, hence we chose to just sit. Boring? Yes. Strategically right? I would say so.