There are tens of thousands of existing 4x8 fields out there in the world.
All of them will need to be upgraded this year to 6x8.
However, VEX does not seem to sell an upgrade kit.
Yes, you can buy a Half Field for $99, but that gives you 6 extra walls and 2 extra corners.
Yes, you can buy the necessary 16 floor tiles and 4 walls a la carte, but that totals $207.
Thus, most people will buy the extra Half Field to save money, resulting in HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of extra, wasted, useless wall and corner pieces out there in the world.
I’m sure someone will chime in suggesting cool uses for these extra pieces, but in our case, we have enough extra plastic piling up from several years of running a VEX IQ team…
(Maybe IQ Challenge 2022 will use walls and corners as field elements: VEX IQ 2022: WALLED IN)
Is VEX going to offer a specific 4 wall and 16 tile upgrade kit soon?
That would be nice, but I don’t have any hope for it to come because I already bought everything that I’ll need. I had three old fields that I’m making into two and then I bought three new “new fields.”
So with 30 extra wall pieces and 10 extra corners… Yes, I’ll take any ideas I can get!
@jasonrohrer - The larger field has been known for the last year, if VEX was going to create a new set, I think we would have seen it by now. I bought 1/2 field kits for my 9 fields, so I have lots of corners and sides stored away. Maybe your idea of the walls being part of a game will happen.
I framed a poster that was mounted on cardboard with corners and straights. that took 10 walls and 4 corners
I emailed Vex support about a month ago and they said a new upgrade kit was coming. So that being said, they are probably sitting on old inventory of half and full field boxes that they have to get rid of first before they introduce the upgrade kit.
I hear you about the half-field inventory. But you could still buy those along with an upgrade kit, so they aren’t entirely wasted, even if the upgrade kit is available.
New teams might want a half field to practice on, so they might want to sell a half upgrade kit too, right?
