Hi all,
Background:
During pre-covid, Singapore was used to be known for our super early season tournament - SingVex (or Singapore VEX Robotics Championship).
Now with covid out of the way, we (the SG vrc community) are still hoping get something back on track.
So hence 8059 Blank. has decided to host this early season scrimmage and called it Blank’s Beginnings on 3 June 2024.
Think the obvious difference between SingVex and Blank’s Beginnings is definitely the size of the event - this year, we only have 13 teams (from 6 schools/academy) for the event (holiday has started about 1 week ago). But I would still think it is a decent size for a scrimmage.
But most importantly, the main objective of such an early season event is for teams to try out some of their designs and strategies, something like an advance proof-of-concepts.
The side objectives will be for beginning teams to learn from the more seasoned teams, and hopefully helped to kickstart their season.
Organisation and Refereeing:
As it is the 1st event that we held for this season, and with the lack of manpower, we have decided to plan with a 10-min match cycle with 2 playing fields and with matches livestreamed to the room where the pits were at.
13 teams and each getting 6 qualifying matches.
And then we had 6 alliances for the elimination matches - Bo1 except for the final which was Bo3.
The field setting was much faster than expected and the rings were definitely much easier to handle than the tri-balls. Lesser number of game elements to setup helped as well.
I don’t foresee much issues for the EPs organising events for this season.
Only one small thing to note (for those still using the old model of field perimeters) - the 2 neutral stakes tend to slant inwards. But I guess those using the new portable fields shouldn’t face this issue.
Referring is not difficult. Just need to keep a lookout on the possession limits.
The main problem that we faced was actually during scoring, eg. are the rings in the tipped over mobile goals touching the tiles? And also, unexpected huge mess of rings and mobile goals at the corners - which is touching the lines and which is not? And which is resting on which, etc?
Uploaded these 2 pics to show the difficulties that scorers will faced.
But I do think it is still a lot more manageable as compared to last season’s game.
About Robots and Gameplays
I want to emphasise that this was pretty early into the season - so most of the robots that were involved had less than a week to prep. So please don’t expect well-tuned robots for this event.
Nevertheless, here’s the compilation of the 3 final matches - https://youtu.be/9CNv-xzd1XY?si=Te3UtuuLDJAcqGYD
General robot design:
We have one pushbot with a very effective mobile goal clamp by 8076Z.
It has a ramp right in front and it was high disruptive - it can topple mobile goals easily and disrupt robots when trying to score on wall stakes. And if the opponents didnt have a good possession of the mobile goals, it will just steal them away.
We do have a few robots that made use of claws to pick up the rings and to score.
And we also have some that came with more complicated roller/conveyor belt intakes too.
End of the day - what really matters is whether you have good control/possession of the mobile goals. Coz it is so easy to be pushed around while trying to score. Traction wheels and blings wheels might helped a bit - but surprisingly, the design of the head of the stakes made scoring a lot more difficult as compared to Round-Up. Just a bit of misalignment, and most likely the rings will not go into the stakes.
I suspect we might see meta that are similar in idea to ITZ.
I didn’t see any teams managed to figure out a foolproof approach (yet) to score on the wall stakes. Most teams took too long to align to the wall stakes and they were pushed off by their opponents even before they get to score the rings into the stakes.
Another interesting thing that I have noticed - there were actually opportunities for teams to do a quick lowest tier hang.
This happened when all the 4 corners were already filled with rings or their alliance and opponents were all busy fighting in 1 corner.
But in general, hanging is pretty much an afterthought.
As usual, 8059A (Ri1w) and 8059Z (Ri3d) will be doing a robot reveal video.
I also want to use this opportunity to give a shoutout to:
8076A and Z - for coming with 2 well-thought through designs and amazing job that you guys have done (considering most likely you guys were still recuperating from your worlds trip).
35768A - a very very impressive design, especially for an early season event. And this followed right after your impressive design for this year singnat. Just need a bit of fine-tuning and aggressiveness in your strategy 
77789A - a good design and very well-built robot for so early in the season.
