2026 - Rebuilt

The Game

Rebuilt was a game that involved shooting 6" foam balls into a large goal. A robot could hold an unlimited number of balls at one time but could only be 30" tall max or 24" tall if you wanted to be able to go under the "trench" as opposed to being limited to travelling over the bumps. There was also an endgame climb that almost no robot did as it was determined to not be worth it.

Our Robot (version 1)

We decided we wanted to build a single shooting turret robot, thinking that being able to collect and shoot on the move would be a good strategy. We also built a pneumatic Level 1 climber that was capable of lifting the robot off the ground after the final buzzer and robots were disabled. We went through two versions of an intake before our first event to improve it's robustness. We had very little auto and almost no practice time.

Event 1 - McMaster

McMaster was one to the most competitive events in the world in 2026! Many world class teams in attendance.

Our intake broke almost every match but our pit team had it running again every time. We broke our climber in our second match but bent it back enough to have it functional again near the end of the tournament. ( I think we climbed 3-4 times in total)

Highlights were:

winning a match against 2056. First time they lost in about 3 years in a district event!
Winning the Rising All-Star award
Performance of our pit crew in keeping the robot running

Overall record of 4-8 for 25th rank but scored well. Second pick of #7 alliance with 10554 Viper and 4327 (Q Branch) though we were actually the best scorer on our alliance. We were out of the playoffs in 2 matches.

The Rebuild

After McMaster we took a new look at our robot and decided a redesign and rebuild inorder to improve intake, storage capacity and shooting speed. Over the next 3 weeks we made the following changes:

removed all pneumatics and climber
changed the intake rollers and made spindexer more complete
changed back half of robot to a slide-out hopper
added better auto capability

Event 2 - Windsor

In Windsor we were a better scoring robot. We could hold more capacity and had much improved auto that could collect at center and then come back and shoot.

We were ranked 12th at 6-6 but were scoring quite well. We could also play a game where we would steal balls from the other side of the field fairly effectively. We ended up as captain of the #7 and our scouting paid off, being able to get 5024 Raider with our first pick and 3756 Ramferno, who we felt was the best defender at the event with our second pick.

Playoffs were great fun! We lost our first match against #2 but then went on a run in the lower bracket. We beat the #6 alliance quite handily with 5024 scoring while we played the role of a stealer/passer/scorer and 3756 playing mean defence. In our next match it was right down to the wire and we had to wait for about 1 minute for the final scores to come up, showing we had scored a narrow 3 point victory!

The next match also crazy, with almost all robots breaking at some point during the match. With barely any fuel scored and time running out, we drove our disabled intake into a wall and that seemed to fix it as it started working again. Our robot was capable of scoring again and we were back in business! We shot as much as we could over the final 30 seconds and scored another narrow victory eliminating the #3 alliance (4920) in a match where both alliances scored only about half of their predicted scores.

Playoffs ended by getting beat by the #1 alliance in a relatively close match ending a great run. So fun to play with teams like 5024 and 3756. This was our greatest playoff experience to date.

Ended the day with a second Rising All-Star Award.

Provincials

Provincials were a mixed bag. Lots of fun and some great matches and also many breakdowns and disappointments.

Overall 6-6 with final ranking of 24 and at points we were ranked in a captain spot but some bad matches and bad luck, including losing connection with our co-pilot controller in our final match. No playoffs though we were likely on the bubble for being picked.

A fun experience enjoying the sights in Niagara Falls and a good end to the season.

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2026 - Rebuilt

For any questions, please email us at: info@tidalshift1229.org