Kickoff has finally arrived, and the Buchanan Bird Brains could not be more thrilled! Every January, a new game is introduced at Kickoff. Compared to last year, 3,400 teams, this year has nearly doubled the amount , bringing the total teams to over 6,000!
During Kickoff, on January 6, all teams watched the 2018 robot game reveal, FIRST POWER UP, where we have to defeat a “boss” by gaining points through putting power cubes on switches and scales. For every second you have more power cubes on the scale or switch you gain points, whichever team has the most points at the end of game wins. Also, you can gain power ups by getting power cubes to the vault, which is done by our team’s human player. There are three power ups: Force, Levitation, and Boost. These each give you an advantage which help boost your score to win.
At the Bird Brains’ kickoff, the strategy team was reading the 2018 game rules, regulations, and going through the Kit of Parts. The 2018 game and season manual is a resource that includes a general overview of the game including description of the field and rules of the game. ST is starting early and analyzing the manual so that they can make a plan
and figure out methods to score points effectively in this season’s game and build a robot that can execute that plan efficiently.
On the other side of the team, IR is compiling answers to questions for the Chairman’s binder, these answers display all of our team’s efforts and activities in the community and with other FIRST teams. Our Media team is working diligently to fix templates for our Chairman’s binder pages and writing our chairman’s video script. Also, our IR members are hard at work capturing the essence of the start of a great build season.
