I think that top alliances are falling for a plethora of reasons, but I think there are three main stumbling points for top alliances this year.

1) Climbing: To state again what has been said many other places, if all three of the robots on an alliance cannot climb there is little hope to get a victory. And for many competitions (particularly districts) there simply aren't enough climbing robots for every alliance to have three.

2) Team Strategy: This years game, in my opinion, is one of the most alliance-dependent games that I have been a part of. In past years one or two extremely powerful robots could essentially take the game for everyone. These teams usually took the #1 slot, picked the second most dynamic robot and took the entire event by themselves. However, in Steamworks, a game is essentially unwinnable without three competent robots all contributing relatively