Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Super Robo Rally at school

Last week, we took Super Robo Rally to a school carnival near Bryan's house.  

We set-up SRR to play "King of the Hill", where players had three turns (about 1/2 hour) to program the robots to race to the flags (red squares) and stay there as long as possible.

The people running the carnival were great!  They set up a system where up to six kids could get a "Quick Pass" ticket for each half-hour game, and two others (waiting in line) would also join.




Bryan would spend a couple minutes explaining the rules to the players and their assistants (parents).

We weren't really sure how this would play out for elementary age kids, but in retrospect, I'm not sure what we were thinking...  Kids (mostly boys)... programming robots...  made of LEGO...   to race... and shoot each other.

Win.

All our games were full, and the only complaint I heard was from a parent watching her son play in the last game.  She said, "I'm just mad we didn't find this game sooner."

Overall, this format worked VERY well in this context.  The kids had enough time to understand the game, they were able to play several turns, and everyone seemed to think it was super cool.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Boxes for Super Robo Rally


Transporting 200 LEGO baseplates can be quite a problem.  It's even more of an issue when they're all covered with tiles.

A single baseplate with tiles weighs about 1 pound.  It's really hard to find a cardboard box that can survive very long, even filled with only 30 of the boards.

Last weekend, my father-in-law helped me build some very nice wooden boxes that I can use to transport the baseplates from show to show.




They are designed to stack, to make it easy to transport and store them.

Today, I'm taking them to their first show.  We'll see how well they work.