Greetings from a remote location somewhere. I’m your friendly neighborhood Senor Weaselo, and this is the thing where I talk about the robots. Better yet, last week brought the return of new episodes! Unfortunately my house doesn’t have TV, I don’t know if we have Wi-Fi, and I don’t have my laptop, so I apologize for the lack of images and videos. Better than nothing, I guess. Onto the fights, which are all on YouTube if you want to see them. And you do.

Tombstone vs. Brutus: Brutus wanted to go for the quick rush with the wedge to get to Tombstone before the big horizontal bar started spinning. Tombstone went ole and got up to speed. After that it was pretty simple, Tombstone took out the front wedge on Brutus, took out a front wheel (not the big ones), damaged the back, won the weapon to weapon shot and flipped Brutus on its back, guns down. In case you forgot what Tombstone can do from last year, things like that. Ray Billings would trade last year’s Most Destructive award for a Giant Nut, but he’s not going to plan on giving it up either, even if he might be behind Minotaur. Tombstone, KO in 1:01 (approx.)

BETA vs. Nightmare: An old, old rematch, when previous John Reid axe bot KillerHurtz and Nightmare squared off in (Googles) Long Beach ’99, all the way back! That competition’s why the Box has a roof, because of Nightmare! Anyways, in a matter of basically what I said, it was difficult for BETA to find a place to hit the odd frame of Nightmare. Nightmare on the other hand did armor damage and did some serious damage to the hammer arm, taking a lot of the sting out of it, and looked on its way to not that stunning of an upset because that’s what I said would happen. But one driving moment changed the fight at the end as Nightmare came up on the side, disc still spinning, and BETA was able to get enough on the hammer to flip Nightmare over with a little under 20 seconds left.

Fortunately Jim Smentowski built a cool srimech to where the disc swings to the other side and Nightmare can be back on its wheels! It malfunctioned against Stinger but he patched that. Unfortunately the frame got mangled in the Icewave fight so it wasn’t working because the pins weren’t lined up anymore. But that’s okay, normally the rule is 20 seconds or so before the count starts, Nightmare survives the… wait the ref is counting. Apparently that rule got changed and there isn’t as much of a wait necessary. It would have been an amazing story to have the old guard Nightmare in the quarters except for the part where bad things would have happened against Tombstone. Like, bad things. Shout-out to our own Personizzle though for Jim responding to his thread on Reddit! BETA, KO 2:59

Yeti vs. Mega Tento: Yeah, this one was over quick. Yeti’s drum made easy work of Mega Tento’s rear armor, and the sandbox, and once the bug was on the screws, absolutely obliterated a wheel. So I feel a little better about my bracket’s state of fucked. Not by much. Yeti, KO 0:34 (also approx.)

Bite Force vs. Chomp: So remember when I said I didn’t like Bite Force’s change to the vertical bar and I could see Chomp going over the spinner killer armor and go through the top? I was pretty close. First hit from Chomp’s hammer struck Bite Force’s weapon chain and it broke. The fight was over after that, even though the champ dominated most of the remaining 2:45 (except for when Bite Force drove over its own chain and Chomp got another shot or two in). From how it looks and basic instinct, Chomp shouldn’t have gotten this far. It flails after every hammer strike and is on its side for much of the fight, I still think Disk O’Inferno did enough with the flipper to win the fight, and the works, but that hammer has done its job. It did help kill the disk (O’Inferno) even if it might have broke on its own, it took out Captain Shrederator, and it hit Bite Force in a perfect spot to win the fight early. So Chomp’s in the quarters, there you go. Good redemption after its showing last year. Chomp, 3-0