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Senor Weaselo - September 6, 2016

14

So the Giant Nut has been awarded. But that’s not all! The builders have other awards that you should know about, plus I have some awards to give out, because that’s what you do for things like this, right? Right. First off, here are your official awards:

Most Destructive: Minotaur, Team RioBotz

No surprise here. Especially because I’m not sure if you’re allowed to win the Giant Nut and one of the Bolts in the same year, even though Ray Billings has confirmed the Nut will thread one of the Bolts. Which is pretty cool. If you need any proof about Minotaur deserving this award, here you go. This fight was technically a judges’ decision. As if you needed to make a decision about that. That was the only bot that lasted three minutes against Minotaur until Bombshell upset it. Photon Storm ruptured its hydraulics. Warhead lost its head. Bronco lost all six its tires. I think we’re done here.

Best Driver: HyperShock, Shenanigans & Co.

An argument can be made for Team Hertz with BETA just from that Tombstone fight, or with Mutant Robots and Lock-Jaw for surviving that fight with Yeti and for what would have been a dominant win against Brutus by the Comedy Central tourney rules, or with RioBotz and Minotaur considering the gyroscopic forces from the drum can be used to help steer if one side loses drive. But all you need for HyperShock’s case is one thing: The Rakening. (If you haven’t seen it yet, and why haven’t you seen it yet, they used a rake to swat down Warrior Clan’s airborne drone. It worked. Also they ran circles around Warrior to get to the back after the other lifting arm was damaged. But more importantly, literally a rake.)

Best Design: Red Devil, DT Robotics

I’m a little surprised it wasn’t Obwalden Overlord for the sheer craziness of it, or Warhead for the third tournament in a row of being gorgeous (I’m a little biased, so sue me). But Jerome Miles built a very nice looking robot and it has the jaws and the saw and so much articulation and it went 2-1 and lost to a finalist. Not bad for the #30 seed.

Founder’s Award: Chomp, The Machine Corps

The Founder’s Award is for “bringing an exemplary bot that does interesting things and pushes the sport in a new direction in which the founders hope BattleBots will grow.” Chomp’s biggest leg up was using a lidar system to determine the distance between Chomp and her opponent so that way the hammer could fire and hit its mark. If I’m correct, it also assisted with the driving to keep Chomp’s front towards the opponent because a hammer’s useless if the other robot’s not in the one spot you can attack from. This could lead to a slippery slope in how much automation will be allowed–there are already autonomous classes but those are for smaller robot weight classes, but it’ll be interesting to see how that road goes.

Now, your unofficial awards. I made almost all of them up myself!

Giant Screw: Blacksmith, Team Half Fast Astronaut

The Giant Screw was a joke award given by the builders in Season 4 of the Comedy Central run given to the robot who took the most damage but survived to the end of the fight. It hasn’t been given since then, but it’s a silly thing and it’s my post so hell with it.

Anyway, I already posted Blacksmith’s fight against Minotaur so I don’t need to post it again. But remember, there wasn’t enough time to count Blacksmith out so technically it survived the full three minutes, if you want to call that survival. Also, who else could qualify for this award if you call it a KO? There were so many fights that ended in knockouts this year it would be either Lock-Jaw (from its fight against Yeti) or Yeti (from its fight against Tombstone). Maybe Nightmare’s fight against Icewave, except it won so I think that means it’s disqualified? Slim pickings. There were a lot of KOs this year in part because of the active weapon rule leading to a lot of spinners.

Stripped Screw: The Disk O’ Inferno, The Infernolab

Now to an award I actually did just make up, the Stripped Screw is for the robot who had the most controversial decision, or the biggest wild card snub. Or both in this case. There are still arguments out there that Disk O’ won its fight against Chomp. The primary active weapon may have stopped working early in that fight, but the lifter was an active weapon, even if it was a secondary weapon and/or a self-righting mechanism, and it absolutely controlled that fight against Chomp. Adam Savage agrees with me, but the other two judges didn’t and I’m not a BattleBots judge (yet) so Chomp won via split decision.

“That’s fine,” I thought. Split decision means Disk O’ has to be in line for a wild card, right? Except it wasn’t, because it didn’t get one. No love for Jason Dante Bardis, a two-time champion in the lightweight division. It is supposed to be in one of the rumbles so I’ll be excited for that to get posted.

Brass Ball Bearings: Blacksmith

Another award I made up, the Brass Balls are for a team that showed heart against great odds. Basically, they were in a really tough spot but good job, good effort, and not the possibly sarcastic version. Unlike the official awards, you can win multiple awards in my book.

Blacksmith won its qualifier rumble in its debut, only to face Bronco in its prelim fight and Minotaur in the first round after receiving a wild card. That seems just cruel considering those were two of the top, what, 3-5 preseason contenders for the Nut in my book? They got bucked by Bronco and many things got ripped off and/or caught fire against Minotaur. Which was expected, but unfortunate.

“Break the Internet” Moment of the Year: Minotaur vs. Blacksmith

This is a close one. You could give it to Warhead pulling a Zoolander and breakdance fighting or #TheRakening because it involved garden tools to great effect. But if you want determine what sent the Internet into a frenzy there’s a difference between a little under 100,000 Youtube views and over 3 million. Because those other two fights are nice and all, but only one went crazy viral and could become ABC’s most-watched Youtube video of all time, yes, even topping this one. (Hooray, I came up with an excuse to post that!) So I guess it wins. (Sorry Senor, you can’t give Warhead all the awards, you have to be impartial here.)

Mismatch of the Year: Bronco vs. Chrome Fly

This award is not for a one-hit KO. This is for a fight where one robot totally outclassed the other, and in this case it was the veteran team in Bronco seemingly toying with Chrome Fly, using it as a test for its wedge which it succeeded in, and one of Chrome Fly’s blades broke off for the second time in as many fights and at that point Bronco said “meh” and flipped it a couple times as they tried to get the main bot out of the arena. Now imagine if Bronco had actually looked good in that fight, because I’d say that apart from the Blacksmith fight they didn’t look great in any of their fights. We didn’t get to see if they could hit the drone out of the air with its own parent bot. That would have been awesome!

Biggest Upset of the Year: Red Devil over Witch Doctor

I could go with Mega Tento over Stinger, which wrecked my bracket early (considering I had Stinger winning the Nut and all), or to a lesser extent Bombshell over Minotaur because it’s someone beating Minotaur that isn’t one of the handful of bots we called Nut contenders. But Tento’s won fights before (granted, the lightweight version of Tentoumushi), Bombshell–Minotaur was the semis, and Red Devil fought Wrecks in the prelims. Wrecks is, well, Wrecks. We didn’t know what to expect from Red Devil as a result, but it took some damage by getting too close to Wrecks so I don’t know if we expected a whole lot. And Witch Doctor looked really good with its one-hit KO of RotatoR. So the lock between the two bots and Red Devil taking out Witch Doctor’s battery was a little bit surprising. It was a perfect strike in the perfect place to take down a dark horse Nut contender. Plus it’s the 30 taking down a 3.

Spinner Killer of the Year: Bombshell, Chaos Corps

The active weapon rule really hurts the spinner killers of the past. Even last year’s champ, Bite Force, which took down Warhead and Tombstone, became a spinner itself with the vertical bar. The only reputable spinner killer that wasn’t a spinner itself was Stinger, which did take down Nightmare, but the Mega Tento loss meant that Stinger couldn’t go run through a steady diet on its way to the Nut like I predicted. So we’ll give it to Bombshell. It took down the first horizontal bar it faced in Cobalt, then beat Red Devil which doesn’t really count because it was more a grabber even though it had the grinder, then took down a pair of drum spinners in Poison Arrow and the terrifying Minotaur. Its luck ran out against Tombstone, but it’s no small feat to take down three accomplished spinners, even if its with various spinning attachments themselves. The honorable mention in this category goes to BETA, whose armor and wedge shape stood up remarkably against both vertical and horizontal spinners in Nightmare and Tombstone; if they could add armor for next year where the hammer arm goes they could win it all, because that was the difference between beating Tombstone and losing a heartbreaker.

Surprise of the Year: Yeti, Team Yeti

Bombshell the wild card could also have a case here, but Yeti wasn’t supposed to even be there. It was an alternate, which meant that one of the other bots had to drop out in order for Yeti to even get into the tournament. Due to that they didn’t pack much in the way of spares and one of the storylines was that they had to buy spares from Inertia Labs (which sounds pretty funny now considering what happened to Bronco). But once it did it made a run all the way to the semis, losing a decision to Tombstone but taking out the fearsome blade. I think they’d take that at the start of the year. Also they got the best intro of the year because of the 8 Mile reference, but that’s just extra.

KO of the Year: Bombshell over Poison Arrow

There were a lot of stylish KOs this year. There was Witch Doctor’s OHKO of RotatoR. There was Warhead sending Complete Control and Team Mission Destruction out in a blaze of glory, with the added bonus of the headspin to top off the match. There was Minotaur destroying Photon Storm with fluid leaking out of the crusher. There was HyperShock swatting down Dragon and destroying it before setting its sights on Warrior. But this fight gets the nod for its finish. Bombshell controlled the bout, pinned Poison Arrow drum down, bumped it off the rails trying to take out Buzz (yes, that’s the drone’s name), and then dropped it inside the screws like it was a quarter in the gumball machine. It’s an unlikely shot and holy shit it was cool.

Fight of the Year: Tombstone vs. BETA

There are two clear-cut choices for this honor. The first, which had been penciled in until I could watch the finale, was Lock-Jaw vs. Yeti, which I was bold enough to put in my top 10 at #8 all-time. The battle between all-out aggression and impeccable control was excellent. This wasn’t as clear-cut in the driver differences, but it was for about two and a half minutes BETA’s fight to lose and the best three minutes someone’s had against a working Hardcore Robotics robot (whether Tombstone or Last Rites) outside of Gary Gin’s legendary wedge Original Sin, and that includes last year’s final against Bite Force. Without the hammer damage at the end of the fight BETA knocks off Tombstone, I think they could have knocked off Yeti, and maybe the fourteen-year wait for BETA to finally fight ends in the first international winner of the Giant Nut. Was it a bit of a lucky bounce off the screws? Yes. But when the builders are giddy from a fight that’s an indication it was a doozy, even if we don’t get the “Three more minutes!” chant.

Lastly, time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the results of the DFO Bracket Challenge. Your winner, with 73 points, picking all four semifinalists correctly and being perfect from then on (yes, that includes Bombshell over Minotaur), is… Personizzle!

Congratulations, I have no idea what you win! Seriously, I didn’t think that far in advance. What you have definitely won however is our hopes and support next season, since according to the Season 3 rumor mill on Reddit (the unofficial way to hear about things going on) Personizzle and Team Dynamite are working on a bot for next season. So we’ll be on the lookout for that as well!

And on that note, I believe that will do it for this season! I’d like to thank DTZM for saying “Sure, write about the fighting robots,” Rikki for the two weeks he subbed for me that first time I was away, all the builders and teams for putting on a great show and for responding to questions (Team Nightmare definitely answered a lot of questions I asked!), and thank you guys for reading this and doing the bracket and taking interest in watching this sport like I have.

Be on the lookout for the five, yes five cut rumbles on the Youtubes in the next couple days, congratulate the necessary people, and we’ll see you back in the BattleBox (we hope), because #WeWantSeason3!

(Oh, and going on right now on the Reddits but possibly finishing up soon is a Bombshell/Chaos Corps AMA. Later tonight at 9 PM DFO time is an AMA with Tombstone/Hardcore Robotics).