Hi there, lizard people. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? But the summer’s here, and with it, large robots that would maul your face, legs, or anything else. That’s right, it’s another season of BattleBots, and with it, another season of the BattleBots Beat!

So, I don’t have anything to recap at this moment, but I DO have some notable stuff. I’m gonna go Uni Watch style, which just means alphabetically if there’s anything notable and cool-looking. So that won’t be every returning bot, and that won’t be every new bot! There are many robots and we don’t need to be here forever.

Black Dragon becomes the second Brazilian bot, by team Uai!rrior. I expect there to be a Brazilian battle between the egg-beater spinner and Minotaur at some point in the season.

Bombshell returns as a modular bot since they now had the time to do that, as there was a little more time between the season getting renewed and applications opening and the build time closing. As opposed to Season 3 where everything was like, what 6 weeks? Maybe?

Team Nightmare is back! With Breaker Box, Jim Smentowski’s post-BattleBots flagship bot. It is predominantly a plow/lifter, but it has interchangeable weapons. HOWEVAH! There is a pic with Nightmare on the site, and Nightmare was there for promo pics with Trey Munson and Greg Roski’s showcase bot from way back when, Ginsu.

Team Carbide returns with Cobalt, but Cobalt is not the same setup as the Season 2 bot, which looked a lot like Carbide except with a different color scheme. This one’s a vertical spinner. Also worth noting, Team Carbide was not allowed to compete in this season’s King of Bots because they wanted more Chinese team. Please note that Tungsten won This is Fighting Robots, which has been compared as the Robot Wars Extreme to regular Robot Wars seasons. (More on this later.)

Deep Six takes the prize for most ridiculous spinner. Seriously, that shit is huge and they apparently had to install a wheelie bar. I mean look at this.

References to Drizzle (from Team Monsoon) at Bugglebots have already come into play.

There are now THREE Team Whyachi robots. Falcon (a double drum spinner), Hydra (a hydraulic rather than pneumatic flipper, replacing Warrior Clan), and of course, Son of Whyachi.

Foxtrot is the current leader in the meme clubhouse because it is very compact. Which has led to “three Foxtrots in a trenchcoat” a la Vincent Adultman. That is seriously one of their team stickers. And then recreated in reality.

There is a robot huger than HUGE! Which is named Mammoth.

Similar to Team Whyachi, Team Black & Blue has split into two teams, as Hannah Rucker goes solo with Marvin. Yes, it is a Hitchhiker’s reference, hence the name Team 42 Robotics.

The cutest robot of the year goes to Nelly the Ellybot. Sarah Malyan also is a producer and host of Bugglebots and is supreme queen of the leading robot combat meme Facebook group, “Robot Wars Shuntposting,” of which I am a member of. Also the shirts say BONK.

Even though Team Carbide wasn’t allowed to compete with Tungsten in China, Team Robo Challenge, as the defending champs of King of Bots, still gets to compete with Spectre. But still found time to build a new robot for BattleBots named Quantum. Like Spectre, it is just as gorgeous as it is lethal, which seems to be mandated of all top crusher bots. (That’s the real reason Petunia didn’t make the top 16!)

Speaking of teams branching off, part of Team Monsoon split off to build Ragnarok with Jack Tweedy. Tim Rackley, also known as the big dude who was yelling “MONSOOOOON” actually captains the team, which will fittingly open its fight card by squaring off with Monsoon.

For the first time we have robots from China in BattleBots, with a pair—Rail Gun Max, an egg-beater spinner (similar to a drum spinner except with the middle carved out), and WanHoo, a vertical disk spinner.

Sharkoprion was originally not selected to compete this year, but then… they were asked to come in? There is no confirmation about what they were doing there, but there is a picture, similar to Nightmare.

Senor gets his new rooting interest, with Brooklyn-based Bots FC and Shatter! I am rooting for them to have a watch party at some point, maybe at Threes Brewing or something. They have a hammer, and mecanum wheels which, if on all four, basically mean they can strafe.

Strangest-looking bot setup goes to Sidewinder. It has a wedge on the front, and a horizontal bar spinner… on the side. Hence the name. I have no idea if it’ll actually work.

Speaking of new countries? Russia, team number one! That would be Team Unicorn with their horizontal spinner Rainbow.

Tantrum has more, uh, tantrum-y things. They still have the fists on the side, and now the vertical spinner (as opposed to last year’s spring-loaded flipper) actually works so it can spin up and then come forward to attack.

Tell me, is this a correct number for The Four Horsemen?

THAT IS MORE THAN FOUR!

Anyway, that covers the big notes. Oh, I mentioned Bugglebots once or thrice. I was going to recap it until I got busy. If you want to watch 3-lb. robots fight, here you go. It’s a good bit of fun, or since it’s a British programme, a gooud bit ouf fun.

Now, that normally would be it, BUT… it was announced that at the Amazon re:MARS conference there would be a BattleBots live competition. So, that’s happening. That would be the first live competition to be televised (on Twitch) since Las Vegas ’99? Here’s the details:

So let’s check those match-ups:

Free Shipping vs. Bronco: This is not a good match-up for the wedge-bot, as per the rules of robot rock-paper-scissors. Even if it is Original Sin with a forklift and Original Sin wins RoboGames unless there is no RoboGames. Like this year. (Pour one out.) Lifters and flippers beat wedges and even with the slightly better lifter it’ll take all of Gary Gin’s driving expertise to pull this one off. I think Bronco’ll pull the win.

Bite Force vs. Icewave: Holy shit, Icewave returns! Icewave is not in Season 4 on account of the engine being totaled by RotatoR in last year’s round of 16, singlehandedly winning the damage award over Icewave. Meanwhile Bite Force is the two-time champion and we’ll see if it can repeat and make it three in four years, and two straight with the vertical bar configuration in the weeks and months ahead. I’m honestly not sure who wins this one, but those wedgelets on Bite Force held up against Minotaur (mostly) and the rear held up against Tombstone (granted less than 100%), so I don’t see any reason to go against the champ in this one.

Skorpios vs. Chomp: Hey, Chomp returns too! Zoe Stephenson will either be extremely pregnant or a new mother, I’m not sure, but that’s why Chomp did not compete this season. But a one night only showcase should be fine. Be that as it may, I have no idea if Chomp’s planned improvements made her less, shall we say, jumpy? Meanwhile Skorpios was in my mind the second-best driven robot last season behind Whiplash, and some argued with its victories over Icewave and HyperShock with essentially no weapon gave it the nod over the surprise semifinalist. Either way I’m taking Skorpios.

Lock-Jaw vs. Whiplash: Speaking of Whiplash, we get what would have been the consolation match from 2018, if BattleBots had such a thing as a consolation match. Two of the greatest drivers in the game square off between the longtime vet Donald Hutson and the Beat’s best driver Matt Vasquez. There will be sticking, there will be moving, there will be trying to line up that shot, and I’m guessing very little weapon on weapon contact. With no knowledge of any improvements but going on year-old memory, I think Whiplash is the quicker of the two and that’ll play a major role in positioning, so give me Whiplash in this one.

Witch Doctor vs. Tombstone: We’ve been waiting four years for a rematch. To the archives!

Overall one of Witch Doctor’s best fights, even though it was a loss. The win over RotatoR in Season 2 was more impressive for sure, and maybe the way it exposed Ultimo last season. But fluke things on both ends. My big question is what the state of Tombstone’s bars are going to be because I highly doubt Ray Billings is going to make a new bar for this event. On the other hand, he’s got like 5 to choose from at this point so none of them should be too fractured to have the chance to do this. Hopefully Witch Doctor’s tires like staying on, they haven’t liked doing that in the past but new axles have hopefully alleviated this. I do think Tombstone’ll win this one though.

All this is of course pending any crazy news about updates and upgrades which I imagine could be talked about in the livestream but I don’t know. But for instance I know that Tombstone also has a new frame so the chain won’t be so slack that it’s more vulnerable than usual. I will be intently watching with Senorita Weaselo after a rehearsal we have for a concert Saturday night, and I’m hoping she doesn’t think I’m too much of a nerd between this and the hot sauce. This’ll get recapped next week along with episode 1, which will be a bear and a half, because all episodes this season will be two hours rather than just one, even if there are fewer episodes. So I’ll be on it. See you all next week!