Welcome back to the Beat! Last time out we had Witch Doctor send Whiplash crashing for the first time this year, HUGE gashed Gigabyte, and Deep Six caused a hole in the Box, Nelly, and the space-time continuum. This time out we have two bots with the exact same record square off, a joke from eleven years ago, and a battle of bots who live down the road with a future rematch in store. But first we have the all-hydraulic fight. So onto that one, and the rest!

Hydra vs. Petunia
Hydra: 2-0 (W, KO 2:05 vs. Free Shipping; W, KO 1:36 vs. WAR Hawk)
Petunia: 1-1 (L, KO 1:51 vs. WAR Hawk; W, JD 3-0 vs. Marvin)

Whether it’s the class of the hydraulics or the class of the flippers, Hydra’s been it, finding new and exciting ways for flippers to win by KO, like in its last fight where it broke WAR Hawk into three different robots. By the transitive property that might not bode too well for Petunia, which lost to WAR Hawk in their first fight. They got a dominant fight with a over Marvin where they showed that there’s some power in that beak, even if it isn’t at Quantum levels.

Hydra came in fairly aggressively even as the two bots eyed and squared. But the Whyachi bot could get under the Dutch crusher’s wedge which was vital, as Hydra missed a flip. It didn’t seem like the highest cranked power flip as it was pretty stable, but it’s something to watch out for in fights against stiffer competition. Jake Ewert’s been awfully hasty on that first flip and can miss in the impatience. Petunia wasn’t able to capitalize however, as it was busy driving serpentine.

Until Hydra caught it and flipped it. And again. And a third time, managing to continue the improbable ways of doing crazy unforeseen things as a flipper and sending Petunia into one of the timers. Which is apparently a screen that shows the timer, but either way it’s about the principle of managing to do that from somewhere around a quarter of a BattleBox away, so 10 feet or so. At that point naturally Hydra was then just trying to get Petunia out, even if Petunia was basically dead. Three more flips sorta did the trick. And by “sorta” I mean it still counts when you get flipped behind the pulverizer and stuck there. And I’m guessing it was a red-square controlled hammer because if the hammer had come down it might have freed Petunia. But it didn’t, so there it stayed. Hydra wins by KO in… who knows, since the clock is busted, and moves to 3-0. (It was 1:29.) And wants Bite Force, which would definitely be a step up in competition over their best win, WAR Hawk.

Rainbow vs. Yeti
Rainbow: 2-0 (W, KO 1:05 vs. Nelly the Ellybot; W, ? vs. Double Jeopardy? & ?)
Yeti: 1-1 (L, JD 3-0 vs. Bite Force; W, JD 3-0 vs. Free Shipping)

Yes, yes, Rainbow is 2-0 even though we’ve only seen the one fight. It has not been posted, not even on the BattleBots site. Yeti’s 1-1, but a three-minute brawl against Bite Force isn’t too bad of a loss, so one of those moments where “It’s who you fight” comes into play. Which is precisely why the 2-0 Rainbow gets to fight Yeti, possibly a la Ultimo Destructo taking on Witch Doctor. Speaking of, Yeti’s sporting #JusticeForNelly on one of its front panels. So, a pissed off Yeti ready to smash since it is once again forkless with the third drum motor.. And dammit, Chris made the “Greg Gibson can see Russia from his house” joke, and I was going to make that joke! It writes itself, Greg Gibson’s from Wasilla and everything!

The fight started and Rainbow’s bar was not spinning. So that was not promising for the Russian bot. Neither was Yeti’s drum sending it skyward, then upside-down, and smoking heavily. There it is, that’s your fight. One shot, one kill, Nelly avenged. Yeti wins by KO in 56 seconds.

Skorpios vs. Tantrum
Skorpios: 2-0 (W, KO 2:37 vs. Copperhead; W, KO 2:52 vs. Sidewinder)
Tantrum: 1-0 (W, JD 3-0 vs. Gemini)

Skorpios is 2-0, and combine that with the wins over Chomp and Lock-Jaw in its future and you’ve got a pretty damn good bot. It goes back to the hammer saw, or the kinetic energy saw, however you want to say it, especially against the heavily armored Tantrum. We saw it to great effect against Copperhead and even more against Sidewinder as it got dismantled, but Tantrum took hits from Tombstone last year. I mean, not that many and the fists on the side went flying and probably would have breached if it hadn’t managed to hit the right thing in the right way to get stuck. But it held up better than many expected.

Both bots went wide, trying to push, as Tantrum’s front forks were keeping both Skorpios’s blade at bay, but also meant that the puncher spinner couldn’t land. It’s a good idea but it’s tough for the disk to get purchase on anything, like we even saw in much of the Gemini fight. Slowly but surely though Skorpios got its footing, getting around Tantrum and getting the hammer saw down. It wasn’t getting, or even going for, the wall pin, instead going for either the disk or the puncher track or the self-righting wings or something. I feel like getting the pin could have been more effective, but Tantrum was doing approximately fuck-all so the strategy was working.

Eventually Skorpios did start going to pin, and slowly got Tantrum closer and closer to the pulverizer for some dual punishment. Except the hammer head broke. Yeah, I know, the arena crew had to be pissed about this card’s fights. Don’t worry, they’ll get angrier later. Anyway, fight ended, Skorpios wins by unanimous decision. Zach Lytle mentions that he would love to fight Lock-Jaw. Well, he got that fight in time, which Skorpios won in the BattleBots Challenge.

Bronco vs. Free Shipping
Bronco: 0-1 (L, KO 2:48 vs. Bite Force)
Free Shipping: 0-2 (L, KO 2:05 vs. Hydra; L, JD vs. Yeti)

This seems like the “Oh, let’s give Bronco a matchup against a robot it should beat” kind of fight. We saw that Free Shipping doesn’t match up great against flippers in its past loss to Hydra and its future loss to this very same Bronco. That’s just robot rock-paper-scissors, where wedge bots are rock, and flippers are paper. (Spinners are scissors naturally.) Which meant for Free Shipping it was key to stay away from Bronco’s repaired flipper, and for Gary Gin to do his Gary Gin things.

Bronco went for its low to middle power flips at first, but Free Shipping was just quick enough to escape until the third one, where Bronco got under, and a weird noise happened, and all of a sudden Bronco looked like its older, bigger brother, Toro.

See how Toro’s flipper is higher than the box portion of the robot? That’s how Bronco’s is not supposed to be. And it was like that. Hence the Inertia Labs crew saying, and I quote, “Oh shit.” Which would be a valid reaction when your flipper spatula’s broken from who knows what and the flipping arm is jammed upward. “I think we can outdrive him,” the next thing said, was a little less likely, because now Free Shipping’s lifter just becomes an added bonus thing and for once isn’t going to get mangled, so now Bronco has to fight ass-first against a full Original Sin mode Free Shipping. You’re not gonna outdrive him, guys, even if you do have two Giant Nuts in the stable. So Free Shipping got to the side, pushing Bronco around. Even in the one or two moments the two bots went wedge to wedge it was at best a stalemate as Free Shipping took Bronco to the wall to close it out, and a celebratory lick of flame skyward.

The safety crew really didn’t like that. Like, they apparently almost DQed Free Shipping for that. Key was almost, Free Shipping wins by unanimous decision and all the safety crew must have loved Bronco’s revenge!

Valkyrie vs. Monsoon
Valkyrie: 1-1 (L, KO 2:14 vs. HyperShock; W, KO 0:42 vs. Ragnarök)
Monsoon: 1-1 (W, KO 0:44 vs. Ragnarök; L, KO 0:41 vs. HyperShock)

It’s a battle of robots with the same record. Not just similar, since they’re both 1-1, but the same, with wins over Ragnarök and losses to HyperShock. I doubt we’ll get HyperShock and Ragnarök to complete the group stage round-robin. They have the same color scheme to boot, blue and blackish.

After Monsoon’s loss where things fell off, Tom Brewster and co. had to reinforce the bolt that held the weapon to the robot. They also begged/borrowed/bought some materials from the Chaos Corps and Bombshell. Which happens all the time. Their strategy was to let Valkyrie’s bow-tie blade spin up, or at least so they could spin themselves up, since Valkyrie’s reliability hasn’t always been greatest and that weapon is quite powerful.

It was an okay idea, until its own bar stopped due to what Tom Brewster said was a radio issue. So that was a bit of a problem to put it mildly. It meant that Valkyrie could just go do what it wanted and grind away at Monsoon’s bottom part, grinding up the wedge to the bar, and some of the bar, and some of the bottom. And Monsoon had to try and stop it and almost did, pushing Valkyrie into the wall bar first, but this only happened once. The rest of the time was Valkyrie grinding away, trying to re-remove Monsoon’s weapon from its rest of bot, as Monsoon tried to pivot and push.

The weapon looked loose, but it was staying on, even if by a thread. So Valkyrie went to the back and the tires at the last bit of the fight, tearing one of the tires up where the blue foam filling the tires kept falling away as Monsoon kept shuffling away. Somehow this fight went to the judges and in one of the easier decisions they’d have, it’s Valkyrie by unanimous decision. That’s another quarterfinal bot from last year with 2 losses, which means we might have one hell of a Last Chance Rumble, if it comes to fruition. The tag for Episode 14 talks about the judges or the selection committee doing something with a twist. Which is 4 weeks away, since this is Episode 10.

Copperhead vs. Chronos
Copperhead: 1-1 (L, KO 2:37 vs. Skorpios; W, JD 2-1 vs. Gruff)
Chronos: 0-1 (L, KO 1:24 vs. Gigabyte)

It’s a swing fight for Copperhead, at 1-1. It’s got the pedigree obviously, and it had moments in that fight against Gruff, but it also had moments of not having control against Gruff. Granted, Gruff is also a pretty damn good bot looking at its RoboGames performance. For ring spinner Chronos, it’s probably not going to have a chance to get three fights and win three fights and have a chance to advance but this would be a start. It’s also the debut of their “mini”bot, T imeline. Mini is in quotes because it’s just a long stick-looking bot. It’s longer than the blue square is wide, so it isn’t exactly tiny. Its job for this fight was to prevent Copperhead from box rushing Chronos before it could spin all the way up.

And now for a question about whether that shit worked! Well guess what, that shit worked! Copperhead went towards Timeline, got distracted, thought about attacking it, and eventually went after Chronos as the two met in the middle. Can I get a “huge hit there,” people?

Chronos got airborne almost ten feet and was no longer spinning. But Copperhead’s drum was no longer attached on one side. It was slowly moving, but the refs determined that its crabwalking was not controlled translational movement and counted it out. It’s one of those judgement calls which I’d like BattleBots to be a little bit more concrete on “controlled translational movement,” but Copperhead wasn’t going to do anything. Chronos wins by KO in 1:04.

Main Event: Bite Force vs. HyperShock
Bite Force: 2-0 (W, JD 3-0 vs. Yeti; W, KO 2:48 vs. Bronco)
HyperShock: 2-0 (W, KO 2:14 vs. Valkyrie; W, KO 0:41 vs. Monsoon)

Round 3! No, I’m not sure why these two have become familiar foes, though the two fights have gone vastly differently even if Paul Ventimiglia’s newly elected Robot Combat Hall of Fame bot has come out on top (more on that later). In the first fight, HyperShock was on top throughout the fight against the then-grappler until the drivetrain suddenly died. Had it lasted the full three minutes we might be saying some entirely different things. The Season 3 fight was entirely different, since that’s the fight where Will Bales and Shenanigans & Co. learned that rubber mounts might not be the best option to hold your robot’s top plate against vertical spinners that can now flip you over because then they’ll all shear off and rip your guts out. It wasn’t a good season for HyperShock. But yes, the two seasons Bite Force has won the championship were the seasons it fought and beat HyperShock. Which totally means something, obviously.

In the pits segments Jenny had Will run a course because he mentioned that HyperShock’s controller is like an RC car’s rather than most robots’ tank drive. Which means throttle down. It actually wasn’t the best time, as Will mentioned on Reddit that until the course got shut down by THE MAN, Monsoon actually had a better time by being tidy in the corners, because drifting is not the fastest racing line. Jenny driving HyperShock did not have the fastest time, and I continue to envy her for getting to drive the robots. Yes, I know I got to drive the Bots FC test bot, but that wasn’t a heavyweight as seen on TV!

Bite Force has some longer wedgelets to make sure that the vertical disk can’t reach. HyperShock has a robot that finally works the way they want it to. So HyperShock came in hard because of course they did but since the wedgelets were long enough Bite Force got leverage and flipped HyperShock over. The srimech was having some trouble (apparently the radio transmitter for it worked in the Test Box, not the full-size Box). So HyperShock used Bite Force to flip itself over by running into it disk first. It worked, flipping HyperShock back, and it could actually get an upper hand on Bite Force, damaging the side armor and being the first robot we’ve seen to actually get under Bite Force and get a hit or two on the underside. It came at a cost though, as HyperShock threw a belt, and Bite Force kept working away at the front plow on HyperShock,taking it off one side. Bite Force was having its own drivetrain issues, but the weapon was spinning and still working, and HyperShock was struggling to move. Part of that was the plow impeding it, and once Bite Force ripped that totally away HyperShock got its drive somewhat back. I mean, it’s probably now going to lose damage, but progress. Speaking of progress, it went to the judges as Will Bales gave a possibly punch-drunk laugh because HyperShock finally went three minutes. Against someone. And it was the champ! That they did damage to! That’s about it though, not too tough a decision, Bite Force by unanimous decision, the champ moves to 3-0 and has won 12 straight fights dating back to a rumble with Witch Doctor and Wrecks. Plus two more after this tournament in the BattleBots Challenge.

As I mentioned, Bite Force was newly named to the Robot Combat Hall of Fame. Yes, that’s a thing that builders vote on every couple of years. Notable robots to join it in full honors this year were Bite Force, arguably two different robots but combined as one because either way it’s been successful and because voters didn’t specify; Tombstone, being added onto Last Rites already being in the Hall because they’re such similar bots by Ray Billings, the only real difference being the weight; and Silent Spring, Jamison Go of SawBlaze’s beetleweight bot, a horizontal spinner that has dominated the class. Congratulations to all who made it, and the honorable mentions.

On the other hand, a couple of days ago YouTube started taking robot combat videos down since it pinged the algorithm as animal fighting. Part of this might be animal themed or named bots, but still, people’s videos were getting taken down. Fortunately the community’s made a big stink about it and YouTube is working to restore the videos.

That’s it for robot combat news. Next week we’re supposedly having RotatoR vs. Death Roll as the main event, with Tombstone vs. Gruff in there as well. With four episodes until the top 16 is determined, it’s put up or shut up time. Hell, it’s very possibly a must-win for RotatoR, Tombstone, and Gruff. We may also get DUCK! vs. Quantum that episode, speaking of must-wins. So we’re towards the pointy end. See you next week!