The round’s almost over, so dance break!

And then we shall be down to 16, a full round ahead of the real one! It all comes a-barrelin’ to the end of the month. In addition, a couple notes on what’s coming up in April—the filming of BattleBots Season 4, which means we’ll have another BattleBots Beat. I’m not gonna get into the full of it, but we know there plan to be 67 competing robots this season, up from last year’s 56 55. Some notable, uh, notes, in this which I’m calling a BattleBots Byte.

A second Brazilian team is joining the fray, Team Ua!rrior, who are known for their lower-weight bots in RoboGames (which isn’t running at all this year), with Black Dragon. It’s an “eggbeater spinner,” which is drum-like.

Team RoboChallenge, best known for King of Bots champ Spectre, bring another crusher, named Quantum. This must mean BattleBots and the next televised season of King of Bots are filming at different times, and it looks like that is correct—BattleBots will be mid to late April, King of Bots is in May. That’s still tough to have two bots in fighting shape a month or so apart.

I finally get a hometown team to root for! Brooklyn squad Bots FC, who had Blue in King of Bots, brings Shatter to the party. That’s a hammer-bot, of which there seem to be a lot more of this year surprisingly. Someone’s got to fill the void, as Chomp will not be around, since she’ll be doing “emergency babysitting duty” because Zoe Stephenson (I assume) is pregnant! Congrats!

Team Carbide will have another entry—they’ve won Robot Wars with Carbide and the King of Bots-adjacent This is Fighting Robots! with Tungsten, so whether they compete with Cobalt or have a new entry remains to be seen. Interestingly, Tungsten was NOT approved for King of Bots Season 2, as the Chinese show clamped down a bit on international teams, but you would’ve expected they’d have Tungsten in after its showing. (The above-mentioned Blue was also one of the not accepted teams.)

Speaking of, we will have our first Chinese team in BattleBots, with Wan Hoo.

Team Nightmare returns! However, Jim Smentowski will not be competing with flagship Nightmare, but his other main robot, Breaker Box, which in addition to having its breakdancing lifter plow (video not found) boasts what Jim said might be the biggest hammer in BattleBots, among other weapons (he said 5 interchangeable ones). The role of giant vertical spinner will be filled by newcomer Mammoth and the returning HUGE!.

Among the teams not returning, I mentioned Chomp already, but it seems that Red Devil has retired as Jerome Miles returns to King of Bots with Dragon King. Even more surprising, Team Equals Zero Robotics will not be returning with Overhaul, the first time the bot will not be competing. After last season’s dismantling, it looks like Icewave is out as well. BETA is also not competing (and no word on Tánshé for King of Bots). Stinger is still out as well, and it seems that last season’s dome-breaker was the last hurrah for Team Razer, as Warhead will not be competing. (Ian Lewis will probably be a judge on King of Bots.)

Derek Young will be returning as a judge, and will be joined by Jason Bardis, as this season the judges will be former roboteers.

That concludes this BattleBots Byte. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

So that will do it for the second round. Tomorrow—16 start to become 8.