BattleBots Thread

[Kohr]

holy fucking shit shrederator

RIP Tombstone.

[Window Land]

holy fucking shit shrederator

RIP Tombstone.

Tombstone had an impressive fire going on. It looks like the blade lost a tooth and then Tombstone shook itself apart.

[Sword Island]

This should be fun

[Kohr]

I'm glad Deep Six is back for more nonsense. That fight was beautiful chaos.

[HISPIDA]

fuck, i can't watch. what's going on with tombstone and shredenator?

edit: fuuuuuuuuuck, you're kidding me. if tombstone has another bad season i'm gonna fucking kill somebody.

[Sword Island]

fuck, i can't watch. what's going on with tombstone and shredenator?

edit: fuuuuuuuuuck, you're kidding me. if tombstone has another bad season i'm gonna fucking kill somebody.

The king is dead, long live Endgame the new king

[HISPIDA]

fuck, i can't watch. what's going on with tombstone and shredenator?

edit: fuuuuuuuuuck, you're kidding me. if tombstone has another bad season i'm gonna fucking kill somebody.

The king is dead, long live Endgame the new king

you watch. i hope endgame gets wrecked this season. then you'll feel my pain.

[Kohr]

Man, that main event was really upsetting. Hydra would've had them all day if they didn't have mechanical issues out of the gate...

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Pretty cool opening episode. My predictions weren't too bad, but it seems some robots had first fight teething issues.

- Sawblaze and Minotaur went pretty much how I expected. I was impressed with how easily Minotaur could attack the forks, but the Sawblaze only really needs one good attack now given how powerful its weapon is. No overhead weapon even comes close to the damage that Sawblaze does, and most robots have their weakest armour on the top and bottom. Minotaur is durable at least, clearly surviving for most of the fight with an internal fire is a Brazilian thing.
- Gigabyte arguably is better than last year, but they really missed Max Maxham's driving. Should have gone to the centre of the box.
- Gruff was barely functional in this fight, but Switchback seemed to confirm my fears about their design. No point putting your weapon on an arm if that arm isn't strong enough to help you self-right.
- After years of marginal upgrades, Tombstone was actually redesigned from the ground up this year. Unfortunately that comes with the drawback of having to find out issues with the new design in the Battlebox. Captain Shred did its usual trick of losing the weapon after 1 minute, but fortunately for them, they'd already won the fight at that stage.
- Free Shipping's arm doesn't have enough power. Again. Blacksmith very clearly nowhere near as optimised with the hammer saw design as Sawblaze is, but its durability may make it a contender for top 16.
- It's clear that neither Deep Six nor Pain Train are going to challenge this year, given that they can't drive in the direction they want to. Still, it was good to see some gratuitous violence.
- As with Tombstone, Hydra actually had substantial internal design changes for this season. As with Tombstone, the only place to really test those is in the Battlebox, and that's where the issues became apparent. End Games forks, let's be honest, didn't function properly at all. They got very lucky.
- I haven't watched the Youtube exclusive because I can't find it. Hopefully they just haven't uploaded it yet, rather than it being geo-blocked.

[Ameriganastan]

He lost to fucking CAPTAIN SHREDERATOR.

I give up. Tombstone sucks. I need a new favorite robot.

[HISPIDA]

He lost to fucking CAPTAIN SHREDERATOR.

I give up. Tombstone sucks. I need a new favorite robot.

DON'T LOSE HOPE, BROTHER
WE'RE COMING BACK I SWEAR

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Bonus fight now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA27O7yy90Q

Well worth a watch. Produced to the same quality as the show, which is much better than previous unaired fights that were put on Youtube. A very good quality fight too, honestly I'd have preferred to see this in the show than Hydra Vs Endgame.

[Kohr]

Bonus fight now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA27O7yy90Q

Well worth a watch. Produced to the same quality as the show, which is much better than previous unaired fights that were put on Youtube. A very good quality fight too, honestly I'd have preferred to see this in the show than Hydra Vs Endgame.

I'm very glad they're finally using common sense by putting these unaired fights on YouTube right away.

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

- Yeti and Madcatter both have made changes since the last time we saw them. Madcatter has a wraparound wedge now to combat horizontals, but I'm not sure what setup they have for drums. As with all vert matches, it's going to be a battle for low ground. Yeti has the forks, and I'm not sure what Madcatter has, so I'll have to guess at Yeti for this one.
- Defender is a new robot from the Whiplash team. It appears to be a weird kind of full-body lifter. I'm not convinced by the design, but it's the Whiplash team and they know what they're doing. Having said that, Ribbot is a solid and durable bot with various different setups, and I think they'll have enough to win this.
- Hijinx and Mammoth is going to come down to whether Hijinx can reach top speed. If they can, they'll chop through the scaffolding like Hypershock did last year, but if they can't, they are the perfect shape for Mammoth to bully them around the box. Hijinx was slow to spin up last year, so I'll guess Mammoth for this.
- I'm not sure what Kraken really do to Rotator. I'm not sure if they can out-wedge them (Rotator has some decent rear forks/wedgelets), and if they attack head-on, their wedge will just get chewed up. Both robots are crazy durable, so this will last the full three minutes, but Rotator will dominate.
- Blip is a new robot from the Tantrum team. Its flipper is said to be very powerful, but it's a mechanism nobody has used before, and the flipper seems quite high up the robot, which might cause it Cobalt-style problems. Having said that, Rusty, even with its significant upgrades, will not be a match for Blip.
- Team Tantrum have a second appearance in this episode, though I suspect the show will bill both the Blip and Defender teams as breakaways from their original teams. I really don't see what Malice can do here. It's spinner doesn't have much range, and Tantrum is well armoured with no easy place to get a bite. Should be a straightforward Tantrum win.
- I'm worried for Bloodsport after their latter matches last year. Breaking a weapon against Gruff, then losing weakly to Tantrum and then Lockjaw. They have looked dominant at times, but I fear that a fast, well-driven, and tough robot like Whiplash is their weakness. Having said that, Whiplash lost twice to Tombstone, so it might be a close one.
- The Youtube exclusive looks enticing again. Two strong mid-tier robots, but Shatter has looked the more impressive to me. Subzero just isn't reliable enough for my liking, but maybe they'll do better against a non-spinner.

[Kohr]

I know Blip wasn't really facing a real opponent, but I'm glad its flipper worked. I can hope that maybe it'll go far this year. We really need a flipper champion at some point.

[Ameriganastan]

That was a complete bitch win by Whisplash. Wuss.

[Kohr]

That was a complete bitch win by Whisplash. Wuss.

If so, Bloodsport should've stopped it. But they couldn't.

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Did pretty well with my predictions, just once again fell into the trap of underestimating MadCatter. They look like they've got End Game levels of power this season.

Pretty cool to see Blip gyrodancing, not often you see that with a flipper.

I actually kind of agree with the point on Whiplash. I'm not a massive fan of removing the primary weapon for a defensive setup, but it's a sport and the objective is to win, so it makes sense from their perspective. At least it wasn't a bike rack.

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Preditions for this week:

- Hypershock is often unreliable, but I can see them beating Slammow easily. I just don't think Slammow is very well defended and was pretty slow last year.
- P1 is another robot that struggles against spinners. Valkyrie will deal with them without issues.
- Huge is a waning power now, but this is Riptide's first fight, and it's hard to back a rookie against an experienced bot, so I'll go with Huge to win.
- Cobalt has had wedge-issues in the past, and I can see Fusion dominating this fight. Of course, Fusion can't last longer than a minute without exploding, but I'll assume they've worked out those issues for this season, and that they'll win this one.
- Black Dragon beat Tombstone last year, and Icewave spins up way too slow to do anything to them, so this will be one-sided.
- Duck has been completely redesigned, and I can see that working against them when fighting a tried and tested design. Witch Doctor to take this one on a JD.
- Copperhead Lockjaw is very tough to call. Lockjaw was pretty bad last year, but dominated in Bounty Hunters. Copperhead looked good, but straight up didn't work against Mammoth. Lockjaw's problems seem to be more persistent though, so I'll go for Copperhead here with the last minute of the fight being a weaponless shoving match.
- Pardon My French looks dangerous, but once again, it's a brand new design fighting for the first time. Claw Viper did badly last year, but I'll back them here.

[Kohr]

I've never seen Huge go that high in the air before. That was a bit of an upset. Also happy that P1 handled business against a quality opponent.

[Kohr]

It kills me to say this, but the redesign of Duck is probably the worst redesign I've ever seen on Battlebots. Can we get the extremely violent spinner killer back please?

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

Honestly... this wasn't a great episode. Most of the fights were really one-sided and a lot of weapons broke early on. Huge and Icewave seem to be spent forces at this point in time. Both were successful in a time before anybody was good at the box rush, and their lack of pushing power and slow spin up times are such a hinderance at this stage.

At least Fusion seems to have fixed its problems this year. Could make a deep run if their reliability holds up.

[Kohr]

I see what they've done. They've given Tombstone a favorable matchup, but one against a bot with a respectable enough reputation that it's not insulting.

[Pencil Sharpeners 2]

There seem to be quite a lot of one-sided fights this week, but I might be wrong. Barring unreliability or a major driving error, I think Jackpot, Ribbot, Skorpios, Tombstone, and Tantrum should have easy wins, mainly because I'm not too sure what their opponents can really do to them. My rule is to never predict a win for a rookie in their first fight, but Glitch are up against Ghost Raptor, so they will win so long as they have a functioning weapon. The main event looks tasty at least. I've underestimated Madcatter multiple times in the past, but I'll still go with Sawblaze for this fight.

I see what they've done. They've given Tombstone a favorable matchup, but one against a bot with a respectable enough reputation that it's not insulting.

Yeah, seems about right. I suspect they'll do the same for the likes of Hydra, Minotaur, and Bloodsport.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

wonder when they'll finally figure out they should move the lights outside the battle box.