Robot Wars S07E02 Part 3: A Grim End

Right then. We have one, in the form of The Grim Reaper. But who will be the other? One of Big Nipper or Jackson Wallop is going to be going through to the Heat B final.
Now this is an interesting matchup. I don’t know who at Mentorn decided it was a good idea to put Jackson Wallop up against Big Nipper, but unless they really wanted Big Nipper to win, they accidentally gave Jackson Wallop the battle from hell. The thing is, Big Nipper is a very low robot (19cm high to be precise, if you believe Jonathan Pearce)… Jackson Wallop has a spinner that is so far off the ground (33cm, again coming from the mouth of Jonathan Pearce) that it has no hope at all of actually being able to hit Big Nipper. Jackson Wallop is now basically a pushbot. Why they couldn’t have put Big Nipper up against Gyrobot, then things would have been far more even. But oh well, this is what we’re stuck with.

Your house robots are Shunt and Dead Metal. Ah the wonderful, original duo.
And so we begin. Credit to Jackson Wallop, they go head first into Big Nipper, so not lacking on the aggression. Only problem is that’s probably the last thing you want to do whilst Big Nipper is around, because now they have JW in their claws. Jackson Wallop does escape this time, but then decides it’s a good idea to show the world the gyroscopic effects of having a large, fast and rather useless spinning disc attached to the top of your robot by driving into the arena side wall, bouncing off and then driving into the Refbot… And then the other arena side wall. Now we all know JW isn’t going to destroy Big Nipper with its disc, so instead they go other and eviscerate the pit release button, as if to prove a point about how destructive it can really be.

Collateral damage

This makes no change to the fact Jackson Wallop is doomed, something illustrated when Big Nipper pick them up and drive them into the angle grinder. Big Nipper then parade them around for a bit, mainly because one of the claws is now stuck in Jackson Wallop’s wheel. Sure enough, eventually they actually rip the entire tyre off. So now not only does Jackson Wallop not have a useful disc, it has no viable locomotion. Might as well just go home now. Shunt then decides now is the time to move in for the kill, and does a total of zero damage. Nice.

Shunted

Cue Dead Metal, who actually uses the saw to effect and puts holes in Jackson Wallop’s disc. This goes on for some time, and Infact all that the battle has really devolved into is a contest of who can pass Jackson Wallop around and do the most damage. It goes to Dead Metal, then Shunt, then even back to Big Nipper at one point. Long story short (Because the rest of the battle is really just more of the same), Jackson Wallop ends up down the pit. Hand up if that didn’t surprise you at all?

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So, the final is pretty much a rematch between two of Heat B’s 1st melee competitors, The Grim Reaper and Big Nipper. No spinners in this heat final, despite it being guaranteed there would be two of them in the semis. How unfortunate…

Your House Robots for this heat final are Sgt Bash and Cassius Chrome. Fuck Cassius Chrome.
The fight starts with The Grim Reaper slightly on the front foot, but Big Nipper are slippery customers, ducking and weaving away from every attack. TGR can’t get in anywhere near how they would like in order to get a flip in. Infact, eventually it is Big Nipper that launches the first proper assault, getting their claws under TGR and pushing them into the CPZ. Neither of these robots it has to be said are blessed with weapons of mass destruction, despite Big Nipper taking off one of Jackson Wallop’s tyres last time around. After re-capturing The Grim Reaper, Big Nipper then lift them up and pretty much carry them around the arena for a bit.

Taxi service

To get away from Big Nipper, The Grim Reaper actually fire the flipper, sending them off balance and back onto the arena floor. Having regained their balance, they then proceed to flip Big Nipper straight over. Big Nipper are now themselves trapped in the CPZ, so along comes Cassius Chrome. Cassius Chrome then proceeds to do a grand total of absolutely nothing and just watches as The Grim Reaper flips Big Nipper again… And then again. TGR now definitely have the upper hand, but Big Nipper are not out of this yet.

The onslaught continues, but The Grim Reaper can’t get Big Nipper out of the arena. Sure, they can get them up against the arena side wall, but Big Nipper always manage to escape.  And now, with Big Nipper fully free, they can retake the advantage. They get underneath TGR and start driving them across the arena, lifting them up by their front end. By the time Big Nipper drives them into the CPZ, TGR are fully up on their rear end, and cornered.

Cornered

The Grim Reaper use the tried and tested method of firing the flipper to escape, but then find themselves captured by Sgt Bash. Bash may be an old robot, but it can still clamp down fairly effectively for a few seconds at least. They escape, but Big Nipper are there again, and just push them back. The countdown clock begins, signalling the battle is coming to an end. Big Nipper makes one final attack, pushing The Grim Reaper into the arena side wall and lifting them up. But that’s the last act of this heat final. Now the judges have a decision to make.

Now this was a fairly even fight. Big Nipper take it for the beginning and the end phases of the fight, but The Grim Reaper dominated the mid section. It’s a difficult decision to make, but one robot is going through to the series semi-final. And that robot is…

THE GRIM REAPER

You can’t outrun the Reaper

And so there we have it. The Grim Reaper joins M2 in the 7th wars of the series semi final. Kind of a legion of flippers so far. Can anyone with a different design ass themselves to the mix. Well Heat C is just around the corner, so until then…

Robot Wars S07E02 Part 2: Miniature Madness

We’ve now finished the initial melees, which means it’s time for this episode’s side event. This time we’re treated for the first heat in the Featherweight championships, which basically just means lots of very small robots fighting it out in a very big arena. These robots are: G2, Cygnus, Kitty, Mini Maul, Prince of Awe, Rip & Alpha. Now if you expect me to coherently manage to narrate what went on in this battle, then you’ll be wrong. It was pretty much a mess. Also, I stopped remembering half of which robots were which after the first 30 seconds.

First, a brief description. Rip (Header Picture) is a small green robot with a yellow scoop flipper. Kitty is literally a miniature Pussycat. Alpha is a dark box of doom with a front scoop on it. Mini Maul are also a dark box of doom, but aside from the scoop it also had a large rear spike. G2 is a box shaped robot with a lifting arm. Prince Of Awe was another flipper, and a more conventional wedge shaped flipper too. Cygnus is the final robot, which is a box on wheels with a miniature flipper.

Anyway, you’re house robots (Yes, the house robots are a part of this) are Sir Killalot, Mr Psycho and Growler. Because nobody at Mentorn seemingly ever heard of the phrase ‘overkill’.
And so we start. Dear god. Rip and POA were the first to make moves, flipping other opponents. The resolution on this video is so crap it’s sometimes hard to determine who is who. Infact, Rip got involved quite a lot early on, teaming up with G2 to flip what might have been Mini Maul. The house robots don’t seem to have any restraint in this battle, because they’re already roaming well outside of their CPZs and causing chaos. At  one point, Growler almost eats Kitty whole.

Rip mind are really getting into it. They’re easy enough to spot too with that paint job. Everyone else? Not so much. Kitty, Alpha, Mini Maul and Cygnus have all done fuck all. Infact, Cygnus got flipped fairly early on and can’t actually self right, so…
Now this is all well and good, but the house robots have become restless, so My Psycho decides to try and remedy this by grabbing the impressive Rip and crumpling the front end as it picks the robot up.

In a Psycho’s grip

Growler also has someone in his jaws. I don’t know who, but they are still alive and eventually escape. Psycho’s moved on from Rip and starts bashing Cygnus with the giant mallet. I suppose that’s what Cygnus deserves for being so awful. Actually, thinking about it, the Featherweight Championships just seem to be an excuse for the house robots to cause some real damage. Killalot has even taken it upon himself to drive over and completely crush Mini Maul. Like, the robot is completely destroyed. Nice one Killalot.
Back to the actual competitors though, and both Kitty and POA are ganging up on G2. POA flips them at the same time Kitty hits them, and the batteries fall out. So that’s G2 well and truly gone. Meanwhile:

Mini Maul… I think

Just to finish things off, Sir K takes the non-functional Cygnus and G2 and places them both on the floor flipper. A floor flipper that’s used to tossing 100Kg robots across the arena. So when they flew, my word did they fly. G2 sailed straight out of the arena and would have ended up in the audience had there not been the protective cover infront of them. Cygnus went higher than it did far, and bounced straight into the pit. It was a beautiful sight.

That left a few robots still moving to go to the judges. I’ll save you the suspense; Prince of Awe and Rip were the robots chosen to go through, because they were honestly the only ones still standing that actually did anything. Kitty launched like one attack, and I’m not sure if Alpha actually did do anything. It doubt it was a hard decision.

So now, back to the heavyweights! The Grim Reaper, Big Nipper, Jackson Wallop and Gyrobot were the 4 that went through into the heat semi-final. First up for us is The Grim Reaper vs. Gyrobot. The flipper vs. the spinner!

Gyrobot, for a laugh, seem to have taken some of Killerkat’s fur and plastered it to the spinner’s teeth. I suppose there are worse things to do to your robot.
Sir Killalot and the boxing bandit Cassius Chrome are your house robots. Let’s begin!

We start the fight with Gyrobot running away and The Grim Reaper not running away, giving TGR the advantage in 2 seconds flat when Gyrobot reverses into the arena side wall and TGR manages to get underneath and flip them. Gyrobot end up on their side first, but do eventually topple. Gyrobot run away again, but they run straight into Sir Killalot, who for some reason is wandering outside of his CPZ. All that does though is allow TGR to get in underneath again and flip Gyrobot back over!

Flipping fantastic

Gyrobot’s spinning disc isn’t doing much to help it. Sure, it’s spinning, but it’s not spinning fast and not doing any damage. It lands a hit on The Grim Reaper, but succeeds only in sending itself flying across the flame pit and into Cassius Chrome, who is also out of his CPZ. For some reason in this episode the house robots don’t seem to care about their boundaries. I blame Channel 5.

From then on, it’s pretty much a procession. TGR flips Gyrobot, Gyrobot runs away and repeat. At one point Gyrobot does manage to get under The Grim Reaper, but it lasts about 3 seconds before they find themselves being flipped again. Now they’re also being ganged up on by the house robots, just to add to things. After escaping, Gyrobot no longer even disguises the fact it’s running away and does so all the way until it runs into Cassius Chrome. TGR, probably fed up of just flipping it and watching it run away, gives up on Gyrobot and opens up the pit.

GRIND

You can probably guess most of what happens in the rest of the fight. Just re-read the last paragraph a couple more times. But the fact is, Gyrobot did survive long enough to take it to the judges. And so to the judges it went.

I mean, it’s not surprising that they went with The Grim Reaper, right? It really isn’t. Gyrobot were TERRIBLE.

So, we have the first of our robots through to the heat final. But now the question is, who is going to join them? Jackson Wallop or Big Nipper? And next time, that’s what we’re going to find out.

Until then…

Robot Wars S07E02 Part 1: Terrorhurtz And The Curious Case Of The Missing 3rd Seed

It took me 15 minutes to come up with that title, and I’m not changing it dammit.

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So, with M2 the first robot confirmed to be competing in the 7th wars semi-finals, it’s time to see which other robot from a group of 8 can join them. Everything works the same as in the first heat, with 2 melees of 4 reducing down to 2 heat semi finals and then the heat final. Competing in this episode were Terrorhurtz (3), Big Nipper, Barbaric Response, The Grim Reaper, Kan Opener, Jackson Wallop, Gyrobot & Killerkat.

Except, that wasn’t true. Terrorhurtz weren’t competing because their robot wasn’t ready to compete, and so they were actually barred from entering the building, let alone the arena on the basis of a robot completion clause. For some reason, the guys at Mentorn decided to try and turn it into a drama event, making it seem as if this was a breaking news alert when Terrorhurtz’ name was called out and they didn’t appear. It wasn’t anywhere near as dramatic as that.

So onto the first melee of the heat. The first robot to make an appearance is Kan Opener, which you may remember from the 8th wars (It feels weird saying that considering the 8th wars happened after the 7th wars). In brief, Kan Opener is basically a yellow robotic crab that can run both ways up. It comes equipped with a set of grabbing pincers or 4 and a terrible record in the main competition. I mean sure, they’ve won annihilators, but this isn’t an annihilator. So…

Next up is The Grim Reaper, which to be honest is a fairly common looking flipper robot painted in a ghastly green colour to set it apart from the rest. That and the guy in the grim reaper costume, looking like he’s going to send someone to an early grave. Basically, discount UK Moebius but it actually works.

Then we have Big Nipper! Another that also took part this year, Big Nipper comes complete with its original design, that being a narrow set of claws that can also lift up, the main strategy supposedly to grab, lift and drag. Invertability is of course always an asset, especially with The Grim Reaper also in the arena alongside them. If you strip it down though, it’s basically a box with pincers.

And finally we have Barbaric Response, which is a full body flipper and rambot. It has almost a Behemoth type scoop flipper attached to the front end, and runs at 20mph, making it plenty fast enough to cause some serious damage at high speed. It’s an interesting heat, comprising of 2 flippers and 2 pincer robots. Barbaric Response competed in S6 too, but went out in the first round to Firestorm.

So, onto the melee itself. Your house robots are  the ever dynamic pair of Mr Psycho and his pet dog Growler. I’m sure this is like their version of hunting.
Melees sometimes are a bit of a mess at the start, with 4 robots all going at each other. This was one of those messes, but in the middle of it somewhere The Grim Reaper did attempt to flip Big Nipper, not that they entirely succeeded. They then did almost flip Kan Opener, but they managed to get away too. Barbaric Response then join in the fun, flipping over Big Nipper before being caught by Kan Opener. At this point, everyone just piled on everyone… Again.

See here: A mess

They eventually separate into pairs: Whilst The Grim Reaper goes off and starts flipping around Big Nipper, Kan Opener still has itself caught on Barbaric Response. The Grim Reaper though is really going at Big Nipper, flipping it at every opportunity, but Big Nipper is fighting back like the angry crustacean it is. At one point this leads to Big Nipper actually riding on top of The Grim Reaper like some weird kind of Latin dance.

Would you like to Tango?

Whilst those 2 are having their very well fought and fairly even battle, Kan Opener are still stuck on Barbaric Response. Like literally, their pincers have managed to jam themselves into Barbaric Response’s armour panels, and they’re pretty much driving each other around the arena. So we don’t care about them.
With the other battle, however, Big Nipper have started to gain the upper hand, getting themselves underneath The Grim Reaper and pushing them into the angle grinder/arena side wall, then attempting to lift them up. I say attempting, because what really happened was Big Nipper’s arse came off the floor instead, unable to take the workload. Probably not the initial intention.

By now, the fact Kan Opener and Barbaric Response have become a coupling is starting to annoy the house robots, especially Growler, who takes the initiative and starts ramming them with little success. TGR and BN join the party around a now opened pit. The Grim Reaper flips Big Nipper, very, very almost resulting in them driving down the pit. Nice to see old habits die hard, eh?

“How close to death do you wanna get?”

In the dying seconds, Kan Opener tries to get Barbaric Response into the pit. I don’t know how it would have worked, because surely being attached would lead Kan Opener going down too?
But now it is up to the esteemed judges to pick two robots from the four to go through to the heat semi-finals. I think it was fair to assume that The Grim Reaper was going to be one of them, and that Barbaric Response had done pretty much nothing, and so were out. That left it between Big Nipper and Kan Opener, but because Kan Opener had basically been walking their pet Barbaric Response the whole time, Big Nipper was put through instead. The Grim Reaper and Big Nipper into the next round!

So onto the second melee, where 2 more robots will go through and win the chance to contest TGR and BN in the battle of who can have the best set of initials. I would say TGR is winning so far. And no, the big guy with the scythe standing over me did not influence my decision.

First up is Killerkat, which is a rather oddly shaped triangle box wedge robot, almost like a discount Pussycat but with the wheels inside the robot (Even Jonathan Pearce made the link). It also has a horizontal spinning bar that had several holes through it, like Swiss cheese in metal form. Oh, and it was also covered in fur, because nobody learned anything from Diotor. It was almost guaranteed that this robot was going to end up on fire at some point, let’s face it.

Next we have Jackson Wallop, which was also an interesting looking design. It’s pretty much a box on wheels, but with a tabletop spinner attached to the top of it. It’s a very large spinner too at 1.2m in diameter, and possesses some rather lethal looking teeth too. An allusion to wacky artist Jackson Pollock, it wouldn’t really be complete if it wasn’t covered in a large variety of coloured paint. No fur though.

Finally we have Gyrobot, which whilst not quite a box on wheels, is more of a disc on wheels. Infact, it is literally a disc on wheels. The 40kg outer shell spun at 800rpm, something that could give quite a whack to whoever got in its path- if it spun on the spot as well as spinning the outer rim, that could get up to 1500rpm. It’s also invertible, which probably would mean more if it wasn’t coming up against two other spinners. This melee is literally battle of the spinners.

You’ll notice there are only 3 robots on that list. This is where Terrorhurtz should have been, but they’re busy being denied entry. Cue Jonathan Pearce doing his best to try and pretend that he’s surprised. He’s not surprised. We then get to see Jayne wander outside to witness John Reid and Terrorhurtz being disqualified in person. John Reid, credit to him, seems to be taking it well. It’s almost as if he knew it was going to happen…

Your house robots are Cassius Chrome  and everyone’s favourite bulldozer Shunt. So let’s get this 3-WAY melee underway.
With only 3 robots to fight, the start wasn’t quite as frantic as the previous bout, something made even more prominent by the fact Gyrobot seems to do… Nothing. This leaves Jackson Wallop and Killerkat to clash, although neither of them seem to do any actual damage to each other. Gyrobot then managed to get themselves moving, and did more to damage Killerkat in their blow, though still not much. If anything, Killerkat seemed more likely to fall over than that take damage from each of the blows. It certainly wasn’t entirely balanced.

Now with everyone moving, it’s a case of who can destroy who first. Jackson Wallop becomes a robot pinball for a second when he bounces off both Killerkat and Gyrobot, but eventually everyone decides it’s time to gang up on the incredibly lethargic Killerkat. Gyrobot takes the first swing, before Jackson Wallop follows up. From there it descends something like a Chuckle Brothers sketch- to me, to you… As both JW and Gyrobot pass Killerkat back and forth between them. I don’t think the kat was enjoying it.

Killerkat at this point have pretty much used up all of their 9 lives. The weapon is no longer spinning. The robot is no longer moving. The fur has remained intact though, the most minor of victories. But even not moving, the pain and humiliation is not over yet, because Jackson Wallop decide to come in one last time and hit them with enough force that they finally topple over. Game, set and match.

On your side

Of course, even with Killerkat dead, this wasn’t over. Gyrobot and Jackson Wallop conspired between them to push the now dead robot onto the flame pit (Much to Jonathan Pearce’s delight), and the fur went up in flames! That’s kind of what happens when you bring fur into Robot Wars, and especially if your robot has died. It’s nice to see Killerkat go out in a blaze of glory.

Flame grilled kat ft Refbot

Shunt then comes along, reminding us all that the house robots are a thing and they do still exist, and pushes the smouldering robot onto the floor flipper, where it flies *gracefully* through the air before crashing back to the ground. Perfect.

And so there we have it! Our 4 competitors moving on to the heat semi finals are:
Gyrobot
Jackson Wallop
The Grim Reaper
Big Nipper

And next time, we’ll see what happens between them all. Until then…