Spoilers follow. If you don’t wanna know what happened, you don’t wanna read this . I mean, you may not want me to read this anyway, but I thought I should let you know about the spoilers just in case.
So, about last week…I wrote a pretty mediocre recap of the action and then my cat jumped on my keyboard. Thanks to Squarespace’s baffling decision not to implement an autosave feature, the whole post was lost and, frankly, wasn’t worth re-writing. Let’s move on.
Fight 1: Black Dragon v. Claw Viper
A couple of 1-0 bots squared off in the opening fight. Claw Viper had the more impressive win, showing tremendous mobility against HiJinx. Black Dragon’s win was a little more controversial, a split decision over Kraken that wasn’t especially convincing.
Claw Viper performed their customary box rush which was rendered ineffective by Black Dragon lining up at a diagonal and immediately moving out of the way. Claw Viper bumped into the wall, but unfortunately for them, Black Dragon’s drive and weapon were actually working this time around and the Brazillian spinner got a couple of good hits.
The hits didn’t do anything flashy, but Claw Viper just sort of stopped working. “Not working” is enough to start a countdown and that’s what happened. Pretty impressive win for Black Dragon, which is good, because it wouldn’t be Battlebots without a bot from Brazil in the tournament.
Winner: Black Dragon (Knockout)
Fight 2: JackPot v. Ghost Raptor
The low-budget rookie JackPot came in on the back of a win over SubZero, while Ghost Raptor was 0-1 after getting knocked out by Shatter. I didn’t really want to see either of this bots lose, what with JackPot having a compelling backstory and Ghost Raptor coming back after a four year layoff looking like Cherno Alpha in Pacific Rim.
The bots went weapon to weapon right off the bat and this didn’t go well for Ghost Raptor. JackPot’s giant spinning disc knocked Ghost Raptor’s spinning bar clean off the top of the bot. Ghost Raptor gamely attempted to do some shoving and lifting, but every time it got int he way of JackPot’s weapon, the floor got littered with bits of Ghost Raptor.
One hit split Ghost Raptor in half, and that, as they say, was that. I don’t know how JackPot will fare against a top-tier bot, but this was a very impressive win.
Winner: JackPot (Knockout)
Fight 3: Grabot v. SubZero
This was the maiden fight for Ben Davidson’s Grabot, a grappler of some sort, featuring a couple of “hands” and some chain thingies. It looked complicated. SubZero was coming off a lost to JackPot and, honestly, years and years of losses.
Grabot sort of limped out of the gate and SubZero, possibly not able to believe it’s luck, dove in and flipped Grabot on its back.
Grabot does not have a self-righting mechanism.
So, SubZero spent the next few minutes tossing Grabot around until the flipper rang out of gas but by then, Grabot was done. The cool looking grapple things never came into play, which was disappointing, but it was nice to see SubZero finally get a win.
Winner: SubZero (Knockout I think, maybe it was a unanimous decision, I can’t remember)
Fight 4: HUGE! v. Hydra
This is the fight everyone is talking about and for all the wrong reasons. This was probably the worst fight I’ve ever seen in Battlebots and I’m a little surprised they aired it. HUGE! came in at 0-1 having lost an epic battle against Mammoth. Hydra was 1-0 after taking a split-decision against Witch Doctor.
If you’ve been around Battlebots for a while, you probably remember the famous Ghost Raptor/Icewave fight where underdog Ghost Raptor mounted a pole with a V on the front in place of their spinning bar. They used it to keep Icewave at bay, eventually flipping the horizontal spinner bot and knocking it out.
Hydra’s Jake Ewert, having seen HUGE! dismantle Bronco last year, decided to take this to an extreme and mounted a giant C-shaped bar to the front of his bot. His strategy was to negate both robots’ weapons, force HUGE! into a corner, and just collect the win.
If that sounds like a boring, chickenshit strategy, you got it exactly right. HUGE! kept trying to get around or through the safety bar but could only make a little minor contact with Hydra. Hydra just patiently corralled HUGE! into the corner and sat there. The referee told him to back off and he refused until he was threatened with…whatever action a referee can take.
That was the whole fight. What total garbage. The judges gave the fight to Hydra. I’m not sure what the thinking was. Neither bot did any damage. Hydra had total control but precisely zero aggression (actually, you could argue negative aggression). How do you judge a fight like that?
To make it worse, Ewert was a complete dick about the whole thing. I’m team whoever-is-fighting-Hydra from here on out. It’s an amazing bot, easily the best flipper I’ve ever seen, but if he’s too scared to fight? Screw him. The folks at Battlebots weren’t amused, either:
Second fight this season where there was willful nonuse of an active weapon. There WILL be a penalty for this next season. #BattleBots
— BattleBots (@BattleBots) January 8, 2021
Winner: Hydra (unanimous decision)
Fight 5: Aegis v. Fusion
This marked the first fight for Chris Sparzo’s Aegis, a Kevlar-armored, shield-shaped flipper. Fusion came in at 0-1 after having failed to do much of anything in it’s first fight. Still, Fusion is a Team Whyachi bot, so you’d have to think it was a heavy favorite, especially as Kevlar seemed an extremely curious choice for armor.
Literally nothing happened for the first 15 seconds of the fight. Both bots came out of their square and…did nothing. Finally, Fusion’s weapons came online and Aegis was left to wonder what might have been had they attacked when their foe was helpless.
As it happened, Aegis actually got a good run at Fusion, but they fired their flipper too early, leaving them utterly helpless. Fusion ripped open the sides of the defenseless bot and kept attacking even as the count was going because they could, I guess.
Winner: Aegis (Knockout)
Fight 6: Big Dill v. Lock-Jaw
Both of these bots came in at 1-0 thanks to victories over hapless opponents. Big Dill actually worked pretty well in their win over Atom #94, but Lock-Jaw sputtered badly in their fight, but since it was against Captain Shredderator, they had the luxury of just waiting for their opponent to knock itself out.
Neither bot really impressed, but it’s always a pleasure to watch Donald Hutson drive Lock-Jaw. He got his bot flipped over early on, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. He bent one of Big Dill’s lifting forks and very nearly knocked ‘em out, but the pickle bot managed to get moving and see out the match.
It was more entertaining than I made it sound, as there were sparks a-plenty, but neither bot packed the punch to really put the other to the sword and that’s not a good sign for Lock-Jaw.
Winner: Lock-Jaw (unanimous decision)
Fight 7: Witch Doctor v. Kraken
Both of these bots came in at 0-1 after suffering split-decision defeats to Hydra (Witch Doctor) and Black Dragon (Kraken). It’s a little strange to see the main event be a battle of winless robots, but in this case, it made sense: Witch Doctor was a finalist last year and Kraken has made unbelievable strides from being a hopeless gimmick bot to a pretty strong control bot.
The two went head to head immediately, and you’d think that that would have favored Witch Doctor. However, just like in the fight against Hydra, the weapon system let them down. One of the two discs broke and the bot was now unbalanced and couldn’t spin the weapon at full speed.
Kraken spent most of the match biting into one or another part of Witch Doctor and running them around the box. From time to time, Witch Doctor would get their weapon going and managed to rip off some of Kraken’s armor. Kraken responded by tearing a belt off of Witch Doctor.
This was a really good fight and it went to the judges, who all agreed on the winner and I think they got the call right: A huge upset for Kraken.
Winner: Kraken (unanimous decision)
Obviously, the HUGE! v. Hydra fight was the big talking point here. People have been saying this was nothing new, that it was essentially the same as the Ghost Raptor/Icewave fight and Beta/Rotator tussle. Neither of those comparisons really hold water though: Ghost Raptor won by knockout after all and Beta charged headlong into their opponent which certainly qualifies as “aggression.” This was just anti-fighting and it was egregious enough that the rules will be changed so we won’t be subjected to this B.S. again next year.