BattleBots

I watched the first episode of the new season just a few hours ago. Very much like last year, the Slugfest tournament consists of a final bracket with three of the eight openings filled with recent champions End Game, Tantrum, and SawBlaze, while the remaining five openings will be determined by five qualifying brackets with the winner of all three rounds in each bracket moving on to the final tournament.

The first episode featured the first of these five qualifying brackets, and let me just say that you would not believe who ended up winning it all. Talk about the ultimate underdog…

I’d say both of the night’s finalists were underdogs and I called quite a few fights wrong leading up to the matches.

This just isn’t Rotator’s year all in all. I get the feeling their team is really disappointed with their showing.

Meanwhile, both Shreddit Bro and Valkyrie had unexpectedly great showings whereas both had a lot of trouble in the regular season. Better robotics from one team and better driving from the other really turned their images around.

A lot of good fights were had! Though to be honest I nearly fell asleep during all the prefight B-roll jibba-jabba. More than once. This is why it’s good to have a DVR so you can skip around!

I remember in the early seasons when they had one-hour episodes, they couldn’t fit in all the fights and could only show highlights of one or two fights in each episode (except the season finale for obvious reasons). Obviously, extending these episodes to two hours effectively got rid of that, but now the downside is the need for more filler content to actually get the full two hours. I don’t mind it at all, and I definitely don’t want to miss a moment of the actual battles, so I certainly prefer these longer episodes over what they used to have in the early seasons.

Anyway, just finished watching tonight’s new episode, and while many of the first round fights ended with some rather quick knockouts, the final match was an epic battle that came down to a very close judge’s decision. Now there’s a team that deserved to move on to the final tournament.

Just watched the third Slugfest qualifying tournament, and some legendary names were able to progress through the bracket. Ultimately, it was a fan favorite that did remarkably well enough to win this tournament and earn a place in the finals. Only two more qualifying tournaments left to go before the final bracket will be set.

Finished watching the fourth Slugfest qualifying tournament, and while there was one clear favorite in the field to start off, that heavy hitter being operated by a rookie driver meant that just about any of the eight bots had a fair chance in this bracket. Remarkably, nearly all of the fights ended in judge’s decision, but the final ended in really dramatic style (complete with flames).

And seeing the preview bracket for the final Slugfest qualifier next week, it looks like some of the best teams yet will be going head-to-head right from the start, so that should be exciting to watch.

Saw the fifth and final Slugfest qualifying tournament, and there were quite a lot of heavy hitters in this bracket, with a couple of fan favorites reaching the final. Some pretty interesting results, with quite the destructive bot making it to the end.

And with that, here are the eight finalist bots going for the Golden Bolt:

Free Shipping vs End Game
Jackpot vs Whiplash
Shreddit Bro vs SawBlaze
Tantrum vs Ripperoni

Who do you think will win it all?

Here are my picks on who will win the quarterfinals, the semifinals, and the final:

End Game wins against Free Shipping
Whiplash wins against Jackpot
SawBlaze wins against Shreddit Bro
Ripperoni wins against Tantrum

End game wins against Whiplash
Ripperoni wins against SawBlaze

Now to wait and see how many of these picks I’ll get right…

Okay, I just finished watching the Golden Bolt tournament, and here are the results…

Quarterfinals:
End Game won against Free Shipping by knockout (it didn’t last very long, so not much else to really say here)
Jackpot won against Whiplash by a split judges decision (Whiplash went with its lifter only configuration, but it failed to work at all)
SawBlaze won against Shreddit Bro! by unanimous judges decision (the fight had to be stopped early due to the bots getting stuck together and excessive smoke making it too dangerous to try separating them)
Tantrum won against Ripperoni by unanimous judges decision (could’ve gone very differently if not for Ripperoni unexpectedly losing a wheel entirely on its own early on)

Semifinals:
End Game won against Jackpot by knockout (Jackpot could’ve had a better chance at winning if not for its weapon being disabled early, especially with the help Jackpot was getting from its minibot Ace)
SawBlaze won against Tantrum by a split judges decision (SawBlaze flipped itself over after delivering one hit too many and was counted out right at the three minute mark at the end of the fight, leading to some initial confusion on whether it would be a knockout or go to the judges, so that call came down to literally a fraction of a second)

Final:
End Game won against SawBlaze by a split judges decision (it was very close with SawBlaze dominating the first half and End Game dominating the second half, and great sportsmanship from the SawBlaze team for choosing not to appeal the judges decision)

Wow, that sure was fun to watch, with lots of incredible moments in several of those fights. I don’t know when the next full season will begin, but I am certainly looking forward to it.

Wait… there’s a BattleBots forum? WHY DIDNT I KNOW ABOUT THIS?!