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

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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 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…

It’s finally here! The second season of the Slugfest (where past champions compete against other teams that fought their way into the tournament will all to compete for the Giant Golden Bolt) is about to begin, later tonight. If I remember the previous year correctly, this tournament was likely filmed immediately following the conclusion of the previous regular season, so all the bots we got familiar with back then will still be there. Not to mention, the most recent winner of the Giant Nut will automatically be part of the final round with all the other past champions. Anyway, I’m certainly looking forward to see which of the lesser teams can qualify for the main tournament in these first few episodes.

I was really glad to see Copperhead take out Riptide, but I’m biased since they’re one of my all-time favorite teams/robots. The losing driver made some rookie mistakes, but I don’t think their regular driver wouldn’t have made those same mistakes or mistakes of a similar nature.
I think Witch Doctor should have used their double disk weapon against Huge and eaten into their wheels with it. After their weapon stopped working, even that chunk of a spinner wasn’t going to be enough to break Huge’s weapon.
Speaking of, really glad to see Huge advance all the way to the finals. I love unconventional designs and theirs is extremely well thought-out against the majority of bots on the field. Even if, at the end of the day, it’s still a vertical spinner - at least it’s got an extremely original implementation.
I hope to see more teams adopt clever solutions like that in the future. As pointed out by the commentators, the basic layout of the winning bots for the last several years was already getting kind of stale, barring Tantrum’s neat idea to keep the weapon safe and operating for most of a fight.

At any rate, that was a night of some really awesome matches! Ribbot and Hydra facing off was extremely tense. I could sense Jake trying to lure them in with those superfluous flips.

Season 7 is finished, and the winner of the Giant Nut is…

With how great that has been over the years and how they’ve gradually kept improving, I’d say that team absolutely deserved to win the championship this year.

The action’s not yet over, however. It is confirmed there will be a second season of the special tournament where the championship prize is the Giant Golden Bolt. It’ll be interesting to see which non-championship teams will advance to the final tournament this time. (No idea when it’ll be on, but I’ll be sure to inform you once I find out.)

For those of you who have not yet seen the most recent episode… End Game lost their fight, and with Tantrum already eliminated in the previous round, that means there will definitely be a first time winner of the Championship this season.

Final episode of the season will be later this week, so here are my revised picks for the remaining fights…

Quarterfinals:
Minotaur wins against SawBlaze
Riptide wins against Copperhead
Witch Doctor wins against Huge
Hydra wins against Ribbot

Semifinals:
Minotaur wins against Hydra
Riptide wins against Witch Doctor

Final:
Minotaur wins against Riptide

Essentially, my predictions for the top four remain the same, so we’ll see in a few days if I got that correct.

With the Round of 32 now complete, here’s my revised picks for the remaining fights…

Round of 16:
Minotaur wins against Malice
SawBlaze wins against Monsoon
Riptide wins against HyperShock
End Game wins against Copperhead
Witch Doctor wins against Lock-Jaw
Huge wins against MadCatter
Hydra wins against Whiplash
Black Dragon wins against Ribbot

Quarterfinals:
Minotaur wins against SawBlaze
Riptide wins against End Game
Witch Doctor wins against Huge
Hydra wins against Black Dragon

Semifinals:
Minotaur wins against Hydra
Riptide wins against Witch Doctor

Final:
Minotaur wins against Riptide

So, despite getting almost an entire quadrant wrong, my picks for the last few fights remain the same.

For the opening Round of 32 episode:

Riptide vs. Shatter: Man, Team Riptide sure is salty that teams are suspicious when they act skeevy and break the rules. Even if they aren’t caught cheating, they’re still not complying with the rules going into the match. It would have been better to shrug that off as well-deserved lack of trust after they got caught fiddling with their bot after weigh-in, would have helped reduce the damage to their reputation.

Mad Catter vs. Claw Viper: Damn good fight! And a good show of mutual respect and sportsmanship. Even if Team CV invoked a challenge of the decision, both teams took it in stride. I can’t blame CV for trying it, since they essentially had nothing to lose by playing that card and I think their captain felt he owed it to the team since the initial decision was split. Really looking forward to seeing more Claw Viper next year!

Lucky vs. Hypershock: Really good showing by Lucky! I honestly didn’t expect them to go the distance, but they did. Their weapon is just too underpowered and too flimsy, though. They’re going to have to redesign that to be competitive even if they do have a really good driver. By the time you get to the tournament, they’re ALL good drivers.

Bloodsport vs. Lockjaw: Really happy to see Lockjaw win. Bloodsport pretty much defeated themselves by slamming into the dead weapon of LJ and killing their own weapon in the process so they couldn’t self-right afterwards. Still, Team LJ went in with the right configuration and strategy. There’s really no “good” way to go against a horizontal spinner where the weapon radius is larger than the robot’s frame, so you only have two viable paths: break their weapon with your face or force them to break it against the spike strips.

Huge vs. Skorpios: Went about how I expected it to. Skorpios needs to put some more work into their weapon. Nothing wrong with an over-head hammersaw, especially against a Huge, but their has a high probability of dying before the match and robbing them of options to win. Their basic robot is still robust and viable, especially with that enormous steel shield in front.

End Game vs. Tantrum: A good match in the first half. Once Tantrum’s weapon was broken, though, they really didn’t have a chance. They got the forks under Endgame early on, but that also made it hard for their weapon to connect.

Jackpot vs. Witchdoctor: Jackpot just plain got out-driven and then taken apart. WD took every opening once they landed a hit and put JP off balance. Textbook controlled aggression. Jackpot has more reach but less mobility, and WD’s weapon was able to get in and hit hard - probably BECAUSE they were only spinning it at 75%.

Rotator vs. Copperhead: I really love both bots and both teams so I didn’t know who to root for. Copperhead’s wheels are solid cast urethane rubber, so destroying one to the extent that the right-side drive fails is a real accomplishment. Likewise, tearing up Rotator’s fender to keep their weapon from spinning up again was a great outcome. This turned out to be one of several recent fights where both teams burned each other out in the first half, reducing them to stumbling around in the second half.

And I completely forgot to make my picks until just before the new episode begins. (For anyone curious, here’s a link to see the bracket: https://battlebots.com/wcvii-bracket/) Well, good thing I watch TV on Hulu and am able to pause and rewind live TV. So now I can get my predictions out before actually watching the episode. I’ll wait until tomorrow to update any calls I got wrong, but for now, here’s what I’m predicting…

Round of 32:
Minotaur wins against Fusion
Switchback wins against Malice
Sawblaze wins against Blip
Cobalt wins against Monsoon
Riptide wins against Shatter
Hypershock wins against Lucky
Endgame wins against Tantrum
Copperhead wins against Rotator
Witch Doctor wins against Jackpot
Bloodsport wins against Lockjaw
Huge wins against Scorpios
Claw Viper against over Mad Catter
Hydra wins against Deathroll
Beta wins against Whiplash
Quantum wins against Ribbot
Ripperoni wins against Black Dragon

Round of 16:
Minotaur wins against Switchback
Sawblaze wins against Cobalt
Riptide wins against Hypershock
Endgame wins against Copperhead
Witch Doctor wins against Bloodsport
Huge wins against Claw Viper
Beta wins against Hydra
Ripperoni wins against Quantum

Quarterfinals:
Minotaur wins against Sawblaze
Riptide wins against End Game
Witch Doctor wins against Huge
Ripperoni wins against Beta

Semifinals:
Minotaur wins against Ripperoni
Riptide wins against Witch Doctor

Final:
Minotaur wins against Riptide

And those are my predictions. Now to watch the new episode for the Round of 32 matches to see how many of them I got right…

Tonight’s episode was the final set of fights for the qualifying round.

So now the bracket for the knockout round has been set. I’ll share my predictions for the knockout round when I get a chance in the next few days.

This week’s new episode just finished, with quite a few interesting results.

Next week’s new episode will feature Minotaur vs Witch Doctor, and I’m really looking forward to that one.

Dang, I missed the one entitled “Never Say Die.” Caught “Claws and Jaws” and “Pizza Party” though! Great fights, and not really any disappointing matches. Was surprised a couple of times with matches going exactly the way I thought they wouldn’t, too.

I just finished watching tonight’s new episode, and boy did it have some spectacular battles. Lock Jaw vs Mad Catter, Claw Viper vs Hypershock, and Hydra vs Sawblaze, all of them were just incredible. Believe me, this is one episode you just had to watch!

New episodes have resumed, and from checking the match schedule page, it looks like there are now just four more episodes left to go until the tournament begins. All competitors have now gone through three out of their four qualifying matches, and while some favorites to go all the way have begun to emerge, some others by this point will almost certainly fail to make it to the tournament bracket.

Among some rather destructive fights, the most recent episode also included further use of the appeal. In fact, three teams attempted it after losing their fights, and all three of them failed, so that means Shatter, Shreddit Bro, and Monsoon will not be allowed to make any additional appeals for the rest of this season.

And apparently, the show is off for the next two weeks for some reason, so the next new episode won’t be until March 30.

I actually saw the video from Team Skorpios of them showing off that particular weapon weeks ago. I didn’t think it would make an appearance in a real fight.

Big Dill is putting on a much better showing, I honestly did not think they’d be that aggressive and controlling against Mad Catter like in the first half. Too bad they lost momentum in the second half.

Also, wow. Every fight Witch Doctor’s been in has been one for the highlight reels.

A couple of observations on the season so far:

Starchild ’s weapon has a really problematic “sweet-spot.” It’s proven difficult for Brandon Zalinsky to land a good hit no matter who the opponent is. Really looking forward to their match-up against Huge, but I think they need to seriously rework that tail end if they want the bot to be competitive.

Slam-Mow put up a pretty good fight against TerrorTops, which turned out to be an extremely effective design. TT and Big Dill are basically clones now. Using the spin attack to defend against TT was pretty genius, it’s too bad they didn’t get more opportunities.

Seems like we have a crap-ton of robots that are 3 and 0 this time around, too; including a couple of surprising ones!

I had a good laugh when I saw the name of this week’s episode: “You Want a Pizza Me?”

But seriously, I just finished watching the new episode and there were quite some interesting moments. Most notably, the very first ever appeal of a judge’s decision was made by Malice in their fight against Valkyrie, making the argument that their weapon had not in fact been disabled. Upon further review of the video, the judges ultimately agreed and reversed their initial decision. And since this appeal was successful, Malice will have the ability to use another appeal later in the tournament (it’s only when an appeal fails that a team is not allowed to make another attempt for the rest of the season).

Also in this episode was a much anticipated match-up between the two hammer-saw bots of SawBlaze and Skorpios. Let’s just say it was a massive letdown when Skorpios decided to replace their usual weapon with a giant sword, which SawBlaze easily cut right through for a quick win.

@Background Pony #EFE7
I’ve always said forks are going to cause trouble. I hope the meta moves away from them.
This kind of thing was an eventuality, in almost every forky-match there’s been at least one instance of them getting jammed in the killsaws. It physically hurts me to watch.
Anyway, RIPperoni’s flywheel seems to have been running the entire match this time. Looks like they’ve got a good design when it works.

Also, very cathartic to see Tantrum prove that their victory over Hydra is more than just luck.

If this really is the final fighting season for Shredderator, it’ll be the end of a long and storied career. I have DVDs from 2003 robot league fights featuring them. No shame in being a menace of the sport for two decades.

How about that major upset in the most recent episode? End Game got a terrible start against Ripperoni, which was able to win a devastating knockout against the former champion. You’d better start believing that this spinning pizza bot could make a deep run this season.