For this new season of Battlebots, The Young Folks’ music editor Ryan Gibbs and contributing writer Joey Daniewicz will be giving their impressions of each episode in our recurring feature Battlebots Chat. These will be a little more informal than our regular television, film and music reviews – after all we think it’s a little complicated to give a rating to something that we both consider to be a competitive sport as opposed to a game show or a reality television program.
Battlebots is a robot combat program that aired on Comedy Central for four seasons between 2000 and 2002 and then on ABC for two more in 2015 and 2016. In 2018, the show was revived by Discovery Channel,.
If you want the history on Battlebots and robot combat in general, SB Nation ran an oral history on the show’s first run in the late 1990s and early 2000s that is well worth your time to read. You can also read more about this season’s competitors over on the show’s official site. Also worth reading is Battlebots Update, which, like us, provides analysis of each Battlebots episode.
You can watch this week’s episode of Battlebots over on Discovery Channel’s website.
Opening Thoughts
Ryan: Four of these five fights were pretty fast, huh?
Joey: Most definitely. All of them were pretty decisive.
Ryan: Several of them ended with a robot being pushed onto its side or flipped over, which is pretty funny.
Joey: The tip in particular I think is great. We don’t get a lot of endings on the side.
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Ryan: We also got our first two robots with 3 wins, effectively making them locks for the tournament unless we somehow magically get 16 undefeateds which probably isn’t happening.
Joey: Considering they keep putting really good bots against each other.
Ryan: Also there apparently a bunch of untelevised fights, not just the rumbles on the Science Channel!
Joey: WHAT.
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Ryan: A quote from Dracophile from BattleBots Update: “There’s another robot at 2-0 right now who hasn’t had any of its fights televised yet and you will lose your fucking mind when you find out who it is.” And he was at the taping so he would know.
Joey: Uh, you’ve probably looked into this. Who might it be?
Ryan: It’s either Ultimo Destructo or Warhead. Only two possible options.
Joey: Is UD that full body spinner?
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Ryan: No. It’s a robot with an interchangable weapon. One’s the flipper its team has used since the old series and another is a horizontal blade that looks like something they stole from Tombstone
Joey: Oh. Well wow. Are we really ready for undefeated Warhead?
Ryan: You remember Techno Destructo, right?
Joey: I sort of do.
Ryan: This guy? Two time quarterfinalist?
Joey: oh yeahhhhh
Ryan: Yeah, well they brought this thing this year.
Joey: Well, wow. Let’s see how it works! Let’s get into the matches?
Fight One: Son of Whyachi (W) vs. Lucky
Son of Whyachi: Entered by Team Whyachi of Dorchester, Wisconsin, built by Terry Ewert and driven by Luke Ewert. The former Battlebots heavyweight champion lost against Brutus in its first match of the season. Son of Whyachi’s weapons are three horizontally spinning hammers laid out in a triangular shape.
Lucky: Entered by Team Lucky Canucky of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and built by Mark Demers. Lucky lost against Skorpios in its first fight. Its primary weapon is a gas-powered flipper arm.
Joey: So up to this point, had there been a bot in the ABC/Discovery era who had underperformed as bad as SOW?
Ryan: You mean until this week? Because it well and truly messed Lucky up something feirce here.
Joey: Yup. And Lucky looked kinda okay! It couldn’t get done but it could really take hits.
Ryan: I mean, props to it being able to keep moving for a while while it it got knocked around.
Joey: Haha, yeah. It might do fine in most fights! Not this time. Had no way in.
Ryan: Like Son of Whyachi, in its first hit, took a wheel off of Lucky. Lucky did not once use its weapon and it never acted offensively. At one point, SOW even bent up its lifter so it couldn’t even use it anyway.
Joey: It had no real chance to. Unless maybe it hit Whyachi before it sped up?
Ryan: Nope. Not once Also, it looks like the Whyachi team finally got the robots’ balancing working well. Remember how it used to fly around the box after every hit? The recoil wasn’t nearly as dramatic here.
Joey: Yeah. It still kinda tipped sometimes, though. Must be hard to deal with.
Ryan: In this fight SOW looked like the robot we remembered from back in the day. And I’m looking back at the video for this fight and there’s just pieces of Lucky strewn all over the floor by the end of it.
Joey: Hahaha. Not very Lucky at all.
Ryan: Correct.
Fight Two: Mohawk vs. SawBlaze (W)
Mohawk: Entered by Euclid Robotics of Miami, Florida, built by Korey Kline and driven by Max Bales. Kline previously designed Rammstein and Surgeon General for Team Loki in the original run of Battlebots. The two robots were quite successful, with Rammstein making one semifinal and two quarterfinals in the superheavyweight class, and Surgeon General making the season four semifinals in the heavyweight class. Driver Max Bales is the brother of Hypershock builder and driver Will Bales. Mohawk lost its first match of the season, a rumble televised exclusively on the Science Channel, to Gemini. Its primary weapon is a crushing jaw and flamethrower.
SawBlaze: Entered by Team SawBlaze of Cambridge, Massachusetts and built by Jamison Go. Sawblaze won its first match of the season by defeating fellow MIT robot Overhaul, and its second by beating Reality. SawBlaze’s weapons are a circular saw mounted on an arm with 180-degrees of movement, and a three-pronged lifting scoop.
Ryan: Man, how about Sawblaze kind of coming right out of nowhere to grab a 3-0 start? Did you expect we’d be talking about this robot as a serious contender at the start of the season? Because we have to now.
Joey: Sawblaze is reaaaaaaal. That wedge is super cool and I wouldn’t have guessed it but it works stupid well.
Ryan: Last season, they lost 1 fight and were all done. Didn’t even get a wild card. I think this team never wants that to happen again huh? As for Mohawk, here was another robot who didn’t really get to use their weapon or act offensively all that much in a control fight that they lost.
Joey: Did Sawblaze make any design changes? Who did they lose to last year?
Ryan: Razorback. A somewhat non-descript bot by the guy who did El Diablo back in the day. Lost in a judges decision.
Joey: Ouch. What’s the best win Sawblaze has this year?
Ryan: The Overhaul one was pretty neat. This one against Mohawk ended a lot more satisfyingly though. I guess Mohawk’s team added some kevlar to stop Sawblaze’s saw from blazin’ on it. And, well…
Joey: By best I mean most impressive. In terms of “this bot is hard to beat.” Has Sawblaze overcame a for real challenge yet or has it mostly been…enh?
Ryan: In terms of performance? Probably the Overhaul one again. Overhaul did go to the quarterfinals in the first reboot season even if it hasn’t done much since.
Joey: I’d need to see who it beat but uh yeah. We’ll get back to Overhaul in a bit. This fight ended with Mohawk on its side and it was very funny. As someone who hates when a bot gives a charity nudge to a stuck bot, this episode was rather satisfying.
Ryan: Definitely was. All Mohawk really did in this match was spray out a bunch of fire that did nothing, which I know aren’t robots you like.
Joey: Correct, and this was a good example of why.
Fight three: Mecha Rampage vs. Whiplash (W)
Mecha Rampage: Entered by C2 Robotics of San Luis Obispo, California and built by Christian Carlberg. Mecha Rampage, the latest creation from two-time Battlebots champion Christian Carlberg, last appeared in the season premiere where it lost to DUCK! in a rumble. The robot has a low-to-the-ground design with a horizontal spinning blade as its main weapon.
Whiplash: Entered by Fast Electric Robotics of Newbury Park, California, built by Jeff Vasquez and driven by Matthew Vasquez. Whiplash beat Hypothermia to win its first match of the season. Its primary weapon is a rotating saw blade mounted onto a lifting arm.
Ryan: Speaking of fire, here’s a fight featuring a robot who pretty much got burned to the ground the last time it was in the arena.
Joey: Frickin Mecha Rampage.
Ryan: Did we mention before that the builder of Mecha Rampage is a two-time Battlebots champion? Because you might not have been able to tell given its middling performance in the past two fights.
Joey: Oh right, he built Minion. Maybe he’s gotta return to that.
Ryan: Yup.
Joey: I don’t know what to say. Mecha Rampage just seems ill-advised. Whiplash seems….solid!
Ryan: The funniest thing about this match is that after Whiplash tries to flip Mecha Rampage once, one of the announcers claimed that flipping it would not end the fight. Since it can run inverted. Well, guess how the fight ended. This was another fight where a robot just got parked on its side.
Joey: Two in a row. It’s the new meta.
Ryan: Also Whiplash’s victory dance was pretty dope wasn’t it?
Joey: Hell yeah! I was very surprised.
Fight four: Chomp vs. Overhaul (W)
Chomp: Entered by The Machine Corps of Seattle, Washington and built by Zoe Stephenson. Chomp lost to Warrior Dragon in its first fight of the season. Its weapons are a pneumatic powered hammer and flamethrower.
Overhaul: Entered by Equals Zero Robotics of Cambridge, Massachusetts and built by Charles Guan. Overhaul lost its first match of the season to SawBlaze. Its main weapon is a grappling claw
Joey: Buhhhhhhh.
Ryan: So are all Chomp fights just going to be weird as hell?
Joey: Feels like it.
Ryan: For its size, Chomp seems very easy to flip.
Joey: It doesn’t seem very heavy. Not to mention, as people keep mentioning to the point where it’s already tiring, its center of gravity.
Ryan: Yeah, like Overhaul also doesn’t seem to be very large, but it staight up deadlifted Chomp right off the ground a couple times in this fight
Joey: This was the longest fight of the night, but it wasn’t much less decisive than everything else……aside from Overhaul somehow, uh, almost dying for no reason near the end?
Ryan: Did it or did the team just take their hands off the controls because they felt they had this?
Joey: Did they? It looked like the bot wasn’t working that well.
Ryan: I’m rewatching and maybe? After it delivers Chomp to the killsaws, it doesn’t really move much for the rest of the fight.
Joey: Either way, it scared me for a second.
RyanL Chomp gets some good hits in at the end, but idk. I’m kind of writing off any bots that start with 0-2, like Free Shipping and whatnot. Even if they win their last two, I just don’t see any 2-2 bots making the tournament. 16 robots isn’t a lot of room for wild cards.
Joey: RIP Free Shipping.
Main event: Bite Force (W) vs. End Game
Our competitors
Bite Force: Entered by APTYX Designs of Mountain View, California and built by Paul Ventimiglia. 2015 champion Bite Force won its first two matches of the season against Blacksmith and Hypershock. Its weapon is a vertical spinning bar.
End Game: Entered by OYES Robotics of Auckland, New Zealand and built by Jack Barker. This was also the third match for the rookie phenomenon End Game, which had previously defeated Captain Shredderator and Lock Jaw. The robot’s main weapon is a vertical spinning disc.
Ryan: Hmm, well how about this fight?
Joey: Amazing stuff by Bite Force, who I’ve been kind of disrespecting since it kinda lucked its way into its title in 2015. Although it would’ve been nice if End Game had been at full power.
Ryan: This wasn’t a “weird” fight much as one with a blown chance. Bite Force had a radio issue and just died after a big hit. And End Game didn’t hit him.
Joey: Sadness.
Ryan: I know a lot of drivers are playing it safe with gratuitous killshots of disabled robots since Tombstone spilled all its guts at the end of that Bronco fight in 2015, but this time? Who knows?
Joey: Gotta go for it unless you know they’re done. Sometimes it hasn’t been about playing it safe. There’s also courtesy.
Ryan: Normally, End Game could have come back from the hit that took it out. I believe it can use its weapon to self right. But here there was something wrong with it. And it was done because of it. For the want of a nail, etc. etc.
Joey: That also means that its weapon didn’t hit as hard as it could have, yeah?
Ryan: I suppose not. We’re used to End Game’s weapon dealing big hits. And I think out of the three major collisions in this fight, only one would have scored any points in End Game’s favor. Strip away the Bite Force thing, this was really a 3 or 4 hit fight.
Joey: Meanwhile, Bite Force’s weapon is, uh, crazy.
Ryan: Right? I guess we saw that when it tore Hypershock up, but yeah. Even without its pedigree, It’s definitely distinguishing itself among vertical spinners
Joey: All those wedge-into-vertical-spinner bots are all pretty samey, huh?
Ryan: Yes. And there’s only a few that really stand out from the bunch. Two of them were in this fight.
Joey: Yeah! Will be fun to see how they both do.
Ryan: Especially now that Bite Force joins SawBlaze as an almost certain tournament of 16 lock.
Final thoughts!
Ryan: So Joey, I have some good news for you about next week. Guess who’s back? It’s your boy. The DUCK.
Joey: QUACK QUACK. I’m hype. Hope it like obliterates Warhead or whoever
Ryan: Also Bronco vs. Lock-Jaw is the main fight. And that’s gonna be a good one.
Joey: I think Lock-Jaw might be outclassed?
Ryan: There’s only thee teams this year that have been to every Battlebots event since the 1999 pay-per-views and Mutant Robots and Inertia Labs are two of them (the other is the Mecha Rampage guy). And they’ve only ever fought once. And it wasn’t with their flagship robots Diesector and Toro, either, even though they were in the same weight class. Lock-Jaw and Bronco are basically the evolutions of those two robots, so this should be neat.
Joey: Lock-Jaw feels like an incomplete evolution, no? Maybe it’ll surprise me, but man, I dunno.
Ryan: I wish Lock-Jaw was more Diesector-y. Bring back the crushing jaws, man.
Joey: But does that count as a primary weapon!!!!
Ryan: Well Duck’s here, and he impressed the heck out of us with the least amount of primary weapon possible.
Joey: As it should be.
Next week: You heard right, DUCK will be returning. How will our favorite new robot do in its second match? Stay tuned!
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