Hmm.

To be frank I was disappointed in this episode but probably not the reason you think.

In my last Battlebots article I gushed how in this new series, we get to spend more time looking at the builder’s personal lives and strategy thanks to the smaller amount of contestants.  The fights were for the full time and not given brief clips.  However, this episode I was disappointed as ABC decided to show four full battles and cram four more in by showing just clips, thereby keeping the Qualifying episodes to just two and not three episodes.

First off, I thought that was disrespectful to the builders and especially to the winning teams. I want to learn about who they are, their background, and their thought process behind building their robot.  Second, I want to see the full fight!  I want to see the full battles regardless if it was exciting or not.  Third, I feel like ABC is already revealing which robots are going to lose in the next round because of their minute coverage on these bots.  Why should I care about Chomp, Overdrive, or Stinger?  You have given me no reason why I should care about them.

Sorry, this bothers me a lot.

Okay, with that said, the fights!

Lockjaw vs. Overhaul

Oh boy!  What a fight to begin this episode!  I love, love, love, love Donald Hutson.  Creative, kind, and mellow, he’s probably the most humble out of all the veteran competitors.  Yeah, that last hit by him after the buzzer raised some eyebrows but I believe he was sincere in his apology.  And Lockjaw!  He’s like the son of Dissector but more agile and colorful!  I like it!  Though I am concerned how effective Lockjaw is, it doesn’t seem strong and it doesn’t have any weapons to bash his opponents with.  Maybe it will do better in the next round.  And Overhaul is not bad either, I respect those MIT kids.  They have that dorky, awkward look about them that a lot of builders have.  They did a good job as well.

Bronco vs. Witch Doctor

If the Screws keep KOing robots they might as well be rewarded with the Giant Nut am I right folks?  Screws aside, BRONCOOOOOO.  YES, I was a fan of Toro and T-minus in the original series so seeing their prodigy just flip some shit I was happy.  If Bronco is like his ancestors then he might upset some spinners!  Witch Doctor has a neat flamethrower and I guess a cool vertical spinner but it didn’t really do much to Bronco I thought.  Still a cool fight though.

Tombstone vs. Counter Revolution

If a vertical spinner fights a horizontal spinner, the horizontal spinner wins, that’s like a fact of life in Battlebots.  But this…jesus.  That was great!  Seeing those parts go flying was amazing and made me giddy.  And man, ABC was really laying it on thick how badass Ray Billings and his robot are.  Haha, gotta love the bowling ball destruction bit, though.

Complete Control vs. Ghost Raptor

Very controversial match, I daresay.  But let me just stop there and say, wow, the builders for Complete Control look like real douchbags with their shiny jackets, beards and smirks.  Damn, not saying they are mind you but they sure do dressed the part.  Entanglements aside this was a disappointing battle for both robots.  Neither of them should have advanced. Complete Control wasn’t doing what it did best and throw a robot around the match while Ghost Raptor’s blade broke, seriously?  You main weapon snapped off?  That’s sad.  I would have rather seen Overdrive and Chomp’s battle than this one.

Summarized battles.

Didn’t get a good look at all the battles or the robots but I like the looks of Stinger and Overdrive, I hope they do well in their next battle.  Radioactive was a joke though.  Seriously, its hammer looked like it was doing no damage and the only reason why it won was that the other robot was facing technical errors!  Unless, I’m missing something big, Radioactive is going to lose next round.

Wildcards

Overhaul made sense as it did a good job against Lockjaw.  Chomp I can’t honestly judge since we just got a clip of it but Warhead…really?  He barely did anything to Biteforce!  Same goes for Witch Doctor!  Granted, they weren’t bad or anything but they certainly didn’t deserve a wildcard.  I would have given it to either Nightmare or Wrecks.  Confused why Warhead got the wildcard, I did a little digging though and found a Reddit AMA for a builder on Team Mohawk who says “It’s a mix of whether a losing team is able to get their robot fixed in time, whether they want to be considered as a wild card, and what would make for the best match ups later on.”  Hm, seems a bit odd to me but I can totally understand the part about a robot functioning properly.  If an important part were to be severely damaged during the fight, you would probably throw in the towel because you couldn’t replace it.  You can read the original interview on reddit here.  http://www.reddit.com/r/battlebots/comments/3bgqcd/mohawk_robot_team_member_here_ama/

Who would win?

Everyone on reddit and elsewhere is crying Tombstone and I agree that he has a good chance.  I would actually love to see Icewave fight Tombstone, that would be awesome!  Icewave and Tombstone horizontal spinners would destroy the other before the match is over and I seriously think Icewave has the chance in beating him.

Who else could be Tombstone’s foil though?  If we look at the history of Battlebots we come across the many-time Middleweight champion Hazard, a horizontal spinning robot.  The amount of robots Hazard has KO’d is staggering but it finally fell in Season 5 against T-minus, a flipping robot.  Check it out below.

Spinners have that problem of stability.  If they’re flipped over even once, they’re done.  So if Tombstone faces a flipping robot that can get a quick flip in, it’s a KO.  Bronco is the first that comes to mind and in all honesty, if they put in a flipper extension, they can beat Tombstone (plus, the builders were the same guys that built T-Minus).  Warrior Clan is also a good candidate, perhaps the multibot can use its minibots as a distraction before coming in and flipping Tombstone.

Tombstone also doesn’t look like a very fast robot and when you factor in its one-sided spinning blade, you got a robot with some big weak spots.  A durable and agile robot would be able to bring Tombstone down.  In this case, I’m looking at Stinger and Overdrive who both have shown to be durable and surprisingly quick.  I honestly think they have a shot in beating Tombstone.

The other two potential winners I would bet on would be Icewave and Bronco.  Icewave’s blade doesn’t do a lot of damage but it can spin up fast and keep spinning despite delivering heavy blow after blow (something that a lot of robots have trouble with *coughGhostRaptorcough*).  Bronco’s crazy flipping arm could also incapacitate robots, especially if he flips them onto those crazy screws.

That’s all for now, looking forward to, hopefully, full battles in the next episode!