Robot Wars UK: S8 E5

[Robot Wars UK: S8 is available online through the BBC.]

Welcome back to BattleBots Update’s ongoing coverage of a series that isn’t named “BattleBots” and exists as a casual reminder why I should’ve put more than twenty second’s worth of thought into buying a domain name. This week is the last “heat” of sorts until the Grand Final; the fifth and final guaranteed spot is up for grabs after which leaves only the wildcard slot where this season’s least worst loser can come back for another shot at glory. Considering the quality of the robots that have lost thus far, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the wildcard pick will go to a cardboard cutout of Jeremy Clarkson. Carbide, Shockwave, TR2, and Apollo have already staked their claims in the Grand Final, and now the eight last bots are about to commit technological hate crimes to see who joins them.

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GROUPO UNO

Maybe I’m just late to the party, but is Dara O’Briain a fucking giant or something? Because when he stands next to the PULSAR team I can’t even focus on their conversation because all I can think about is “holy shit those people are tiny”. Pulsar is yet another robot whose weapon is a vertical spinning drum/disc with a single tooth because that’s just the hip thing to do these days. “Look at how special we are, we made a spinning mass that’s balanced with only one tooth!” Yeah guys, real cool. Considering Sabretooth’s team also managed to figure out how to do it — and their robot was a total piece of shit — that really kind of undercuts the accomplishment. Pulsar’s team has no idea how fast their weapon spins but have estimated it at 9,000 RPM. At this point I think these people are just pulling numbers out of their ass to sound cool; either do the math and figure it out or just tell Dara that your weapon is “really fast”, he doesn’t have the ability to comprehend physics anyways and will be just as impressed.

I always love it when an oldie returns to fight again. CHOMPALOT dates back to the sixth series and, weirdly enough, I swear to god this team has pulled a Warhead and has returned with a robot that hasn’t changed at all. Equipped with what appears to be plastic armor covered with shiny wrapping paper, Chompalot’s primary weapon is a hydraulic crushing jaw with about one ton of biting force. I know that sounds like a lot of what Jonathan would call “PP” for “Pinchability Potential” or some stupid shit, but I’m pretty certain this is the weakest jaw of the series; fucking Kan-Opener boasted 12 tons of crushing power and they couldn’t even make a dent on PP3D, if that’s anything to go by I’m assuming Chompalot is going to be less of a voreaphile’s wet dream come true and more of a soggy diaper of a robot that’ll get blown to fucking pieces the minute its armor comes in contact with anything.

IRONSIDE 3 looks to be the bot that satisfies this episode’s requirement for “big spinner”. Joining the esteemed ranks of previous “token” robots such as Carbide, DisConstructor, Supernova, and PP3D, Ironside 3’s pièce de résistance is a giant fuck off blade powered by what looks to be two Magmotors linked together in a hellacious puzzle cube of a gearbox that would give Pinhead from Hellraiser an erection that could cut diamonds. A recurring theme with these types of robots is how the teams always mention that they haven’t tested their weapons at all, presumably because there’s nowhere safe to do so. Call me crazy, or wildly stupid, but if I were to build something on the scale of Ironside 3 or Carbide I’d sure as shit fire it up in the driveway and decimate some old printers or something. You’ve essentially built one of the world’s most dangerous woodchippers, the only logical thing to do now is throw caution to the wind and risk a potential trip to the ER after being hit with a shard of scrap metal. Isn’t healthcare free over in the UK? So you’re out one afternoon if you take a printer cable to the eye, big deal. Cry me a fucking river. Or a stream I guess, on account of the whole “one eye” thing.

There’s something about THERMIDOR 2 that I really admire, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it’s the fact that the team had the audacity to paint their robot like a goddamned lobster. Maybe it’s the robot’s ridiculous wheels fashioned from actual car tires. Maybe it’s how the inside of the bot appears to be comprised mostly of air tanks. Whatever it is, this guy is one of the greats as far as I’m concerned. Supposedly Thermidor 2’s little claws can grapple opponents, but I’ve never seen them move once so I’m assuming it’s a feature that the team built into their machine and then realized was stupid and now never use it. No matter though, because the lobster’s main mode of attack is its triangular flipping arm which is rigged up to fire with full pressure from the air tanks. Ironically enough, Thermidor 2 and Chompalot have met in a heat before; Chompalot got the short end of the stick back then, will we see a different outcome this year?

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GROUP BATTLE 1

Right away Thermidor 2 and Chompalot decide it’s time to settle the score and we have a spat of lobster-on-dragon action. Now, as a denizen of the ‘net I can tell you with a straight face that I’ve seen some shit that would give war veterans a previously undocumented strain of “super” PTSD, but I’ve never seen a lobster fuck a dragon so savagely and then toss the reptile over by a bulldozer with a pneumatic axe before. Shunt brings down the hammer on Chompalot and I want you to keep an eye out for just how crinkly and fragile this thing is; one of Chompalot’s wings is legitimately bent up by this point. Chompalot resumes sparring with Thermidor 2 as Ironside 3 ping pongs around the arena seemingly out of control while its blade spins at varying speeds depending upon which camera is pointed at it. Ironside 3 finally lands a blow and bites into Chompalot’s ass, sending it reeling while the foley guys queue up and play the “sword_hit.wav” sound effect.

Almost immediately Ironside 3 lands another hit, this time on Pulsar, and just absolutely blows Pulsar’s drivetrain to fucking smithereens. I have no idea what kind of wheels Pulsar is using, or what just flew out of them for that matter, but going by what I’ve seen thus far I can safely say that whatever they were was a dumbass idea. Pulsar is crippled right as Thermidor 2’s driver is heard claiming his robot is dead. The camera cuts to a wide shot and we see Thermidor 2 flipping its wedge up and down but not really doing much in the way of moving around and then, like a shitty Hot Can meal, cooks itself. A sad end to a great robot. It looks like Chompalot finally got its revenge. Speaking of Chompalot, the dragon makes the grave mistake of trying to do battle with Ironside 3 — a robot firmly on another tier of build quality — and ends up losing an entire fucking side panel in the process. Probably elated by seeing just how easily Chompalot can lose pieces, Ironside 3’s driver immediately focuses his attention on it and starts whacking it several more times presumably hoping Mexican candies and toys will eventually start coming out of the dragon’s horrific wounds.

We haven’t seen Pulsar much since its wheels exploded, but we’ve sure as shit heard the damn thing. See, when a robot like BattleBots’ Minotaur has a weapon that does the “death hum” it’s an exciting thing because Minotaur would be ripping pieces off of opponents or, in the case of Blacksmith, throwing the whole robot through the air until it fucking blows up. Pulsar on the other hand is just making noise like some asshole neighbor who sits in his driveway revving his motorcycle engine just to hear it in an effort to communicate the size of his penis (small) to everyone within earshot. Even though Chompalot has lost a lot of its street cred in this match it still has the gall to try and tell Pulsar to shut the fuck up and plows straight into the crippled spinner head-on. I think Ironside 3 also wants to kill off the monotonous droning because it goes for the pit release hoping Chompalot will do the leg work since the dragon is presently stuck in a headlock with Pulsar.

Instead, Chompalot nearly dicks it all up by driving itself into the pit. Pulsar almost ends up in the trash but manages to hang on by a thread and snakes by to the end of the match. Of course, it’s all for naught because Pulsar managed to land a whopping zero hits during the course of that match and understandably the judges tell the team they better get busy packing up their things.

WINNERS: Chompalot and Ironside 3

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THE FINAL FOUR

Dara primes us for CRAZY COUPE 88 by basically saying it looks like a piece of shit someone built in their shed. Buddy, compared to something like fucking Chimera, Crazy Coupe 88 looks like a precision-crafted machine that was bankrolled by Google and shat out by fucking Lockheed Martin. I get the impression Team Crazy 88 couldn’t figure out whether or not they wanted to have a horizontal or a vertical spinning weapon so at one point someone caved and just said “fuck it do ’em both”. Dara really has this obsession with people’s relationships which is kind of fucked up in a way, and he starts giving Tyrone’s fiancee the business about how long she had known her husband-to-be before he told her that he liked building robots. Dude it’s just Robot Wars, it’s not like Tyrone ritualistically kidnaps and murders children on the fifth Sunday of each month in years that are prime numbers or some crazy shit. The guy just builds robots that are named after cars from that god awful Wacky Races cartoon, which surprisingly if I were to make a “top 10 autistic things in Robot Wars” wouldn’t even make the fucking list.

Now, you wanna see some “built in a shed” shit? Take a look at this next piece of work. GABRIEL seems to have taken the Nuts approach to building a robot and didn’t just dial it up to 11, they straight up took it to the fucking moon. Gabriel’s team, which fancies themselves a biblical bunch, is named Team Saint. This is why the team captain is dressed like he was almost late to Robot Wars from a steampunk convention? Let’s just address the elephant in the room, Gabriel is a thwackbot in the heavyweight division and as such will most likely be heaped on the most as per the history of this blog. Did you know there was an “active weapon” rule for this series of Robot Wars? Now that you know this, how would you react if I told you Gabriel managed to get around this requirement by insisting that the robot’s ability to swing its hammer 180 degrees qualified it as an “active weapon” and the Robot Wars crew bought it? I know in regards to the Bible that Gabriel was one of God’s messengers, but I didn’t know it was also capable of the fucking Jedi Mind Trick.

Up next is BEAST, a robot with virtually no armor built by a team who is so sure of their flipper’s weaponry that they decided foregoing on an outer shell was a good idea. That’s fine and all, Chompalot’s team pretty much did the same thing for one reason or another, but they at least covered their robot up so you couldn’t see inside the fucking thing and know exactly where to hit it to do the most damage. “Your robot has no armor,” Dara says. “Actually, it has steel tubing,” the builder replies. That doesn’t count, when an opponent armed with only a goddamned spike has the potential to cause massive internal damage to your robot, you fucked up. In fact, by entering a robot with no armor you’re actually giving Gabriel a decent chance at making it beyond the first fucking round. Looking at the innards of Beast — which I should again state literally anyone can do — it looks no different from how TR2, Apollo, and Eruption were built. Care to notice what those three robots have in common that this one doesn’t? I’ll move on with the article while you figure this one out.

INFERNAL CONTRAPTION is the last robot introduced to us for the series, and it’s another returning contender that I feel deserves a second chance. Coming into this event with five losses and only one win I genuinely want to see its luck change because while the design is kind of stupid it reminds me of former competitor S3 in a way and I just want to see it tear something up. Angela Scanlon meets up with the team in the pits who appear to be charging their phones and tablets off of Infernal Contraption. One of the team members informs us how ridiculously redundant their robot is by mentioning its three sets of motors, batteries, and radio receivers. You’re either preparing for the absolute worst, or you have a definite lack of faith in your robot’s first two operating systems and if that’s the case why even keep them around?

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GROUP BATTLE 2

This fight is a fucking mess. Right off the bat Infernal Contraption is doing wheelies and flails around unable to point its spinner at any of its opponents. It’s a given that Gabriel is a clusterfuck of flailing, but for starters at least it’s able to land a hit on Crazy Coupe 88. Beast grazes Infernal Contraption with its flipper while Jonathan informs us that the team doesn’t have much experience driving the contraption. That set off a red flag for me so I went to go consult the wiki, and sure enough this iteration of Infernal Contraption may as well be in name only because it has an entirely new group of idiots behind the wheel which explains why the robot is driving like the transmitter was just handed off to a toddler. Crazy Coupe 88 starts trying to take advantage of Beast’s freeballin’ lifestyle but ends up getting toppled over and shoved into Dead Metal where it promptly dies. Welp, that was one of the two robots I had pinned for winning this match. Great.

Gabriel starts taking some generous swings at Infernal Contraption while Beast literally just drives right underneath it. Apparently, Gabriel’s wheels are the size of washing machine drums. Normally I’d say that’s a bit excessive but I guess when you’re jacked that high up off the ground and your wheels have maybe six square inches of contact with the ground at any given time you don’t need to worry about things like wedges and flippers. Infernal Contraption goes for the pit release button but I can’t tell if this is a stroke of potential strategy or just an artifact of nobody on the team knowing how to drive the goddamned thing. Seriously, I swear at one point I saw the robot do a flip on its own without any input from Beast whatsoever. The optimist in me wants to say it’s strategy but then I remember that there’s only one robot with a wedge in this fight and it’s not Infernal Contraption. To cement that notion, the robot ends up spinning around and rolls right over Beast and into the fucking pit that it just opened. There goes the other robot that I assumed would win this match.

Beast and fucking Gabriel won. A robot with virtually no armor, and a thwackbot. At least Ironside 3 will have something to chew on later. Shoutouts to Dara calling Gabriel’s builder “the dad from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang“, this guy operates at a level that people like me can only aspire to achieve.

WINNERS: Beast and Gabriel

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CHOMPALOT vs. GABRIEL

Chompalot was wrecked so badly in its previous match that rebuilding it, if the story conveyed in the show is to be believed, was a fucking nightmare that required the intervention of multiple teams to rebuild. I spotted Storm 2, TR2, and Terror Turtle in the pits lending a hand and that’s just who I saw directly.

Against all odds, Chompalot has risen to fight another day, and within three seconds Gabriel has already brought its axe blade down onto the dragon’s head and bashed its fucking skull in. Gabriel’s builder claims his robot is too high off the ground for Chompalot to bite, but look closely. Someone’s getting their snack on. Now, it’s hard to tell if Chompalot is dragging Gabriel backwards or if Gabriel is shoving Chompalot into the wall because both of these robots have total jokes of a drive system, but the end result here is that Chompalot ends up on its side. Theoretically the robot should be able to self-right using its wings, but we’re dealing with a robot that was beaten so savagely one can assume the functionality of anything on it at this point to be a complete crapshoot. Gabriel continues to beat on the dragon and ends up helping it back onto its wheels, only one of which now works.

Somehow, Chompalot is naked by this point. All of its armor has fallen away and its wings are crumpled and broken. There’s something really fucking weird going on here because I’m still not a believer that Gabriel’s weapon is capable of that kind of damage. For a robot with only one good wheel Chompalot does a fairly decent job avoiding Gabriel’s axe, that is until Chompalot careens straight onto the floor flipper and gets thrown across the arena and back onto its side. Chompalot’s batteries go up in smoke and you can just see how uneven literally fucking everything in the robot is sitting after being tossed and thrown around like this. The battle is mercy killed and while the officials let the arena air out in the aftermath of the dragon’s jurassic fart Angela asks Simon Cook if his robot can even be rebuilt. He says yes. And then, with timing that only the universe itself is capable of, the powers that be just spectacularly shits all over the poor dragon. Chompalot spontaneously combusts and becomes a total loss.

Chompalot didn’t just lose this battle, oh no. It lost so badly that the judges had to make an executive decision to bring back fucking Pulsar to resume where Chompalot left off. Damn.

“There’s smoke, there’s fire. That’s what dragons are supposed to do… but… not in that way.”

rest in rip, sir chomp a lot

WINNER BY FATALITY: Gabriel

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BEAST vs. IRONSIDE 3

Right. We’ve seen this match a million times before. Spinner versus wedge, wedge tries to stop the spinner before it can get up to speed, and then one of either two things happens: wedge succeeds and the spinner fails, or the spinner achieves terminal velocity and rips its opponent several new assholes. From the start of the match Beast looks to have the upper hand considering Ironside 3’s weapon takes half the episode to achieve any sort of dangerous speed. Ironside 3 manages to get a few glancing blows off of Beast’s tubular armor and even musters what looks like a light hook in between a couple of the bars, but there’s no significant damage done to Beast. No damage, that is, until the two bots get caught up in a good jousting run and Beast’s left wheel stops working. The fight has now clearly turned in favor of Ironside 3, a swerve that Beast could’ve corrected had it not missed an opportunity for a solid flip as the spinner literally drove up and over its wedge just now.

With free reign to get its blade up to tip top speed there’s nothing stopping Ironside 3 from causing some god-tier damage and that’s exactly what it lays out into Beast’s remaining working wheel. Ironside 3’s blade just slices into this thing like it was in a fucking Ronco ad and ruins Beast’s ridiculous fucking Dunlop go-kart wheels. Beast isn’t dead from the hit, but it doesn’t take long for Ironside 3 to finish the job. A couple more blows leaves Beast dead in the water and the team with plenty of time in the pits to repair their robot and contemplate getting some fucking armor next time.

WINNER: Ironside 3, KO

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SHARED AUTONOMY, ZERO RESPONSIBILITY

It’s time now for another one of these segments where Dara shoots the shit with one of the judges about various topics in the field of robotics and engineering. Sethu Vijayakumar is Dara’s bullshittin’ buddy today and since Sethu really has a hard-on for the obsolescence of the human race he’s here to tell us all about pseudo-autonomy and how “the human factor” is the one single thing that’s inhibiting robots from realizing their full potential. Yeah man, it’s that pesky goddamned sense of compassion for our own kind and our conscience that keeps us from intentionally harming others that’s really holding these fucking killing machines back. If we could just convince ourselves that allowing robots to “make decisions on their own” while blurring the line of responsibility is a good idea we’d all be well on our way to paradise and not some dystopian I, Robot shit.

To demonstrate, since Dara seems to not be following this conversation very well, Sethu brings out a prosthetic hand that can jerk you off using only your thoughts or something. Sethu straps the jerk off hand onto Dana’s arm, hands him a bottle of water, and starts unloading gigabytes of information and instructions onto a golem of a man whose IQ could probably be expressed by the number on his football jersey from fucking high school. Dara is impressed in a casual sense by the robot hand’s ability to grab a bottle. He asks if you could pick up an egg with it to which Sethu responds with “yes but you’ve have to adjust the software”. Look, I’m not trying to shit on science or whatever but if you were going to use a pair of these hands to bake a cake, for example, it sincerely seems to me like messing with software and sensors and all of this other stupid fucking bullshit is more trouble than it’s really worth compared to just having your grandmother crack an egg on the side of the bowl and add it to the goddamned flour. QED.

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GABRIEL vs. IRONSIDE 3

Gabriel enters this match sporting a new axe weapon which its driver says he hopes to “jam up” Ironside 3’s blade with. I guess BattleBots has aired in the UK. At the start of the match there’s not a whole lot of jamming up going on because Ironside 3 takes control of the fight and gets to work peeling off the little pieces of bike tire or whatever the hell the outside rim of Gabriel’s wheels are made from. Gabriel continuously tries to get its bearings and start an attack but it’s thwarted at every turn by the runaway helicopter known as Ironside 3. While this is going on Jonathan mistakes the holes drilled into Gabriel’s wheels as damage done by Ironside 3. I know, I’m nitpicking again but whatever, this guy has been commentating Robot Wars for longer than some of the people reading this website have been alive. Sue me. Anyways we’re not missing much here because Gabriel’s weird gummy tires and its floppy donkey dick of a new weapon aren’t doing a fucking thing to Ironside 3.

To get most of the pictures and stills you see on this website I end up watching a lot of these fights frame-by-frame. Those of you who are familiar with animation might know what a “smear frame” is. If not, a “smear” is when you see a character move really fast and for a split second their on-screen form kind of blurs. The frames during that character’s movement are known as “smear frames” and they can sometimes be pretty fucking weird. I bring that up because this whole battle is nothing but smear frames of Gabriel. Here’s one of Gabriel’s wheel bending in fucking half. Here’s another where is chassis is flexing in like fourteen places. And finally here’s one of Gabriel doing the splits Looney Tunes-style as its ass touches flame.

Also you might be surprised to hear Gabriel doesn’t win this fight.

WINNER: Ironside 3, Judges’ Decision

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CHOMPALOT PULSAR vs. BEAST

Because Chompalot gave up the ghost and went to the big treasure hoard in the sky, Pulsar is back to try and make some sense out of Beast and use its second wind to ride into the heat final. Its first opponent is Beast, a robot which I should remind you has no armor, so unless Pulsar fucks things up a second time this shouldn’t be a hard match especially considering right from the start Beast looks to be driving erratically, something the operator later confirms after taking a glancing hit from Pulsar and realizes he’s lost control of his machine. Pulsar’s drum starts revving up to top speed but doesn’t land a hit right away which prompts Jonathan to question if it’s operational. Jonathan, I know you can hear the drum spinning because you just commented on it. This isn’t Schrodinger’s drum; it’s not in some BS superposition of being both functional and not functional at the same time. You and me and everyone else know the drum is working and like clockwork Pulsar tears into Beast and finishes it off.

WINNER: Pulsar, KO

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BEAST vs. GABRIEL

Dara and Jonathan iterate that Gabriel needs to win this match by a KO in order to guarantee a place in the heat finals. Gabriel charges forward to lead the attack… and drives right over Beast. Taking Beast’s performance in this episode thus far into consideration I can’t quite tell if Beast is hiding underneath Gabriel to use its opponent’s size to their disadvantage or if the robot has already broken down after being hit once. Either is a possibility here. Beast twitches a few times, but it looks to me that the flipper is already dead. Craig from Gabriel’s team said he switched the robot’s weapon back to the blade because he wanted to “do some sushi” to Beast’s tires. Negating the fact that “sushi” isn’t a verb, wouldn’t the floppy dildo weapon from Gabriel’s previous match actually be a better tool? Beast’s armor consists of a roll cage and that’s it, you could theoretically just hook that thing in there and have a field day with it.

Gabriel starts swinging its dick back and forth in the corner of the arena while Beast’s driver asks the team to keep hitting their robot in the hopes that it’ll come back to life. Part of me wonders if this is just shitty bait to try and lure Gabriel near the pit that they just opened so Beast can try tossing them in, but regardless of that I guess it doesn’t really matter because even if Beast wins this fight it’s sure as shit not going anywhere. Craig tells Gabriel’s driver to stand down because he doesn’t want to damage their opponents any further, presumably because this is the sportsmanlike thing to do. He seems to have forgotten the fact that he needed a knock out victory in order to guarantee a spot in the finals but whatever. I guess when you have other things on your mind, like whipping your dick out for Harambe or whatever, things like “making it to the heat finals” become afterthoughts.

Also, “damage”. With that thing. Yeah okay.

WINNER: Gabriel, Judges’ Decision

Actually, as it turns out the judges “reviewed” the fight and decided that Beast was immobilized. Funny how sometimes a robot with only one side of drive is counted out and other times it’s not. Where was that call for PP3D vs. Eruption last week? Glad to see they’re still just making the rules up as they go.

WINNER: Gabriel, KO

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IRONSIDE 3 vs. CHOMPALOT PULSAR

The last time these two robots met Pulsar had one of its wheels blown to bits by Ironside 3. Considering how fragile they are it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume the same or a similar fight might play out. Now that I’ve prefaced this match accordingly, that’s not what happens at all. Within seconds Pulsar catches Ironside 3 as it tries to attack and deflects it in such a manner that the robot gets thrown onto its back. The little pokey thing sticking up out of Ironside 3 is actually a self-righting mechanism, but for whatever reason it doesn’t appear to be working properly. Pulsar takes a few more gratuitous hits before somewhere in this mess of metal Ironside 3’s srimech pops up and doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to do. That’s okay though, because Sir Killalot decides to act as a stand-in srimech and tosses Ironside 3 back onto its wheels so this fight can carry on for longer than Gabriel vs. Beast’s should have.

Though Ironside 3 is mobile again, its weapon isn’t. Since that’s the moneymaker here, Ironside 3 engages its panic strategy which is to open the pit and hope that Pulsar just falls into it somehow. Pulsar responds to the pit by straight up dying meaning Ironside 3 has to throw it down the pit itself and is able to muster the strength and control to do exactly that… and then fall in afterward. Normally, when both robots end up in the pit it’s who went in first that counts. In this scenario, Ironside 3 should be the winner. However, because Robot Wars changes their minds on their own rules more times than a spoiled brat does when being a sore loser at Mario Kart this fight has instead gone to the judges who rule in favor of — wait for it — fucking Pulsar. So not only does this piece of shit machine with a bullshit weapon, wheels seemingly made of glass, and with one side of drive that never seems to fucking work correctly get a second wind when Chompalot keels over and dies, they get another one when the judges decide that even though BOTH robots were technically immobilized in this fight (albeit at different times) and Pulsar went into the pit first… Pulsar still wins.

That makes perfect sense. No, really. Perfect fucking sense. We now have a heat final that consists of Gabriel and Pulsar, two of the shittiest robots I’ve ever seen in my entire goddamned life, who have made it here on dumb luck alone. Thanks Beast, for putting up a limp wrist of a fight against everyone and fucking this up for all of us. You blew it.

WINNER: Pulsar, Judges’ Decision KO What the fuck ever I don’t even care anymore

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HEAT FINAL
CHOMPALOT PULSAR vs. GABRIEL

As luck would have it, if you want to blame it on luck, these two robots have never fought one another. Not in the group battles nor the head-to-head matches. This is generally what happens when you let officials make decisions by shaking a Magic 8 Ball. I guess the good news here is that whatever problems Pulsar was having with its drivetrain have been fixed. Or rather, they appear to have been fixed because the robot is able to drive in a straight fucking line for the first time this episode. Meanwhile, Gabriel is doing what it’s been up to this whole show which is to say it’s flailing around and sometimes its axe hits its opponent. Pulsar chews off one of the tread pieces of Gabriel’s wheels and for once it looks like there’s been some substantial damage done to the robot’s plastic material; there’s actually a bite in the plastic where the tread used to be as opposed to how Ironside 3 just kept bending and warping the plastic until something came off of it. Pulsar appears to be too small and quick for Gabriel to hit so in a sense this is Pulsar’s match to win.

Now that I’ve said that, it’s a good time to point out that Pulsar has crashed into the wall near the pit release button and has stopped working. Listen closely and you can hear its weapon’s death hum start to slow down and fizzle out. Just in the nick of time, Pulsar comes back to life and chews on Gabriel a bit more before sending it reeling across the arena and into the pit button. Then Pulsar dies again. Gabriel tries to get some free hits but Sir Killalot is busy fucking everything up by pushing Pulsar onto the flame pit and messing with Gabriel’s aim. Pulsar springs back to life once more, gets away, and then dies a third fucking time. Are you starting to see a pattern develop here? Good, because Pulsar starts moving again and somewhere between now and the next ten seconds it starts losing one side of drive again just like it has in literally every previous fight thus far. The clock runs out on this heat final and sends it over to the judges.

Before we get into who wins, because you’ve probably already guessed by this point judging by how this episode has progressed up to this point, let’s just rap for a bit. I don’t inherently have anything against Pulsar or Gabriel, I just don’t particularly like either robot; Gabriel because it’s a thwackbot in the heavyweight division, and Pulsar because while it looks nice the thing is clearly built like a piece of shit with Chinese knock-off parts or something and it keeps breaking down. Between these two robots, I genuinely would have liked to see Gabriel win. Even though the robot’s gimmick is that its wheels are the size of one of those goddamned novelty pizzas you order with a group of friends Gabriel just worked. Plain and simple. Pulsar is just a nicer looking version of Beast as far as I’m concerned because for the most part it exhibited the same level of functionality. That said, of course the judges went with Pulsar.

WINNER: Pulsar, Judges’ Decision

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The hosts go over the list of Grand Finalists before the end of the show and while I’d normally get into their histories here I feel like doing so at the end of some random article is a bad idea because the section would be more relevant in the article about the Grand Final itself. Plus, they don’t even announce who the wildcard is so getting into the details of just 5 of the 6 finalists would be pretty dumb. That said, next week’s article is the last one of the series before the “Celebrity Christmas Special” episodes. Since many of you have asked, yes I’ll be getting into those. I genuinely have no idea what to expect though, and my lack of knowledge of British celebrities is probably going to show. However, if this hilarious article is anything to go by it looks like we’ll be dealing with a bunch of retards (with the exception of the Olympians).

Make sure you’re following this website on Facebook if you aren’t already, and if your wallet hasn’t been demolished by the holiday season yet you can pitch in and help fund my chronic PC gaming addiction by donating here.

Wishing you all a fantastic Christmas this weekend, and I’ll see you again just before the new year!

– Draco