BattleBots_Update- bbs2e1 - E201: Too Many Robots & Jay Leno's Big Fucking Chi

author:Justin "RFS" Bardin

 

Bigger Brother vs. Mauler 51-50
         During that quick little British robot segment from the season two promo/pilot episode we got to see a little bit of Bigger Brother, who happens to be a formidable Robot Wars competitor when it's not poking around in North America. I cannot describe Bigger Brother any better than I did in the previous BattleBots Update article: "the vicious offspring of the Aggro Crag". Mauler on the other hand looks completely different for the second season. The whole design is shorter and a bit more aerodynamic to maximize the speed of its weapon, not to mention its new paint job is tearing all kinds of ass all over the arena. Bil Dwyer just can't seem to keep it in his pants that Mauler is back, but I guess if he had watched the pre-season trailer episode he would know not to be too excited.

         Bigger Brother initially starts to come towards Mauler with its lifting forks, but pulls a 180 and opts instead to try and back into Mauler to slow it down. Mauler's spinning disc is spinning at its maximum speed (said to be seven times faster) when it digs into the back end of Bigger Brother as Bil Dwyer gives a preemptive "AW MAN" out of excitement. Bigger Brother's plan was to slow down the spinning weapon of Mauler gradually and then come in with the flipper but really this one hit is all that was needed. If you watch carefully you can see one of Mauler's metal flails go flying off across the arena and as the robot continues to spin it becomes off balanced. In a matter of seconds Mauler goes from vibrating vigorously to spinning up like a flicked coin and rolls back down onto its top as the chassis begins to spin wildly.

         Mauler landed inches away from the new Pulverizer, so to help him get acquainted with it Bigger Brother plows the spinner into the hammer. I don't think any actual serious blows are landed but Mauler starts to smolder anyways, probably from burning out its electronics trying to spin while upside down. Judging by the stuff bouncing around inside of it while Bigger Brother tries flipping it, the force of spinning pulled the internals of Mauler apart, a truly fucking metal ending for a robot fitting the description. Take note of where Mauler was spinning upside down, because the bolts on top of the spinner reduced that spot of the arena to mere gravel.

Snake vs. War Machine
         Okay, seriously Snake scares the fuck out of me. It doesn't even look like a BattleBot, it looks like a giant novelty version of some brain-boring mind control creature from The Matrix or something. The thing is so huge it's bigger than the square it starts in, which is eight feet long (and wide). Snake's weapon is what appears to be a giant spinning ass (a tail) and the ability to "open wide" - with its mouth not its ass you sick fuck, it has a clamp. War Machine is literally the complete opposite of the insanely designed Snake. War Machine took the minimalist route and is a giant box covered in wheels and one giant sheet of metal for a wedge (and two pieces of wood that serve no purpose whatsoever).

         The fight begins and War Machine literally is just like "what the fuck are you serious" as Snake starts to bend and contort and flop towards War Machine. Aside from looking like a snake that someone just struck with the blade-end of a shovel snake almost looks a little bit lifelike, and as War Machine tries to decide how to attack there is this brilliant pose Snake strikes that gives it that "alive" touch. It bends towards War Machine, starts spinning its drill, and opens up its jaw. If the thing would have roared I would have shit my pants. War Machine actually backs off a bit, but then decides "well what the hell" and charges straight at Snake, hitting it in the stomach and pushing it into the wall. Snake tries to writhe away from the wall but War Machine continues the attack, and much like a real-life snake Snake begins to emit smoke and sparks from its abdomen. Snake appears to not be functional anymore (maybe its appendix ruptured) but springs back to life somewhat after War Machine rams it again.

         Snakes movements go from being mobile to what looks to be writhing in pain. Snake's design is just a little bit oddly shaped so War Machine seems to have trouble really getting a hold of it with its ramp. War Machine eventually gets Snake over to the Pulverizer which begins to pound on one of the teeth and Snake decides to try and ingest the Pulverizer (probably to try and assimilate with it and use it as a weapon who knows what kind of crazy shit is built into that thing). We get to see a shot of Mark Setrakian trying to control his cold steel reptile, and the remote for that thing looks like a stolen prototype controller from that Steel Battalion game (you know that one where the giant robots fuck each other with missiles and stuff). Snake is mercifully counted out while Dan Dankick gives the camera a "yeah I just totally got an easy win" look.

Toe Crusher vs. No Tolerance III
         Toe Crusher is a fun new robot from Team Coolrobots, the team who entered last season's Superheavyweight champion Minion. They brought along a little friend to enter in the Lightweight division in the form of a quick overhead thwack-bot with go kart tires. Toe Crusher is like a miniature version of Overkill, in order to attack the robot needs to swing its blade by going into reverse or it can attack using its front wedge, which appears to be of a higher quality than what Overkill was toting last season. What worries me about Toe Crusher though is that the internals are pretty much wide open for the Killsaws to rape; the little black things you see on the top and bottom of the robot are its drive motors - completely exposed to attack. No Tolerance III is a returning entry from last season. We never saw much of No Tolerance, but if you go back to the Lightweight rumble you'll notice that it's the one that looks like a monster truck with a hammer on it (and a FOR SALE sign). This new version of No Tolerance is a complete rebuild and a totally new design. Utilizing the extra weight bonus of being a walker, the team created a fucking giant walking robot armed with a linear actuated lifting plow and a small cutting disc. Remember when I said how big the robot squares are? Look at how much of it is taken up by No Tolerance III. Yeah, that is a big Lightweight.

         It's really hard for me to explain just how fucking goofy No Tolerance III looks when it starts to walk (run, actually) but if I had to come up with something I'd say "retarded poodle with six legs". No Tolerance III takes about two steps before it actually trips over the weight of its own weapon. Toe Crusher really has an easy win if it can manage to stop running into the spike strip and actually land a hit, but if it keeps doing that well then it looks like the bizarre monster-truck-turned-stomper robot is going to be the one with the "easy win"; perhaps No Tolerance III is trying to cash in on that "Pressure Drop voodoo" magic by having six legs and an ineffective weapon. At one point in the match Toe Crusher is actually incapacitated on the spike strip, and if No Tolerance III would have left it alone it actually would have won the match; however the drivers decide to land in a hit with that absolutely terrible "cutting disc" of theirs and Toe Crusher is knocked away from the wall and proceeds to grip the walker by the metaphorical neck and drag it around for a bit. By this point in the fight No Tolerance III hasn't even been able to leave its square yet, and when it tries to walk around it trips once again and Toe Crusher seizes the moment to punch its opponent in the face with its stick.

         No Tolerance III is finally able to start hobbling away and gets a little too close to the Killsaws. Toe Crusher seems to forget about its exposed naughty bits and tries to break some legs but is rejected by the arena hardware and does a nice little somersault off of them (I'd give it a 7/10 for style). While Bill Nye's face appears on the screen to tell us why Toe Crusher just got launched No Tolerance III makes the mistake of walking dangerously close to the saw blades and opens itself up for some easy hits. If there's one thing that No Tolerance III has going for it though, it's that its legs make it incredibly difficult to push around; the stomper actually has more traction than the go kart tires of Toe Crusher so as long as its feet are on the ground it becomes a hard object to shove around. Toe Crusher wedges up underneath the rear end of No Tolerance III and gets in a lucky shot that hooks its train spike into one of the leg mechanisms. Toe Crusher starts to furiously try and back up to drag the limping walker onto the saws but ends up misjudging the time it takes for the saws to work and gets tossed again. Toe Crusher skips on the whole hammer thing and comes out with its wedge and effectively slides No Tolerance III right onto the saws which cut clear through one of the legs of the robot.

         The front left leg of No Tolerance III is a frequent target of Toe Crusher, and with one final slam Toe Crusher shatters the walking mechanism of No Tolerance III. If there was ever an example of a pathetic beaten-up looking robot, it's a battle between the broken Snake and the broken No Tolerance III. No Tolerance III has six legs, and with just one of them broken the entire robot becomes top heavy and is completely incapacitated, right back over by the blue square that it never really managed to get away from. Normally when someone is broken against the wall they're left alone to die but Toe Crusher isn't having any of that, it's busy grabbing No Tolerance III by the neck and slamming it in the face. As expected, the judges give the fight to Toe Crusher (who has now advanced in rank to Leg Breaker).

Vlad The Impaler vs. Mjollnir
         We got to see both of these competitors last season, and between the two of them not a whole lot has changed. Vlad, the returning champion, is still armed with its forklift arms and its insane drive train. Mjollnir is still a reminder that even in the Heavyweight division people still build thwack-bots. However unlike last season Mjollnir now has stronger tires that won't pop and fall apart like they did last season. When the buzzer sounds both robots take a few seconds before beginning to fight; Mjollnir ends up coming out fast and tires to strike Vlad but it appears that the weapon of Mjollnir is too long when fighting in close quarters. Two wheeled thwack-bots like Mjollnir are notoriously hard to get a hold of and shove around, but somehow Vlad is able to lift up one side of the thwacker and carries it to the Pulverizer where Mjollnir demonstrates its ability to drive up the wall to try and get away. Mjollnir's arm gets stuck behind the Pulverizer hazard and its weapon starts to take repeated blows from it.

         Mjollnir's weapon is ineffective when spinning in place, but it quickly lands in a solid blow to the top of Vlad when it performs its overhead attack like Toe Crusher. No damage is done to the tough exoskeleton of Vlad but with enough solid "thuds" Mjollnir may actually skate off with more points than you may think. Mjollnir seems to have less control and traction than Vlad as Vlad once again grabs Mjollnir by the wheel and carries it around until it starts to perform a spinning attack and drive up on top of Vlad and falls off. Mjollnir starts to cruise around and attack reminiscent of the Overkill and Frenzy battle from season one by swinging and missing many more times than hitting. After Mjollnir drove up on top of Vlad though it appears that the forklift on the robot is stuck in the upright position. After a head-on collision that sends both of the robots bouncing a bit Vlad is able to lower its forks and tries to get in another lift against the spinning crazy hammer of Mjollnir (who now seems to have lost the marginal edge it had at the beginning of the battle). The size of the Heavyweights finally comes into play and Vlad takes a little trip over the Killsaws while Mjollnir flat out attacks them and a shower of sparks fly from the spikes on its arm.

         Mjollnir finally gets back into its groove and starts to land in some more thwacking hits to Vlad's side, none of which do anything except prompt the sound editors to add in more metal clanging sounds. Vlad tries to take control of the fight once more but Mjollnir is able to land in some more overhead shots and successfully dodge the lifting forks on Vlad. Just when the simple design of Mjollnir is able to start scoring some offensive points though, tragedy strikes. All of those early hits from the Pulverizer weakened the weapon arm of Mjollnir, and after swinging and missing once more the arm snaps off at the base and turns Mjollnir into nothing more than a flipping bouncing box with two wheels, and speaking of wheels it looks like those wheels finally started to deflate again. It seemed to be too little too late, and Vlad moves on in the tournament.

Buddy Lee Don't Play In The Street vs. Turbo
         Buddy Lee is without a doubt the strangest robot that I've seen, and yes I'm going to use this term again after using it to describe both Snake and No Tolerance III in the same episode. Buddy Lee doesn't even look like a conventional BattleBot; there is no weapon, a Cabbage Patch doll at the wheel, and the truck bed is full of Dalmatian puppies and ladders. It looks kind of like if Toy Story was real and somehow became bloodthirsty enough to enter in BattleBots. In quite possibly the greatest mismatch in BattleBots history, Buddy Lee's opponent is Turbo, a hellacious full body spinner similar to the likes of Mauler and Ziggo. Turbo is very nondescript and resembles a 1970's UFO with two blades on the body. When those blades ("sweet knockers") get spinning to top speed, well, it looks like we'll see some fur and flesh flying.

         Immediately Bil Dwyer is "smellin' massacre" as Buddy Lee almost crawls out of the red square and seems a bit disoriented while Turbo is already on the prowl. Buddy Lee begins to back away from the spinner until it stops and slowly starts to drive forward. Taking advice from Nightmare last season, Buddy Lee tries to absorb the impact of the spinner with one of its wheels, but only manages to take damage and start dumping dogs out of the back of the truck (to which the 101 Dalmatian jokes begin). Buddy Lee begins to actually try and ram into Turbo, but because of the fact that there are still decorations all over the robot Turbo is able to keep racking up damage points by stripping off the wooden ladders and sending another dog rolling out of the truck. A particularly big impact sends both robots bouncing back in opposite directions but doesn't seem to have a noticeable effect on either one (aside from the final dog tumbling out of Buddy Lee's insane PeTA enraging truck of death).

         The front right tire of Buddy Lee begins to fall apart and the tread becomes all bent up and crooked but it doesn't seem to affect the mobility of the robot at all; not even after Turbo inevitably rips the tread off. Buddy Lee is still a mobile threat and doesn't even seem to really notice that it is indeed missing an entire wheel. While backing into Turbo Buddy Lee loses its tailgate (which Dwyer mistakenly calls a wedge) but alas, that was just the last of the cosmetic damage available to reap from Buddy Lee. Strangely Buddy Lee seems to come alive when it takes obscene amounts of damage as we've seen here. Turbo seems to have lost most of its power though, so it appears that underneath Buddy Lee's seemingly inappropriate appearance lied some kind of insane battering ram; childish in appearance, but a bulldozer at heart. In an unprecedented turn of events, Buddy Lee managed to dilute the spinning Turbo in a close judge's decision. Yes, you heard me right. The fucking fire truck won.

ChinKilla vs. Ginsu
         Okay remember that thing about "weirdest robot ever"? Forget everything I said about everything else this episode. ChinKilla wins the award for craziest fucking robot ever. Jay Leno managed to turn his giant shovel of a chin into a giant pneumatic lifting-shovel with a caricature of his face on it. I have no idea what the spinning blades of death are for, but frankly the entire robot is just a little bit unsettling. Ginsu is a returning competitor from the first season, and frankly I love what the team did to it. In season one as you may recall, Ginsu was a box covered in saw blades that started to fall apart with chains and axles hanging out all over the place. What was the solution for this in season two? Add more saws, add more chains, and add more axles. They effectively turned Ginsu into a rolling monster truck from the Home Depot.

         Humor me for just a moment please, and pay close attention to how many hits it takes until there are chains already hanging from Ginsu's drive system. Did you catch it? It took one hit, one fucking hit, not even a big hit and there's already substantial drive train damage done to Ginsu. Ginsu, who is literally made of Killsaws takes a bit of hazard damage but is unaffected by its own weapon (however Jay Leno's metallic chin is another story). You can see that two of the blades have already stopped working and are no longer functional, and even ChinKilla is starting to show damage as two of its blades have become disabled as well. ChinKilla is getting close to rolling Ginsu over and does so using the flexibility of Ginsu's wheels to its advantage. With a few bumps from the Hellraisers and a smack from Leno's blades of death Ginsu is back on its feet (saws?) and begins to terrorize the late night host's face once again.

         ChinKilla is able to maneuver Ginsu over towards one of the Pulverizers, which appears to be already broken and in the "down" position and wouldn't you know Sean Salisbury decides this is as good of a time as any to have Bill Nye tell us how they work when we are clearly looking at an inoperable hazard. Ginsu seems to be designed to take on ChinKilla specifically, as ChinKilla flips Ginsu but Ginsu's crazy box design assures that it will always land on a set of wheels unless you tip it sideways. A bit disoriented, likely because of the damage done to all of the chains, Ginsu gives a drunken charge at ChinKilla, misses, hits the wall, and flips over and onto the aforementioned broken Pulverizer. After brutally bending and ripping the Pulverizer away from the wall ChinKilla is able to free Ginsu much to the delight of Jay Leno who expresses interest in kissing the seizure prone samurai wannabe. In the last few seconds of the fight Ginsu, while dragging more chains than an emo 14 year old on a Linkin Park message board, manages to pull off one of the coolest self righting maneuvers in the show's history. After being tipped over by ChinKilla one last time, Ginsu starts to do donuts on its saw blade tires and actually rolls itself back over.

         This isn't the last we will see of ChinKilla, but for this season this hilarious novelty bot sits the remainder of the tournament out.

- Justin "RFS" Bardin