User blog:RA2/Series 7 Rankdown

Welcome to Series 7 Rankdown! Signups are now active! Until 11:59:59 PM GMT on Tuesday the 5th, signups are only open to people who did not participate in Series 6. The people who did were SpaceManiac888, Jimlaad, Harry Stormer, ToastUltimatum, NJGW, O Raz3r O, CrashBash, Toon Ganondorf. If you're one of those people, please don't jump the gun, or your signup won't count and you'll have to re-register at the proper time

Normal signups will commence until we have 10 people including myself, or until the 13th (whenever I get time). Please note, you need to include your vote-in for your singup to be counted.

Format
We’ll be using the “Pick-n-Mix” format. In this game, we'll be setting up a pool of robots, and take turns eliminating one robot from the pool, the adding a new one

On your turn, you will eliminate one robot in the pool and explain why (Note: You may not cut your own nominees, unless your nominees comprise more than half the pool) then nominate one other robot, whom you believe should get cut ASAP, to go into the pool. You can’t cut or nom a robot that’s already been cut or nommed. Here’s an example of the flow. The example has 5 players, our game may have more:


 * Player 1: Cuts any one robot and explains why, nominates one other robot for the pool (no explanation needed for the nomination). Lists out all the nominated robots for the benefit of the next player
 * Player 2: Same, with any robots not cut or nominated yet
 * Player 3: Same, with any robots not cut or nominated yet
 * Player 4: Same, with any robots not cut or nominated yet
 * Player 5: Same, with any robots not cut or nominated yet.

This will continue until 16 or fewer robots remain. After that, players will rank the surviving robots, and the averages will determine final rankings.

I'll be pretty open about the criteria you use to make your cuts, just a few rule & guidelines:
 * Try to insulate it to the series in question - we're strictly ranking the Extreme 1 & Series 5 incarnations of robots
 * No discussing how it was received by the fandom - you can call a robot overrated or underrated, complain about fanboys, etc, as long as that is not your only reason for cutting
 * No troll-moves. Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but if I see a move that's clearly intended to get a rise out of people or an individual, you will be booted.  Slots are very limited, do not take one unless you plan on taking this seriously.
 * You can make backroom deals with other players, but keep in mind, there is no recourse if someone breaks the deal.
 * You must have watched & be familiar with all episodes of the series in question, even the obscure ones - it won't do to have a bad robot slip under the radar because people forget to nominate it. Since Extreme is part of this, you'll have to remember all the different appearances that each robot made.  The series is on YouTube if you need to refresh your memory, and I will post a spreadsheet in Google Docs, listing all robots in the game, and their status in the rankdown.
 * Please be punctual and check in often. The game only works if each person takes their turn in good order.
 * This will now be enforced, in order to keep the game moving. If a player does not take their turn within 36 hours of the last player, the player will receive a strike, and the turn may be taken by anyone not participating in the rankdown.  If a player gets 3 strikes, a replacement will be sought.  I'm sorry to have to do this, but it is not fair to the other players to keep them waiting an indeterminate amount of time.  If you don't have time to write out a summary, I'll accept just the robots names, and you can post the writeups later.  If comments are not working for whatever reason, you may use my Talk page.
 * Most importantly, have fun, and don't take it personally if a robot you like gets cut sooner than you want it to.

The Doom Dial
To make things more interesting, I’m introducing the Doom Dial, your choice of a special power. Each player may press the Doom Dial once to access one of the following effects:


 * Pit: Negate the most recent cut and remove the robot in question from the pool. The robot gets immunity for one full cycle (ie cannot be nominated until after the player you interrupted finishes his/her next turn).  It’s on you to play this in time to catch the robot you want, if it’s not the most recent, it can’t be Pitted.


 * Rogue House Robot: on your turn, you may cut a robot that’s not in the pool. You will not nominate on the round you use this. You may not cut any robot that has immunity.  This cut cannot be negated by the Pit.
 * New Addition: You can also use Rogue House Robot to cut one of your own nominees. If you do it this way, you pick a replacement, so the pool keeps the same number of robots


 * Fog Of War: On your turn, instead of cutting/nominating, replace the entire pool with a new set. You may not pick any robot that has immunity.  In subsequent rounds, you can cut robots that you brought in with Fog of War.

The Doom Dial will be available in all rounds except the first and last. You are not obligated to use the Doom Dial. To reiterate, you each get one button press, NOT one of each power.

Spreadsheet
List of all robots in the rankdown https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t2F2iAW9iSfqEub-FUrHtOPlOgoWr_STdZ0iCclK7WQ/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115705372364964720596

Instructions
In order to even out the cutting power, I've decided to establish a pool before Round 1. This means in Round 1, there will immediately be a pool available. When you sign up, you'll be voting robots in by making a list of the 10 worst - 10 being the very worst, 1 being the least-worst. Please format your signup like I do, order matters because the robot at #9 will count as 9 votes, the robot at #8 will count as 8 votes... etc. The robots† who collect the most votes will comprise the initial pool. No need to explain your vote-ins though you are free to explain if you wish.

The robots that get "voted in" to the initial pool can be cut by anyone.


 * †Pool size will be equal to the number of players.

My signup
If you wish to play, just do as I've done here and declare your bottom 10. Keep in mind that your spot will NOT be locked in unless you write out your bottom-10 list.


 * 10 Flippa. I'm giving Flippa 10 votes because I think people will give it a free pass for technically having a "win." But this robot just had everything go wrong, immobile in both fights, then dropping out of the Annihilator.  I think even the 0-1 robots had a modicum of reliability.


 * 9. T-Wrecks. They didn't have to spend weight on a motor for their spinner, and still ended up with worse blades than BOD or Spin Doctor.  One of Kat 3, Velocirippa, or Hard managed to bend them out of shape.


 * 8 BOD. Has about an inch of reach on those blades, and when they got a direct hit, it did nothing.  So they had tough armour and a srimech to make up for that right?  Wrong.


 * 7. Cobra. Not a good robot even in theory.  A jabbing spike with allegedly only 7 jabs


 * 6. Spin Doctor. This was their 3rd fight, so whilst some of the robots like Corkscrew 2 can say they were still working out the kinks, this robot continued to suffer from the same problems of simply not damaging anything that touched it.


 * 5. I Bot One Beta. Another spinner with inadequate reach. Visually, it looked to have potential, but it like the Doc, had multiple chances and didn't deliver.


 * 4. Araknia. Underweight, with carbdoard armour and an ugly paintjob.  Decent looking blade, but that's it.


 * 3. Tartarus. Lasted 5 seconds, and that was no fluke, they didn't seem like they had any ability to defend themselves


 * 2. Rawbot. Waepon's nothing to write home about, and not a great pusher to compensate.


 * 1. U.R.O. I think they could've been decent if the spinner worked, but only decent.  Their armour started to fall apart from a flipper.

Players
I If anyone has a spot preference, please let me know. Otherwise, they will be assigned randomly.


 * 1. RA2


 * 2.


 * 3.


 * 4.


 * 5.


 * 6.


 * 7.


 * 8.


 * 9.


 * 10.