User blog comment:RA2/Robot Wars Rankdown: Extreme 1 & Series 5/@comment-1011118-20180722214709


 * 11. Dominator 2. The magic just wasn't there this season.  The robot looked good and the axe seemed damaging, but ironically the robot called Dominator showed the least dominance out of anyone in this list.  They struggled against every robot that wasn't slow with a soft top, and King B was the only robot they beat without assistance from the other bot's misfortune.


 * 10. Disc-O-Inferno. Sure they only had a 3-round annihilator, but that was partly their influence - kicking the snot out of Panic Attack.  They looked extremely destructive, but the reason I'm ending them here is because we can only speculate how well they'd do if they competed in Series 5, and it does not help that they experienced issues in both Series 4 and Series 6.  If I'd had my druthers, they would not have finished above Hypno Disc, because I intuitively don't buy that they're technologically better.


 * 9. Wild Thing. They had a fantastic match against Chaos 2, but they're bogged down by their many struggles - most egregiously, they almost lost to the barely-mobile Trouble n' Strife.  The footage of their battle with Arnold made them out to be the clear winner, but I'll trust the judges got it right, meaning they choked up quite badly.  I can do no more than put them above Dominator for beating them fair and square.


 * 8. Pussycat. Another robot with a W-L record that seems decent, but falls apart when you analyze the wins.  They beat Razer legit, and that's respectable, but I certainly can't rank purely based on who beat whom.  They were dead to rights against Fluffy, and completely dominated twice by Tornado, meaning they struggle against both heavily-armored boxes and destructive weapons, which doesn't leave a diverse array of bots they CAN beat.  In the annihilator, they only had to "beat" two robots, the first half everyone was just focuesd on taking out Hypno Disc.  And the less said about Tag Team Terror, the better.


 * 7 Chaos 2. Maybe controversial to rank them this high, but I believe the champs still had some feist left in them. Sure, they had no chance of winning the title, but they still fell to only the creme of the crop, and could get OOTAs on 100KG robots.


 * 6 .Drillzilla.  If we were strictly to go based on who could beat whom, this would rank higher, however, I factor creativity & interestingness in too, and to be fair,  they're not ranked below anyone who's incapable of beating most robots.


 * 5. S3. Now here's a robot that you can just look at, and know that it's going to make a wreck of the pedestrian boxy designs.  One of the coolest robots in the entire show, one that could simply walk into a room and  steal the spotlight.  They brought the vertical flywheel to the UK, and were responsible for the most-destroyed robot in Series 5.


 * 4. Firestorm. Not much to say, except that few robots could hope to beat Firestorm


 * 3. Bigger Brother. They set out to be Chaos 2 but better, and boy did they succeed.  They had a really tough route to the finals, but proved they could go the distance.  I actually like this version better than the Series 6 and beyond rebuild - this version was more reckless and flipped harder.


 * 2. Tornado. Yes, their Extreme performance was so good, so powerful, that I'm willing to write off their breakdowns as a fluke.  They beat Stinger, they beat Behemoth, they DOMINATED Pussycat and Chaos 2 twice apiece, and racked up more wins than any bot in Extreme.  Somehow they stuffed a disc into a rammer with more push than some barely-weaponed bots had  If Razer was the king of Extreme, Tornado was the queen.  That monster looked invincible to anything except Razer, so in my mind, there's no question it should finish second only to...


 * 1. Razer. A lot of critics will say that Razer had an easy run because they only paired it off against favourable rock-paper-scissors designs.  Fair enough, to an extent, but just by making that argument, the critics have to concede that in any given grab-bag of robots - including the All-Stars or the Series  semifinalists - Razer could steamroll the majority of them.  And it cannot be understated that the crusher is, bar none, the hardest weapon to be successful with.   Look at the first Chomp from the first reboot season of Battlebots, they had a  crusher with tons more power than Razer, but couldn't get a single win.  Razer may not have a 100% reliability rate, but they have something most crushers don't - all the fundamental problems accounted for.  It can crush without breaking itself, it has the valve well-protected, it self-rights as well as can be expected, and it has both the drive system and the driver to easily get the crusher in position.  The mere fact Razer makes it look easy, is a testament to how godly it is.

I'll tabulate the results soon