St. Agro

"Named after the patron saint of roboteers"

- Jonathan Pearce

St. Agro was a competitor robot that fought in Series 6 and 7 of Robot Wars. It was eliminated in the first round of Series 6, but reached the Semi-Finals in Series 7, losing to future Grand Finalist X-Terminator there.

The team previously failed to qualify for Series 4 with Tor, a robot armed with a lifter and covered in plastic wildlife. Tor was going to be rebuilt for Series 6 armed with jaws but it either failed to qualify or it was never rebuilt. The team also failed to qualify for Series 5 with Pendragon.

Design
St. Agro was a two-wheeled, invertible wedge-shaped robot driven by a pair of 800W motors with custom-made gearboxes, and featuring a chassis and batteries salvaged from a Merlin helicopter. The robot was armed with an unusual "double-sided double flipper", which was a pneumatic flipper that would open out on both the top and bottom of the robot with the aid of four linkage bars attached to the piston. This allowed St. Agro to attack efficiently even when it was inverted, while the robot also featured a top speed of 12 mph. However, the robot had a limited CO2 supply as with all other flipper-wielding robots, and had exposed wheels which could easily be damaged.

St. Agro initially had black wheels with rubber tyres for its Series 6 appearance, which were changed to custom five-spoke wheels for Series 7.

Series 6
"Saints alive, look at this! And wait for the shirts!"

- Jonathan Pearce introduces St. Agro

In its first appearance, St. Agro was the only newcomer in its first round battle, as it went up against S.M.I.D.S.Y., Warhog and Comengetorix. St. Agro began by attacking Warhog, pushing it slowly towards the arena wall, St. Agro wedged underneath Warhog, but couldn't fire its flippers in time before Warhog got away. Its flippers then became stuck open, so it stayed out of the way of the other three robots as it hit the pit release. Unfortunately, its lack of a working weapon left it completely defenceless, and S.M.I.D.S.Y came up behind it and pushed it down the pit, eliminating it from the competition. After a fairly heated battle, St. Agro was eventually followed by Warhog as S.M.I.D.S.Y. gave it a piggy-back to the pit.

Series 7
In contrast to its appearance in the Sixth Wars, St. Agro proved itself a powerful machine in its opening match of the heats where it was placed up against Robot Wars veterans Mega Hurts LT and Revolution 3, along with newcomers The Scrapper. In the battle, the Cornish machine began by constantly flipping Mega Hurts around the arena, with the Laptop constantly recovering well. St. Agro then eyed up the limping Scrapper machine and brought it over to the arena side wall, before flipping the newcomers clean out of the arena. St. Agro then turned its attention back to Mega Hurts LT, trying to do the same to them. St. Agro couldn't flip Mega Hurts LT out, so it merely flipped it over instead, with Mega Hurts LT unable to self-right. The Refbot counted it out, and Growler eventually put it down the pit. St. Agro went through to the next round, despite its flipper being locked wide open by the end of the battle, along with Revolution 3, who had also stopped moving.

"St. Agro has been one of the most impressive robots we've seen in Robot Wars: The Seventh Wars"

- Jonathan Pearce, at the start of the second round battle

In the second round of the heat, St. Agro was placed up against Dutch entrants Scraptosaur. St. Agro was flipped many times by Scraptosaur, but since it was invertible, and the Dutch robot's flipper couldn't flip it very far, it was unaffected. St. Agro eventually managed to get under Scraptosaur and flip it over. Scraptosaur couldn't self-right as it had used up too much CO2 when flipping St. Agro, so it was counted out, and St. Agro went through to the Heat Final.

In the Heat Final, it faced newcomers Ceros. St. Agro flipped Ceros, but Ceros self-righted. It then pressed the pit release button, and came extremely close to shoving Ceros into the pit, but Ceros refused to let it. By accident, St. Agro steered into a CPZ, where Matilda took a big chunk out of its exposed wheel. It flipped Ceros again, but crucially, Matilda wandered from her CPZ and accidentally got in Ceros's way at just the moment it came down. This meant Ceros ran out of gas and couldn't self-right. St. Agro did a victory wheelie, while Matilda tossed the defeated Ceros out of the arena with her flywheel, putting St. Agro through to the Semi-Finals.

St. Agro was placed in the first of the two Series Semi-Finals. St. Agro was placed up against the number 11 seeds X-Terminator in the first round. In this battle, St. Agro tried to get under X-Terminator, but X-Terminator buckled one of its flippers with its flywheel. X-Terminator then smashed the wheel of St. Agro in a similar fashion to Matilda in its Heat Final. St. Agro went for the pit release button, only to have X-Terminator get underneath it and grind away at its underside. St. Agro was now immobile, and after it had been counted out, X-Terminator pushed it into Matilda's CPZ, where the house robot tore up St. Agro's armour and wheel. After being thrown by the floor flipper, St. Agro was finally put out of its misery by X-Terminator, who pushed St. Agro into the pit of oblivion. St. Agro was subsequently eliminated from the competition.

Results

 * }

Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 3
 * Losses: 2

Robot Wars Live Events
St. Agro, under its new name of Maelstrom, competed in the first live event of the new Robot Wars at Barnsley in February 2013, winning on a judges decision beating Kronic, Ripper & Thor. Maelstrom also reached the finals at Portsmouth 2013 losing to Eruption and Widnes in 2013 where it lost to Iron-Awe 5. It also won the Robot Wars live event at Colchester 2013 beating Eruption, Kronic & Behemoth. Team Shock also compete with Manta, a blue and grey wedge-shaped robot armed with a large pneumatic flipper, and Shockwave, a competitor in Series 8 of Robot Wars. At the end of 2013, Maelstrom competed in the Robot Wars Winter Tour 2013 where it did very well in the heats finishing second in the Primary heats against Ripper and the Secondary heats agains the teams own Manta. Unfortunately, this didn't earn it the points it needed to qualify for the finals held in Gloucester.

In 2014, a new similarly designed chassis of Maelstrom was built under the name of Maelstrom 2 as the original St. Agro chassis was starting to wear out and is now put on display.

In 2015, Maelstrom 2 fought at Barnsley where it reached the semi-finals of the competition held at the event before being beaten by Dystopia. It also fought in the World Championships 2015 at Colchester where it defeated Rybot by flipping it onto its side, but Maelstrom broke down after a joint attack from Tough as Nails and Kan-Opener, eliminating Maelstrom in the first round.

Outside Robot Wars
St. Agro was sold to Team Shock in 2008, who gradually rebuilt the robot over the years, and renamed it Maelstrom. When the original chassis of Maelstrom became too worn out, Maelstrom 2 was built to replace it. Being built by a new team with brand new components, Maelstrom is effectively unrelated to St. Agro beyond being its spiritual successor.

Team Shock helped it reach the final of the Roaming Robots 2009 UK Championship, only to lose to Terrorhurtz, and the Robots Live! UK Championships where it lost to Big Nipper.

Trivia

 * St. Agro's name was a pun on the team's home town, St Agnes.
 * The team always wore floral Hawaiian shirts when entering Robot Wars, which recieved much ridicule from Jonathan Pearce.
 * St. Agro's defeat in Round 1 of The Sixth Wars was the only time a robot from Cornwall fought in the main competition but did not win its heat.