User blog:Jimlaad43/Ranking every Side-Competition in UK Robot Wars

Seeing as these kind of rankings seem to get views xD

The most prestigious tournament in Robot Wars was always the main UK Championship. They had the most entrants and the longest progression to get to the final. Robots are often not described as legends until they have at least graced a Semi-Final of a main tournament. However, there was only ever a chance of a maximum of 10 robots taking that title, so many other side tournaments were created to give other robots a chance of winning something. After all, thousands of Pounds and Hours had been spent by the many roboteers to try and create the ultimate combatant.

So what were these side competitions? They had a much smaller pool of robots, and were either linked by a common theme, or were eligible to take part in an any robot competition using a different format. So, which was the best?

In this blog, I will rank all tournaments that took place in the UK Series' that weren't the main UK Championship. The ranking will comprise of a few categories, with their maximum rating in brackets:
 * Tournament theme (15): What linked the robots competing and why is that compelling?
 * Number of entrants (10): Did the amount of robots competing feel right?
 * Line-up (10): Were the robots competing good/balanced enough to make an interesting tournament? Were there any contentious links?
 * Format (15): Was the battle format good/suitable or flawed? Were there the right amount of battles?
 * Overall quality of battle(s) (30): An overall rating of every battle that occurred in the tournament?
 * Was it a success (15): Did the tournament do what it was supposed to? Not just "was a winner of that tournament crowned", but did everything culminate to make a worthy tournament. Were some battles too easy for the winner? Did withdrawals or a lack of numbers make it seem hollow, or did they add to the narrative? Did controversies get in the way or anything else?
 * Prestige (5): How prestigious is it to have this win in your trophy cabinet?

I will not just be grouping all tournaments with the same theme together, but ranking them separately if there was a trophy for each. For example, the Northern and Southern Annihilators will have different entries in the list, while all five episodes of the New Blood are compressed into one entry. It will become obvious as this continues what counts and what doesn't.

Honourable Mentions
This section is for a few one-battle only "tournaments", which were mostly just exhibitions, fake rivalries or unnecessary filler battles.

There are just some battles that didn't need to happen. The idea behind them could have been sound, but the choice of robots could have let the tournament down, or just the fact that other battles that occurred in the same series made these battles unnecessary. But mostly, these are filler battles, designed to use up some time, either in an episode, or for the live audience. As such, these battles are rarely considered proper tournaments, which is why they are getting only honourable mentions.

Just because a battle is obsolete, it doesn't mean it's necessary a bad thing, and we have had some cracking battles and moments from the tournaments filling this block, but they just don't meet the criteria for inclusion in the main list. Some of these tournaments have very high scores (the top Honourable Mention scores 60/100), but that can include scores of 0 in some categories.

As such, these 18 tournaments will not have full score and tournament breakdowns like the 56 main tournaments up for consideration, so their written format will be different. Anyway, let's crack on with the 18 tournaments I couldn't justify classing as proper side-tournaments and why.

Unbroadcast Reboot battles
The first three tournaments in this list are the most recent (of the Honourable Mentions at least), and they are as follows: Series 8 Pilot Episode and the Series 8 & 9 Whiteboard Matches (Including Dara vs Angela, broadcast as part of Battle of the Stars). These are unrated episodes as they were never broadcast, leaving us to speculate and read from audience accounts. These don't count as official tournaments, especially as we don't include the results in the robot win/loss counts.

The Pilot Episode is just that, a Pilot to make sure everything was working. Robots not selected, or ineligible for the tournament competed in a simple test for the crew to get some practice, test their format and make sure everything was working before filming the actual Series 8. This was never meant to be anything serious, or officially recorded like we did on the Wiki. The tournament wasn't properly completed, so it doesn't count.

The Whiteboard matches were simply battles to entertain a crowd. There was nothing serious about them, and no flow between them. The only Whiteboard match that counted for anything really was the presenters battle, which was at least broadcast. However, as you'll see later in this section, I find it tough to call a one-off 1v1 battle a proper "tournament", so these Reboot episodes belong here.

International Wastes of time
Talking of 1v1 battles, here we meet three battles between two robots that definitely appear to have been shoehorned together. With a maximum score of 100 possible, two of these battles managed to score single digit totals. Single Digit. The Extreme 1 UK vs Germany fight, The Ashes and The Series 3 War of Independence all felt like battles without a real purpose. Obviously, there was reason for each fight, but nothing worthy of note for a one battle 1v1 filler.

UK vs Germany is the lowest scoring of all tournaments, at 8 points - scoring 0 in Entrants, Success and Prestige. This obvious filler battle was supposed to be an exhibition of Hypno-Disc tearing Nasty Warrior up, but instead we got Hypno breaking down after causing some cosmetic damage to the clearly inferior Nasty Warrior before breaking down. This battle was supposed to be a Hypno-Disc destruction-fest, but instead we got a poor breakdown against a robot we'd already seen in the series. A clear waste of TV time which could have been used better.

The Ashes was clearly a chance for the Terror Australis team to actually have a fight after their original robot broke down, but it was still against the much superior Mortis, which understandably dominated the fight. Another one sided 1v1 that actually worked as it should have. 9/100.

The War of Independence had a much better fight though, and was definitely helped by having two well matched robots fighting each other, especially as Tentoumushi was so incredibly unique and visually appealing. But again, it just felt like a case of "we need to find a way to get Tentoumushi on TV to do what it is designed for" than anything else. As such, it can only be classed as an International waste of time, but it still clocked a 25/100.

Weight Class wastes of time
Over the history of Robot Wars, 6 weight classes all fought for glory. However, there were times when entries were so short it was a proper waste of time. There are 3 tournaments to mention here, bear in mind they've only scored better than UK vs Germany because of the 10 points they each got for at least being a worthy Theme, compared to the 3 points UK vs Germany gathered. Two weight class tournaments ended up as 1v1s, at times when there should have really been more eligible robots. The Extreme 1 Featherweight championship was fought between two robots well below the weight limit in Beef-Cake and RC Warrior. The only notable part of the battle really was Beef-Cake winning, but then getting crushed by Sir Killalot. It is not a good sign when the best part of a fight is the House Robots destroying a robot for no reason. At least the battle before it was OK.

That's more than you can say about the Lightweight fight of the next Extreme. This was just the Edinburgh Air Cadets getting a free trophy as Ellie's Little Pink Bot did absolutely nothing, making the whole thing a complete waste of screen time. At least Growler destroying everything pink and not pink in the arena made up for it, well attempted to make up for it. 21 and 16 points respectively for these two battles.

However, the last of these to be mentioned was actually a fantastic idea. The Walker Battles of Series 3 gave people who had designed walking robots a chance to battle them against other mobility impaired robots, not letting them get trashed by far superior wheeled robots (cough Series 5 cough). However, this tournament was let down by just how impaired the robots were. None of them moved quickly, they all looked ungainly and only one really worked. One of the battles was a draw as Mammoth and Anarachnid couldn't even reach each other in the time allotted. It's a shame, because the most dangerous of the four robots is the only one that actually lost. Stomp's spinning attack could have caused some damage to some of the poorer robots of Series 3 if it had been entered in the main competition, but as its opponent never got a chance to attack it before the immobility was noticed, the House Robots made sure Stomp lost. Two utterly dire battles score it the only 0 in the battles category, and the 10 points from the good idea lift this up to a woeful 14/100.

Vengeance
Vengeance was an official tournament in both Extreme 1 and Nickelodeon, but is a group of battles to settle scores between two robots really a proper tournament? Judgement Day was basically an exhibition for Mortis against two other good robots from Series 2. I split these two battles up as separate tournaments as they were branded differently, and Mortis vs Cassius got the maximum 10 points for Line-Up, as Mortis and Cassius were arguably the two best robots in Series 2. But apart from settling a score, what did this tournament achieve? There may have been some friendly bad blood between the teams before the fights, but the fights were more for TV than to actually settle differences. (vs Napalm - 24, vs Cassius - 33) The Vengeance battles of Extreme 1 seem odd to leave as an honourable mention for 10 battles containing some of the best robots of Extreme 1, but again, what was the point? They were all 1v1 battles to solve one disagreement. They did score quite highly though. Some of the battles were great, some of the reasons for the fights seemed legitimate enough and the quality of robots was really high - Pussycat vs Razer is the perfect example of a top quality vengeance battle.

However, it was plagued with some dodgy "rivalries" and some made up vengeances. I mean, the first broadcast fight of the whole series was a manufactured Vengeance battle for armament's sake. Both teams calling the other robot "boring". Wow, what a "boring" reason for vengeance. At least the Firestorm team had some written evidence of the Diotoir team calling them girlies. No, none of these battles tied into each other, and half of them were filler and/or terrible fights. But still, the good was great, helping it score a decent 48/100. The Internet Insurrection is a good example of a worthy one-battle tournament devolving into chaos. This exhibition battle was supposed to use the medium of a 4-way melee to determine which team had the best website, but a bit like Bigger Brother vs Comengetorix's Vengeance, it was just an excuse to fight the House Robots. Corporal Punishment did start the fight by attacking Griffon yes, but they all turned quite quickly to trying to kill the house robots - something Griffon was surprisingly good at. This battle could arguably be called the original House Robot Rebellion - they were more effective than the Extreme 1 competitors were definitely, but as you'll see later in the honourable mentions, a single battle winner declared by default after all competitors ignore each other is not the basis for a proper tournament...

Obsoleted battles
Sometimes a battle is done early in a series, and followed later by a tournament which makes you go "Why did we bother with the earlier one?". These two battles fit that criteria well. The Armed Forces Melee seemed to be a melee that didn't need to happen, as we had the Forces Special later in the series. OK, the armed forces need to be respected for their service, and publicity to get people to join them is always welcome by the higher-ups in the military, but a melee showing three sub-par robots from the official governmental warring departments really hurts this. At least the Forces special combined it into a proper tournament to prove which is the best faction over multiple battles, this melee just felt like a loose end. It was just too similar. 15 points only.

Another battle from Extreme 1 that just feels like it should have been part of another tournament is the International Inferno. I mean, this is basically just Heat 5 of the 2nd World Championship. I mean, Manta and Flensburger Power took part, so why not replace Whirlpool 70 and Drillzilla with Maximill and Panic Attack? Both robots would have had a better effect on the tournament than the two they (would have) replaced. Don't get me wrong, I do like this battle, but it doesn't count as a tournament.

Single Weapon Battles
These final four battles are all high scoring. One of the battles alone has a higher score than 11 of the tournaments identified already, but these still don't count. We always want to know which is the best robot with a certain type of weapon, and I'm sure if I were to create a forum post we'd get into a massive heated debate over the best. So how can you argue with a battle designed to find the best, eh? Each of these battles scored a hefty 12 points in the "theme" section as the idea behind each battle is really sound. We'll start in Series 7 with three filler battles Special Events: Battle of the Spinners, Axe Attack and Crusher Crunch Up.

These three were all good battles, but each had their own problems. Battle of the Spinners suffered from the fact that the spinners involved really weren't great. OK, it may have been a way to get three veterans that had crashed out in Round 1 another battle, but could you really say in a series that contained legendary moments like Typhoon 2 obliterating Iron-Awe 2.1, X-Terminator 2 spinning two robots out of the arena and Supernova annihilating Mechaniac, that the best three spinners to represent the weapon are Barber-Ous, Infernal Contraption and Shredder Evolution? Admittedly, I am biased in this as I feel Shredder and Infernal Contraption are utterly awful robots, but they were not good in the fight. However, for the number of robots that would have been available at the time, it was an OK choice, and the battle wasn't exactly bad, but it fell short of answering our questions as the spinners didn't do much. 42/100

Axe Attack was a bit of a joke, as Iron-Awe and Hydra pretty much just used their flippers the whole battle. As such, they managed a big fat 0 on the "Line-Up" score for fielding more flippers than robots with just axes. Still a good 20 points for the battle alone helped it to a score of 44/100.

Crusher Crunch Up was the best of the three tournaments, as it did have the best three crushers of Series 7 competing, helping it to a score of 47. The one thing this battle sorely missed though, was Razer. For all their best attempts, Pinser, R.O.C.S. and Mantis were blindingly obviously bad Razer clones, and they would have still lost if this was a 3v1 against Razer. Still, for what was available in Series 7, good job. Shame the battle wasn't as good as the other ones. Our final Honourable Mention also falls in this category, and gets a cracking score of 60/100, one which many following tournaments would be jealous of. This battle scores a great 25/30 alone, and the second 10/10 for the line-up so far. To be honest, if the battle had gone as normal, I would have seriously considered this one as a proper tournament. But as it went, there is no way I can place the Extreme 1 Flipper Frenzy as a true tournament.

Four of clearly the best flippers at the time entered the arena with one thing on their mind: prove I'm the best flipper err, smash the House Robots up? Yeah, a classic battle of brutal House Robot mutilation may be a Robot Wars classic battle, but from a purely tournament viewpoint, it was terrible. A winner declared by default as the best robots with flippers completely ignore each other for 5 minutes. Ah well, I would never trade what we got for a battle that would fit on the main list here.

The full points breakdown of the Honourable Mentions is shown below.

The main list will begin below.

#57 - International League Championship
It is always a shame to put something last in a list and brand it the worst, but when ranking something you have to do that. Coming in at the number 57 slot is a tournament that actually sold Robot Wars to foreign markets, making it odd to place as the worst tournament ever, but the International League Championship is a fine example of a disastrous episode. This tournament firstly feels like it is just about deserving to be an honourable mention under the "Obsoleted Battles" section as it is effectively just a very bad First World Championship using 6 robots which competed in it anyway. We have a small number of robots, either bad or OP, competing in what ended up being the joint worst format of all tournaments once I compiled the list. For anyone wondering, tournaments where the whole thing was just one melee with all competing robots scored a 2 for Format, as it's unoriginal. It was placed like this so it was possible to score worse than it. And oh boy, did this tournament deliver a bad format.

We have two groups of 3 robots entering a group stage, with the winner advancing to the final. Sounds good in theory right? Well, the Round Robin format worked in Series 8 just fine, but the flaws were shown in Series 9 and this tournament. If you have four evenly matched, or rock-paper-scissors type weapons, the round robin can be tense. However, it really doesn't work if you have one dominant robot. That's what we were given here. Razer and Diotoir were just too good for the non-British Isles robots to even have a chance. Granted, they didn't put up much of a fight and the final barely makes up for it, but Terror Australis, Techno-Lease and Prometheus really weren't good enough to make a tournament where they have to fight multiple times interesting. Also, who designs a tournament where a draw is an acceptable result of a battle? Points were docked for that. Sometimes a bad format can be ignored if the battles are good or the result is a welcome surprise, but this is a perfect example of a bad format turning an already dull tournament into a long and drawn out borefest with very little rewatchability. The four success points do at least point towards the success of it as a pilot episode, but it scores nothing in the Prestige bracket. If you were to ask the Razer team which of their awards they were proudest of, I highly doubt this one would ever get mentioned. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Yes, piecing together a nice theory from CrashBash, I might have solved an interesting mystery about this tournament - proving that it doesn't actually exist! If you read Crash's comment here, he theorises that the 3rd World Championship was supposed to be a massive Round Robin that got cut down to a much smaller knockout tournament. Now, none of these battles were part of the World Championship, but all the robots were! What if this was just a supercut of some extra Round 2 battles that were filmed but never used? Footage has been reused in interviews, and even the trophy presentation to Razer was the same. Perhaps a trophy was never given to the team for this tournament? These battles were just supercut together and some hasty bits to TV from Craig, followed by Jonathan being given a useful script to explain the tournament might tell us why this weird tournament existed without being properly mentioned, or a trophy ever given out. It might also explain The Ashes away as just another battle between Mortis and Terror Australis that didn't fit into the League Structure. But Hey, that's just a theory!

Overall, a weird episode that counted as a special which didn't fit in with anything else definitely relegates the International League to the bottom of the pile.

#56 - Series 2 Lightweight Championship
In at number 56 is possibly the most frustrating wiki page - the Series 2 Lightweight Championship. However, those flaws only contibute a tiny bit to the terrible rating this championship gets. For future reference, main championships for lower weight categories always score a 10 in the Theme section. It's always nice to have a competition for other weight categories, but it's just not the heavyweights, which are the stars of Robot Wars. They also by default score 2 in Prestige. The fact that apart from the standard points, this tournament scored 10/85 points shows how much of a struggle this tournament was.

First off, the line-up scores a big fat 1, because we don't Bloody Murder Weapon know the competitors! We have images of the fight, we know that Damacles and Shadow Fiend shared a frame at one point, but can't identify them, and there is also the only Unknown Competitor in the History of televised Robot Wars tournaments. I can remember making the Rosebud and Shadow Fiend pages because they were some of the last red links in the mainspace, and we have found some stuff out since then, but it's still a disaster.

However, the real disappointment with this tournament is the whole fight. First off, all competing robots were just shoved in one large melee, which always scores low in these ratings if we have over four robots only competing in one melee - just be original and come up with more battles and a draw. The battle was hardly broadcast and ended up with the judges unable to declare a winner. The fact that the title went to a robot that drove enthusiastically after cease was called really hurts every score, including the success. What followed was a roboteer fight and the lightweights never appearing again in competent forms. A sheer disaster.

#55 - Extreme 1 House Robot Rebellion
We now enter a three way tie for 53rd on total points, but the deciding factor for position is the quality of the battle. Coming in at 55 is a battle hideously hamstrung by the poor choice of competitors for the battle. A House Robot Rebellion is designed for Roboteers and fans to enjoy the House Robots being beaten up. Why do we think battles like the Flipper Frenzy, Internet Insurrection, Southern Annihilator Final and Series 7 All Stars first melee are so good? Because the House Robots get what's coming to them. So giving robots the chance to actively fight the house robots is an awesome idea, right?

Well, yeah it is, that's why it gets a 9 in the themes category, but the good ends there really. I get that the Producers didn't want the House Robots to be quickly beaten or badly damaged, so a battle with Hypno-Disc, Razer and Chaos 2 was never going to happen, but Plunderbird, Scorpion and Stinger?

OK, Stinger may have been a defending finalist and proved itself as a good robot, but it was totally the wrong sort of design for a House Robot Rebellion. Shunt and Dead Metal - the chosen House Robots - have lovely cavernous front which are perfect for grabbing and deflecting Stinger's attacks. Scorpion gets its only run in the series, which is a shame as it was always an entertaining looking robot, but it still only has a chainsaw... Matilda's chainsaw hasn't done any damage since like Series 2, and it was only ever damaging on dead robots with weak armour, rather than fully loaded House Robots. And then we get Plunderbird, with the low claw that was always too slow and low to cause any meaningful damage. The whole episode was a build up to this battle, and it is such a disappointment. Three robots that were never going to stop the House Robots getting pounded does not make for good TV. A House Robot win isn't interesting if they have it easy. Plunderbird does one weak slam and then breaks down, Scorpion gets instantly karmad every time it tries an attack, while Stinger basically either gets ignored or pushed around. Stinger survives to the end, but then for some reason gets given the victory, despite being the third best active robot left in the battle.

This battle also shows how ineffective the House Robots are. They are obviously powerful and can change a battle, but they are designed to be hazards rather than dangerous machines. A robot that strays into a CPZ needs to fear some damage and the chance of being pinned in the corner for a while, but unless there's a major weakness, a trip to the CPZ shouldn't be a death sentence. Plunderbird, Scorpion and Stinger come out the battle broken, but still as undamaged as the House Robots themselves. One sided battles are usually only decent if the kills are extravagant and spectacular, or there is high damage. Atomic vs Hellbent is a lot more memorable than Storm 2 vs Trax for the same reason. The House Robots just don't have the damage output to make an easy drubbing interesting.

Overall, this tournament is a bit of a disaster. The roboteers had all hatched plans of defeating the House Robots before turning on each other, but they were very quickly disposed of by Shunt and Dead Metal - two beatable House Robots. What the tournament needed was three more suited competitors to have a go. Seriously, if the three robots was something like Panic Attack, The Steel Avenger and S.M.I.D.S.Y. for example, it would have been a win-win. Three competitors which have a chance of doing something, and if they are beaten down, the House Robots would have had to try something clever, which would still have made better TV. The threat of damage is low from those three, so the House Robots should survive relatively unscathed. There would also still be the chance of the "But don't tell anyone..." line actually coming to fruition.

#54 - Series 2 Middleweight Championship
Coming in at number 54 is another Series 2 other weight category fight, barely scraping up above an honourable mention for at least having three robots entering a weight category final. The Series 2 Middleweight final suffers from an issue a few other lower-weight classes will fare through the list - low entrants and a highlights only broadcast. The fact this tournament covers both hurts it. However, the short cut doesn't seem to miss much of a poor fight between three Middleweights for a trophy.

The edit for the battle gives us pretty much no idea what actually happens. The fact that for the 20 seconds that the Middleweight championship is shown on screen, 10 seconds is dedicated to a toy rat becoming dislodged and later barbecued speaks volumes. Still, at least the battle came to a conclusion and a worthy winner was chosen.

Overall, it's a bit of a forgettable battle really, with not much to go on or say.

#53 - German Melee
Quite a lot of this early section of the list falls into the category "Good idea on paper, shame the only robots we could get involved are a bit poor". This is the issue that holds the Extreme 1 German Melee back. The German Melee is a qualifier for the Second World Championship. This is a good idea, get four German robots and let them fight out for a chance to represent their country. However, we witnessed one of the slowest and most uninteresting melees of Robot Wars Extreme. The four robots barely did anything to each other, bar a couple of shoves and attempted flips. The only robot that looked vaguely potent was Golem, which started well, but then died after reversing into Matilda.

The House Robots did most of the work, while the other three pondered around until Golem was placed on the pit and Nasty Warrior lightly nudged it enough to fall in, pulling the classic Fortnite Kill Steal. However, the judges had to be called in to decide between three ineffective robots. Ansgar was declared the winner, mainly because it had tried to use its weapon. Note the word tried. At no point in the battle did its flipper actually get under a robot and lift it. It just flailed about next to robots all battle.

The battle was just to represent their country in another tournament, so it doesn't have any prestige (not like it would get any for the way it was won), but it was at least vaguely successful as a concept, even if two of the robots went through to the World Championship anyway...