User blog:RA2/Series 7 Rankdown

Welcome to Series 7 Rankdown! Signups are now active! Signups are now open to people who played last 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.

Usages

 * RA2 - Rogue House Robot (Round 3)
 * SpaceManiac888
 * Jimlaad43
 * ThatRedOtter
 * O Raz3r O
 * Toon Ganondorf
 * NJGW
 * ToastUltimatum
 * CrashBash
 * Adster1005

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

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


 * 1. RA2


 * 2. SpaceManiac888


 * 3. Jimlaad43


 * 4. ThatRedOtter


 * 5. O Raz3r O


 * 6. Toon Ganondorf


 * 7. NJGW


 * 8. ToastUltimatum


 * 9. CrashBash


 * 10. Adster1005

Round 1
We are ready to start! Thankfully there were no ties, and we have a distinct bottom 10. They are: Araknia, BOD, Cobra, Flippa, I Bot One Beta, Rawbot, Shell Shock, Spin Doctor, Tartarus, Terror Turtle. One of them is about to go.

So here's my first cut, it's probably going to be unpopular, but I think you all would respect me less if I caved to peer pressure. My ballot was not intended to be a **ranked** list, it was meant to be a list of how much **assurance** I thought they each would need to get into the pool. Because I'm terrible at reading a room, I thought Flippa wouldn't be such a popular choice, let alone nearly unanimous. Anyway, I fully expect Flippa to have a short lifespan here, but it was a well built robot let down by a crappy receiver, one that I can see doing a lot better in an arena with less radio noise. The very bottom slot should go to a robot that I can't see doing well in any scenario

135. B.O.D. (RA2)
...And the robot I can't see winning under any circumstances is the one JP wrote off immediately. Those blades have a very poor reach to them, owing to blades being only a few centimeters longer than the chassis and very spindly. I believe the hit we saw on Robochicken was the blades moving at full speed. I don't know how they spent their 100kg if not on the weapon, because the body seemed to take a fair bit of damage just from getting grazed by Disk-O. For BOD takes the most extrapolation to imagine it winning, so it goes out in last.

Adding: T-Wrecks. Got no votes except my own, but I still strongly believe they're a bottom 10 robot, so I'm more than keen to offer the chance to make them ranked second-to-last.

Pool: Araknia, Cobra, Flippa, I Bot One Beta, Rawbot, Shell Shock, Spin Doctor, Tartarus, Terror Turtle, T-Wrecks

134. Flippa (SpaceManiac888)
Waste of space: Flippa. Very few machines I honestly would consider to be a waste of space in Robot Wars. Doctor Fist is one of them, and so is Flippa. Two matches, did about a few seconds of movement at best, and got defeated very easily in both. Should not have been placed in either battle.

Still slightly more exciting than Colossus: U.R.O.. Not a great spinner, died very easily in its only battle

133. Spin Doctor (Jimlaad43)
mpeached: Spin Doctor. A spinner which never worked, got brought back again to not work and even added a srimech which not only looked awful and awkward, also didn't work.

A bit sore: Sawpoint 2. Deliberate incompetence is still incompetence.

Pool: Araknia, Cobra, I Bot One Beta, Rawbot, Sawpoint 2, Shell Shock, Tartarus, Terror Turtle, T-Wrecks, U.R.O.

132. Cobra (ThatRedOtter)
Bitten: Cobra an unimaginitive design and very pathetic run in series 7 means that this robot shouldn't going any fuurther

And for the pool: Colossus There's no excuse for being like this after your debut series. When the flipper fails to work, which is the vital point of a flipper to even exist, there's really nothing you can do to salvage the robot, especially when it loses in the exact same position it lost before.

131. Tartarus (O Raz3r O)
Ta-ta, and don’t come back: Tartarus interesting looking design, but it was beaten in literally 3 or 4 seconds. Showed nothing, and probably would have delivered very little even if it had a chance.

Pork a la crême? Hardly: Hassocks Hog 2

130. Colossus (Toon Ganondorf)
Cockshot by Deadpool: Colossus. Box with a weak flipper whose roll bar seemed to actually hamper its non existant ability to self right.

Pool: Major Tom 3

Araknia, Hassocks Hog 2, I Bot One Beta, Major Tom 3, Rawbot, Sawpoint 2, Shell Shock, T-Wrecks, Terror Turtle, U.R.O.

129. Shell Shock (NJGW)
Cut: Shell Shock - I'm surprised this hadn't been cut yet. I'd put it below virtually everything already canned so far, where I could at least claim "that machine had okay pushing power", "that machine could've acted as a wedge" or "that weapon could've earned aggression points at the worst". But here we have such a laughably weak weapon, fibreglass armour, and self-righters which were too weak to self right. Awful.

Pooled: Demolition Man.

128. Rawbot (ToastUltimatum)
My Friend's Rawbot Fell Down an 'Ole: Rawbot. A robot designed purely to push, but had barely any speed to do so, and broke down under almost no pressure in its Series 7 fight. A complete failure to achieve its simple and only objective.

The Tragic Merry-Go-Round: Scarey-Go-Round.

127. Hassock's Hog 2(CrashBash)
Slaughtered: Hassock's Hog 2. Because Colossus has already been eliminated and virtually everything that has been said about it (see ThatRedOtter's post in particular) can also apply to Hassock's Hog 2.

Not a win pose: Mobot. It's just kinda eh?

126. Mobot (Adster1005)
No gold medal: Mobot - Mobot did no real damage with it's blade, a unique locomotion system which didn't work very well, and was OOTAed by Thermidor 2.

Pooled: Diabolus - It was mangled in it's only fight before being OOTAed.

Round 2
The Doom Dial is now on, and will be available until the penultimate round of cuts

125. U.R.O. (RA2)
U R Cut: U.R.O. Tough call between this and Araknia, so I decided it based on who could improve with the fewest changes. URO won out for being at the full weight limit whilst Araknia could've theoretically been better if they'd spent those 12kg on armour. URO's spinner never worked, and even if it had, the lack of reach would surely hamper it. We didn't see what exactly caused the bottom or the side panel to break off, but I doubt it was Typhoon - they surely would've shown footage of the to-be champ spinning if they had any. Also, why weren't the Men in Black Overalls wearing overalls?

Gone flat: Corkscrew 2. I know that this team's capable of building a deadly ring spinner, but this design is especially vulnerable when the weapon doesn't work.

124. Demolition Man (SpaceManiac888)
What makes him a bad Demoman?: Demolition Man. Certainly had potential, but we never saw it, because it broke down far too quickly.

Beaten: Black and Blue. Overall, a big step down from Mousetrap.

123. Major Tom 3 (Jimlaad43)
Removed from Ragnabot: Major Tom 3. Dreadfully slow and unable to actually do what it was supposed to, this "upgrade" was a complete disaster. That said, Sawpoint should really be gone here but I can't do that...

Flattened: Riptilion

122. Araknia (ThatRedOtter)
Squashed - Araknia It was very close between Araknia and Terror Turtle, but looking at their respective writeups, there was only one choice. I mean, at least Terror Turtle showed a minuscule amount of potential against Snake Bite, Araknia couldn't manage that against bloody Mean Streak! A weak elimination and not having anything to show in the fight itself other than why you should never use carbon-Fibre in the arena! Huh.. sounds like one of the Ragnabot 3 counters...

The last (letter of the alphabet) - Zorro Might be a weird pick but that's what this whole thing lives and breathes on. Yes it allegedly did amazingly in qualifiers but that's not what we're rating this on. On the show, Zorro was an overweight, disappointing Son of Whyachi clone that had to be stripped down to its bare essentials, debalancing itself and posibly unrelated, a srimech that didn't actually work. Wish it did work though, it's a design I love... but we're not rating things on that either huh.

121. Scarey-Go-Round (O Raz3r O)
Round we go back to me: Scarey-Go-Round Though not a serious competitor. it was still rubbish in terms of armour and weaponry, and showed very little in its fight, becoming half immobile almost as soon as it got going thanks to Fluffy.

Deserves the chop soon: Tomahawk

120. Riptillion (Toon Ganondorf)
Ript limb from limb: Riptillion: it’s basically Araknia but I would argue almost worse if that’s possible.

Pooled: devastator

119. I Bot One Beta (NJGW)
Cut: I Bot One Beta - two poor breakdowns is too much.

Pooled: Metalis.

118. Metalis (ToastUltimatum)
Who Would Lose to Team Death Anyway, Hahaha: Metalis. Ironic intro aside, it was down to Metalis and Terror Turtle, and the damage that Terror Turtle caused to Snake Bite suggests it would beat Metalis quite handily. With an easy loss on TV and the qualifiers, neither time without a weapon, I'm surprised Metalis got this far.

You Can Outrun: Reaper NP2.

Pool: Black and Blue, Corkscrew Two, Devastator, Diabolus, Reaper NP2, Sawpoint II, Terror Turtle, Tomahawk, T-Wrecks, Zorro

117. Tomahawk (CrashBash)
Scalped: Tomahawk. A sad case of a robot that in theory should have been decent, but in practise NEVER performed. It died in one hit, which doesn't help.

Insert Alien-Joke-Here: Xenomorph. I'm really not even sure what this robot could realistically even do.

116. Terror Turtle (Adster1005)
It wasn't "Turtle-Super" - Terror Turtle - it would probably lose to the rest of the current pool, and wasn't the best in combat

Pooled: Bamm Bamm - for a Dutch Semi-Finalist, a one flip and done says a lot.

115. T-Wrecks (ROGUE HOUSE ROBOT) (RA2)
I got a suggestion to expand the power of Rogue House Robot to cutting your own nominees. Well, I've got a real chip on my shoulder about one of my own nominees so here it goes.

Extinct: T-Wrecks. When you unburden yourself from the active weapon rule, there's a number of good designs you can make. T-Wrecks was not one of them. They had surplus weight of not having a mechanical device for a weapon, but the blades they depended on to cause damage were fragile sheet metal that curled up under pressure of Psycho. And they had no reach either, you need a single long pole, like say, the SnS T-Wrex from across the pond. Robots practically had to drive straight into T-Wrecks for it to connect. Their innards were solid as a brick shirthouse, but they'd still lose to a spinner, because the outer layer was so flimsy that it could buckle into a wheel, or down into the ground and high-centre it. No hope.

Pooling Brutus Maximus. Got defended last time for being deliberately bad, but we're entering the stage of robots with a semblance of a redeeming feature, so it's their time to join in.

Pool: Bamm Bamm, Black and Blue, Brutus Maximus, Corkscrew 2, Devastator, Diabolus, Reaper NP2, Sawpoint 2, Xenomorph, Zorro

114. Bamm Bamm (SpaceManiac888)
Only a cameo role: Bamm Bamm. Did well in the Dutch Series, but this run was so brief and unimpressive that I cannot rank it any higher. Flipped and was unable to self-right, Bamm Bamm is condemned to an early exit from the Countdown.

Also only a cameo role: Chip. Had high potential, but did not demostrate it because it got thrown out far too quickly.

Pool: Black and Blue, Brutus Maximus, Chip, Corkscrew 2, Devastator, Diabolus, Reaper NP2, Sawpoint 2, Xenomorph, Zorro

113. Xenomorph (Jimlaad43)
Wondering how TF Sawpoint 2 is still in: Xenomorph. Ragnabot 3 just reassured me that I have no clue what it was supposed to do or how it did anything.

Adding: Spartacus. It only won a battle because Flippa was so poor. Apart from that it was pathetic.

112. Sawpoint 2 (ThatRedOtter)
Honestly I think I would be lynched if I didn't say this: Saw Point 2 Not only does it create immense confusion on if it's a sequel to the series 4 machine or the Extreme 2 one in name only, but it's immensely shoddy build quality was clear to see to the point that even the team made merciless fun of it! Going out of the series without much fanfare, it saddens me beyond belief that Saw Point 2 is gonna be considered better than Bamm Bamm

Release it into the pool! - The Kraken Yes the weapon certainly had potential, but with a stupidly situational SriMech, being very easy to side strand, and even if the weapon seemed promising.. it couldn't get through Cobra. I think that says it all.

The pool: Black and Blue, Brutus Maximus, Chip, Corkscrew 2, Devastator, Diabolus, Reaper NP2, Spartacus, The Kraken, Zorro