User blog comment:RA2/Robot Wars Rankdown: Series 4/@comment-6023653-20180601214051

18: Spikasaurus - Fast, powerful, ultimately lucky to win the Annihilator but did get stuck in well- but probably the weakest here.

17: Crusader 2 - Decent enough robot, but probably should have been eliminated before now with weak armour and a fairly unreliable drive-train.

16: X-Terminator 2 - Lacking any kind of effective weaponry, but despite that a fast and aggressive robot and difficult to immobilise.

15: S.M.I.D.S.Y. - Series 4 was probably S.M.I.D.S.Y.’s best chance of reaching the semis, and honestly I think it was beating Panic Attack before it got the forks into play. Stopped shy of being an all-star though.

14: Bigger Brother - Certainly had potential given the TTT performances, but wasn’t the beast of Series 5 onwards just yet.

13: Killerhurtz - Aggressive with a good axe, possibly being given a bit too much leeway based on Battlebots appearances but did have that great Annihilator run.

12: Tornado - Maybe I’m ranking it too low, but whilst it was certainly an impressive debut it seemed to have a number of reliability issues throughout the series that got masked by it immobilising opponents just before. Dying against Gemini, losing drive on one side against WBC- I just feel that against sterner opposition than it faced it’d have got eliminated sooner.

11: Thermidor 2 - Absolutely deserved to win its heat and pushed Pussycat hard, but its flipper wasn’t as good as in Extreme, it had massively vulnerable wheels, and I really doubt it could self-right.

10: Mortis - Bonus points for winning the War of Independence in fine style, points off for weapon unreliability. This was the best version of Mortis, and deserved a semi-final place in my opinion- but not much further given the vulnerability to flippers.

9: Firestorm 2 - Not Firestorm’s most convincing series, but I maintain it’s capable of defeating most robots. Its melee and the semi-final fight against Dominator 2 showed its promise.

8: Panic Attack - The skirts and controllability of this version Panic Attack made it a massive improvement. Convincing run to the semi-finals and really deserved its top 8 finish.

7: Wild Thing - Just unkillable. Ultra aggressive, seriously well-controlled, loses a few points for lacking killing power.

6: Dominator 2 - Fast, aggressive, and Series 4 was when its axe was most effective, but you just can’t overlook those wheels.

5: Razer - Razer’s a tricky one. Won the Annihilator fairly comfortably in the end and it could clearly defeat most opponents on its day, but the scare against Attila shows just how vulnerable this version is to high-powered weapons. There’s only a handful here that could beat it, but we’re up into that handful.

4: Stinger - Just impossible to deal with for all but a select few.

3: Pussycat - The thing that always strikes me about Pussycat’s fights is that it whizzes around the arena, not seeming to do too much damage, and then you look again and suddenly its opponent is in pieces. Phenomenal design.

2: Chaos 2 - Laboured a little bit more in its title defence, but ultimately found a way to win against everything that challenged it. There’s only two robots in the series that I think would beat it, Razer’s one…

1: Hypno-Disc - …And the other’s Hypno-Disc. Utterly dominant throughout the series until Pussycat’s lucky kill-shot. For it to be the most destructive robot of Series 3 and take such a large step up again, that’s something special.