Nuts

"...all eager to do damage with spinners, axes, flippers and...whatever that is."

- Jonathan Pearce previewing some competitors, including Nuts

Nuts is a heavyweight thwackbot, armed with a set of chain flails, which entered the 2016 series of Robot Wars. The robot protects its huge wheels with a metal ring around the outside, which the flails are attached to. The ring is able to rotate in order to provide extra mobility and the ability to lift other robots. Like most thwackbots, Nuts can spin on the spot at high speeds for a defensive form of attack, with exceptionally far reach due to the length of its flails. According to the Robot Wars website, Nuts cost around £1,100, making it one of the cheapest robots to construct in the 2016 Series.

Nuts is accompanied by two smaller wedge-shaped clusterbots, to attempt to impede the movement of opponents by driving underneath them. The team claim that Nuts sacrificed better armour to make its weaponry as strong as possible.

Team Nuts all wear top hats and fluffy waistcoats on the series, and each team member wears a different colour of fur.

2016 series
Nuts received an extremely tough draw for its first battle, as it was pitted up against Razer, Terrorhurtz and Robin Herrick with his new machine, Kill-E-Crank-E, all three of which had been grand finalists in previous series of Robot Wars. It was targeted for most of the battle by Terrorhurtz, but managed to evade the majority of its opponents' axe blows despite being pushed onto its side a few times. Razer managed to puncture one of the minibots, but Nuts itself remained mostly unharmed. Nuts qualified for the Head-to-Head stage alongside Terrorhurtz after Razer and Kill-E-Crank-E both fell into the pit. For its first battle in this stage, Nuts went against another veteran, Behemoth. Here, it was able to use its chain flails effectively to keep Behemoth at bay briefly, but was pushed around the arena for the majority of the battle, with Behemoth nearly flipping its minibots out of the arena and Nuts getting one of its flails caught in the floor flipper mechanism at one point. Nuts managed to hold onto a judges' decision, but Behemoth was given the unanimous win. Nuts was next pitted against deadly bar spinner Carbide. Despite trying to play defensively, an early hit by Carbide caused Nuts' ring and flails to break off completely. Forced onto the defensive, Nuts continued to receive severe damage from Carbide's spinning blade, which ended with one wheel being severely buckled and the other being torn off and flung out of the arena completely. This left Nuts immobile, and Carbide was declared the clear winner.

The team managed to fix Nuts as best they could for its final group match against Terrorhurtz again, although its wheels were still badly bent. Within the first few seconds of the battle, Terrorhurtz managed to break off Nuts' ring and flails again, but this resulted in the former grand-finalist getting caught in the mechanism, hindering its movement for the rest of the battle and giving Nuts a chance to escape. Terrorhurtz eventually hit Nuts with its axe, before driving it into Shunt who landed a blow of its own. Nuts was severely limping by the end of the battle, but just about managed to last the full three minutes after Terrorhurtz got caught on the remaining minibot. The judges decision went in favour of Terrorhurtz, eliminating Nuts from the competition as it had scored no wins during the stage. However, by forcing the fight to go to a judges' decision, Terrorhurtz was also eliminated from the competition, as it failed to score enough points as a result.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 1
 * Losses: 3

Series Record

 * Series 1-7: Did not enter
 * 2016 Series: Round 2, 4th Place

Robot Wars Live Events
Nuts made its combat debut prior to the TV series at Robot Wars live events, competing at various Robot Wars Live Tour events, albeit with few victories.

Despite this, Nuts performed reasonably well at the Robot Wars World Championships in 2015. Nuts fought Iron-Awe 7, Meggamouse and Weird mAlice in the first round, where it qualified after Weird mAlice was thrown out of the arena by Iron-Awe, and Meggamouse drove into the pit. In the second round, Nuts was drawn against Thunderchild and Apex. Thunderchild’s flipper was not working, so was rendered immobile after being turned over by the floor flipper, leaving Nuts to fight Apex alone. Nuts won the resulting Judges’ decision due to its aggression and damage caused in the battle. Nuts was eliminated in the quarter-finals, after being immobilised by repeated axe blows from Thor destroying the removable link.

Outside Robot Wars
Before the team members formed Team Nuts for the 2016 Series of Robot Wars, team members Rory Mangles, Dave Lawrie, Chris Shakespeare & Alex Shakespeare had their own teams and fought with their own robots in the live events during Robot Wars 12-year hiatus.

While Rory Mangles was the original builder of Nuts, he has also built various other robots like Richie, a black featherweight robot armed with an electric lifter with two-front mounted spears and he has also built various ant weight robots

Dave Lawrie fought with his own team under the name Team Die Gracefully Robotics (also shortened to Team DGR) and has been fighting since 2007. Many of his heavyweights he had built for the live events were designed to look like classic "underdogs" to fight the big names at events like Iron-Awe 5 which made fights look interesting as most of the robots during the events all had flippers only. In 2007, his first robot he built was Monolith which was a green wooden wedge-shaped robot, and he also helped build Cabrakan, a two-wheeled robot armed with a stabbing chisel which was also built as a joint-team project between Team DGR, Team Godzilla & Team Hell for the 2009 UK Championships. In 2010, Lawrie built Anger for the UK Championships which was armed with a front wedge and for the 2011 UK Championships held at the O2 in London, he built Wilhelm's Scream which was box-shaped on 2 x green wheels. During the events Dave Lawrie has also fought with various featherweights called Hoodrat, Canary Wharfare, Goon, Japanese Fighting Tortoise & TW3-RX5. Dave Lawrie frequently fought in the antweight class with a large amount of antweights, often a completely new team every event, though has since retired form the class.

Chris Shakespeare has fought under the team names of Team JACKLS and Team Shakesc in both the featherweight and antweight classes. Chris was the builder of the featherweights Spur, Spur 2 (Both were 4WD rambots), Olaf (A 2WD rambot originally with a lifter) and an unnamed electric axe robot. He has fought in several Antweight World Series events with notable ants including Flint, Fantric and Formic along with several others.