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 (20): 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?

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.