User:ToastUltimatum/BattleBots Season 2 Audited

Season 2 of the rebooted BattleBots is insanely good. Wonderful battles, great commentary, great robots, lots of content both in the show and on YouTube, it's a real contender to this year's Robot Wars, and I've thoroughly enjoyed keeping up with it. However, it obviously has problems. I'm running this Audited series to try and re-run the same series, including the same Round 1 matchups, but with those problems fixed.

=The Changes=

Problems

 * The wildcard choices. They weren't all a problem, robots like Lucky and Mega Tento deserved a second run, but some robots didn't earn their wildcards, especially compared to robots who were robbed like Disk O'Inferno.
 * The seedings. The reigning champion Bite Force was seeded only 4th? Below Witch Doctor? 17, 18 and 19 were all wildcards? Escape Velocity was considered worse than Chrome Fly?
 * The scoring criteria. Robots lose aggression points for slamming their opponents around the BattleBox, if they don't use their primary weapon? The lack of an active weapon means that, almost by default, you lose? People say Mentorn were blatantly against Storm II, at least Robot Wars tried to hide it.
 * The Judges' decisions. This comes as a result of the above problem, but considering how many of the poor calls were split decisions, it's clear that the criteria didn't count for 100% of the bad decisions made. There were some stinkers this year. These are the battles I've disagreed with that aren't covered in this audited series:
 * Stinger vs Mega Tento - This battle was entertaining, and I was fairly pleased for Mega Tento when it won, but that doesn't mean I agree with it. Aside from the removal of Stinger's wheel, Tento's damage was quite minimal, and they clearly lost on aggression. Surely the dual flamethrowers and constant bending of the sandpit caused damage to Tento in return? Stinger's constant pushes give it to them for me.
 * Lock-Jaw vs Brutus - The worst decision in the entirety of robotic combat as far as I'm concerned. The design of Lock-Jaw's wedge was genius, and Brutus did nothing. The Judges couldn't even use their usual "loss of the primary weapon" BS, because Brutus lost their spinning disc at the end, while Lock-Jaw clearly used it. This was not a Judges' decision, this was an attempt to eliminate the 'boring box' - which they shouldn't have given a wildcard in the first place if they were going to eliminate it after a dominating win!!

Scoring Criteria
Naturally I'm returning to the scoring criteria used in the previous season, which is identical to the scoring system of 2016 Robot Wars. No bollocks about loss of the primary weapon or loss of aggression for a win via pushing, fair decisions will be made here.

The Judges' Decisions

 * Within Round 1, these two Judges' decisions were awarded to the wrong robots:
 * Disk O'Inferno vs Chomp - Although this appeared close on my first time watching, a rewatch made it clear to me that Chomp actually missed with its axe on nearly every occasion, and they only really landed a blow when Disk'O got trapped in the arena floor, which only left a small dent. Inferno was in control throughout, using its srimech in an extremely clever way to constantly topple Chomp, I don't give a damn if the flywheel stopped, they were better off without it.
 * SawBlaze vs Razorback - Yet somehow they managed to have a Round 1 matchup that was an even worse decision. If you haven't seen the fight, SawBlaze spent the entire 3 minutes pushing Razorback around, and pinning it against the wall. There was a clear winner, and Razorback only won because an accidental attack on SawBlaze's weapon disabled it. It's impossible to watch this fight and say with a straight face that Razorback deserved this.

I've reversed the decisions of these battles, and now Disk O'Inferno and SawBlaze are considered battle winners. I had a think about changing the outcome of Bucktooth Burl vs Chrome Fly, but having finally seen the full match, I just about decided to stick with it.

Wildcards
My eight wildcards have been awarded to the robots I feel are the most deserving.
 * Chomp - Although I believe Chomp should have lost to Disk O'Inferno, it absolutely deserved a wildcard for its performance.
 * Lock-Jaw - The absolute most correct decision made by the Wildcard Selection Committee, there'd be outrage if Lock-Jaw didn't get through. Turned out there'd be outrage anyway, dammit Brutus
 * Lucky - Did extremely well against Beta, the second-best candidate for a wildcard that was actually chosen.
 * Mega Tento - As we know, Poison Arrow is a tough opponent, and Mega Tento had such a good match with it. Poison Arrow deserved to win, but Mega Tento goes through with it.
 * Nightmare - It was a mighty hit against Stinger, and Nightmare should've had a wildcard in Series 1 really.
 * Overhaul - This wildcard confused me at first, but when I learned that Overhaul was immobilised by something outside of the actual battle against Cobalt, this was fair.
 * Ghost Raptor - Hmm... yes I think that past success is allowed to count when they did as well as 3rd place. I'm more annoyed about this choice in the real series because it meant robots like DOI and SawBlaze missed out, but I had room here.
 * Blacksmith - Blacksmith only just crept into my eight, as I don't think results from The Gears Awaken should contribute, and I was tempted to give it to Photon Storm which held off Minotaur for a while, or to Razorback for 'nearly' beating SawBlaze, but ultimately Blacksmith did well against a tough foe and was unfortunate to land where it did after the KO flip. And who doesn't want the chance of Blacksmith fighting Minotaur?

So in the end the only swaps in the Round of 32 are SawBlaze instead of Razorback and Disk O'Inferno instead of Bombshell, but with the obvious wildcards included, there's less reason to call it controversial.

Seedings
This is a mixture of past experience and performance in Round 1, the main difference being that wildcards are locked into bottom-end seedings. They did lose, after all. There is one exception, of course, Chrome Fly did that badly.


 * 1) Bite Force
 * 2) Tombstone
 * 3) Bronco
 * 4) Stinger: The Killer Bee
 * 5) Icewave
 * 6) Witch Doctor
 * 7) Minotaur
 * 8) Son of Whyachi
 * 9) Hypershock
 * 10) Complete Control
 * 11) Captain Shrederator
 * 12) Cobalt
 * 13) Brutus
 * 14) Beta
 * 15) Yeti
 * 16) Disk O'Inferno
 * 17) Poison Arrow
 * 18) SawBlaze
 * 19) Warhead
 * 20) Escape Velocity
 * 21) Ringmaster
 * 22) Warrior Clan
 * 23) Red Devil
 * 24) Lock-Jaw
 * 25) Chomp
 * 26) Mega Tento
 * 27) Lucky
 * 28) Overhaul
 * 29) Chrome Fly
 * 30) Ghost Raptor
 * 31) Nightmare
 * 32) Blacksmith