User blog:Toon Ganondorf/Rock-Paper-Scissors

Ever since I wrote the weapons pages and the associated advantages and disadvantages, I've always felt strongly that certain weapons have advantages over others. I've been challenged on this in the Arena tournaments recently, so I am going to put my logic in writing for ease of access.

Please note that in none of these match ups are black and white. There are obviously exceptions, before certain users need to point that out. Been said? Excellent.

Paper (Horizontal spinners) beats Rock (Front-hinged flippers)
I didn't start with this one, but it's the one I think is the strongest. Front-hinged flippers are supremely reliable at tackling axes, rear-hinged flippers and most boxy robots, but have struggled nearly universally against heavy vertical spinners. This definition may cheat because I've expanded it to include the bar spinners as well as the flywheels.

The first one of these that jumps to mind is Hypno-Disc's obliteration of V-Max, the poor substitute robot who probably wished they didn't come at all. Now I'm firmly of the opinion that V-Max could dance rings around Raizer Blade, but of the two to land the single almost flip on the spinning legend, it was Raizer Blade who managed it. Before one chalks it up to quality of robot, look one year later when Hypno-Disc KOs the equally famous Firestorm 3 in one hit. Might point out now that Firestorm had never been flat knocked out before then (and to my recollection, it is the only time it happened). Why is it that Firestorm 3 had no answer to a robot who had been absolutely controlled by Behemoth and had the Series 3 title snatched away by Chaos 2?

The reason is that deadly robots like Hypno-Disc need to be put on the defensive, and that can only happen with quick, successive attacks. Front-hinged flippers are designed to stick their opponents in impossible to recover positions, not cause the gravity-induced knock out blow of their rear-hinged partners. Because front-hinged flippers need to be entirely under their opponent to have even a slight hope of success, they maximise the time opponents have to deal powerful blows. They are the most passive weapon one can choose for a robot, with Mute being the only robot able to actually throw opponents explosively.

Stepping aside from Hypno-Disc, look at some other wielders. Disc-O-Inferno shredded Spirit of Knightmare, whose mangled flipper basically only served as a shield against worst damage for all the good it did. But when faced with Bigger Brother, it was controlled. Weld-Dor 2 wasn't able to overturn Little Fly before it was KO'd. Flepser had absolutely no answer to Twisted Metal. Arena Cleaner tore Interstellar: MML a new one (I know it beat The Cat later, but I have a - wholly unsubstantiated - theory that each celebrity was allowed to win once). Heck even Toe-Cutter got easy blows against Purple Predator, because the unwieldy robot had an enormous job ahead of it to even land a successful attack.