User blog:Hogwild94/On the Series 3 semi-final draw

OK, so last night I was watching Hypno-Disc's Series 3 heat for the first time in a while, and I noted the post credits sequence where JP ran us through the heat winners thus far, and implied that the line-up for the first semi-final was complete.

Of course, this later turned out not to be the case, as the actual semi-final draws were considerably more jumbled up, although not that much actually, just four straight swaps. It got me thinking though: would Series 3 have actually played out that much differently had the drawn been done 'properly'?

So, I decided, last night, to do an experiment, by swapping the robots around so the first eight heat winners were in the first semi, and the second eight in the second. The results... actually make a lot of sense in some ways:

Semi-Final 1
 * Hypno-Disc vs Pitbull - A straight swap with Firestorm, and now we know why Pitbull didn't return after Series 3!
 * Gravedigger vs Steg-O-Saw-Us - A straight swap with Panic Attack vs Thing 2, and the same battle as before.
 * Big Brother vs Mace 2 - No change here.
 * Chaos 2 vs Blade - Another straight swap results in an even quicker battle than in the actual series.


 * Hypno-Disc vs Steg-O-Saw-Us - Same battle, one round sooner.
 * Mace 2 vs Chaos 2 - Same battle, same round.

Semi-Final 2
 * 101 vs Scutter's Revenge - No change here.
 * Panic Attack vs Thing 2 - Or here, apart from the episode.
 * Beast of Bodmin vs Trident - Doubt Beast of Bodmin will find Trident as easy to topple as Blade, but it should still win this.
 * Evil Weevil vs Firestorm - OK, slightly closer call this one, but I don't think Evil Weevil can flip Firestorm, while vice versa has at least a chance.


 * Panic Attack vs Beast of Bodmin - And whichever way round the semi-final draw is...
 * Firestorm vs 101 - ...the same two robots will make the grand final.

Grand Final
 * Chaos 2 vs Firestorm - And whichever way round the draw is here...
 * Hypno-Disc vs Panic Attack - ...we'll still get the same final battle.


 * Chaos 2 vs Hypno-Disc - So, on the face of it, very little has changed.

Well, on the back of these results, the Series 4 seedings make a great deal more sense than they did in real life.


 * 1) Chaos 2. Reigning champion.
 * 2) Hypno-Disc. Runner-up.
 * 3) Razer. World champion.
 * 4) Panic Attack. Joint third, former champion.
 * 5) Firestorm 2. Joint third.
 * 6) Behemoth. World runner-up.
 * 7) Steg 2. Semi-final semi-finalist.
 * 8) Gemini. Semi-final semi-finalist.
 * 9) 101. Semi-final semi-finalist.
 * 10) Spawn of Scutter. Semi-final quarter-finalist.
 * 11) Wild Thing. Semi-final quarter-finalist.
 * 12) Evil Weevil. Semi-final quarter-finalist.
 * 13) Gravedigger. Semi-final quarter-finalist.
 * 14) Bigger Brother. Semi-final quarter-finalist.

So, the only thing that really comes about from this slight change is that the Series 4 seedings make a lot of sense. Not much changed as a result of this, but I think I'm right in saying the changed fights wouldn't have been as satisfying as the ones we actually got, so it was probably for the best.