User blog comment:RA2/Robot Wars Extreme Warriors 1 Rankdown/@comment-4700688-20181115114312

Manta, The Brute, The Revolutionist

10. The Brute. Performed really well in its melee, but its opposition was poor, and the robot itself was vulnerable from every angle, consisting of four weak wheels with no protection or weaponry anywhere. Lightweight too.

9. Manta. Without the battery issues, this would be in the top three or four, but Manta drained its life in the six-way melee, the Panzer fight and the Drillzilla fight. That's too common of a recurrence for me to trust.

8. The Revolutionist. And to close out the actual "heat winners", The Reverend is here too! Like Manta, this is a robot that could be fantastic or poor, dependent on its recurring issue - one which flagged up in four out of five fights. Edges out Manta due to its solid performance without the weapon in its melee, and a greater peak in its Brute win.

7. Conquering Clown. I appreciate this is a controversial pick, but allow me to explain. There was a significant difference between Clown 1 and Clown 2, and that was the addition of the spinner on Clown 2, with the latter also having wheelguards. But to that I say, how much did these things help it? The spinner broke down on most occasions, and the wheelguards failed in their duty - both Clowns were primarily wedgebots, and they did a good job of that. Clown held up to Drillzilla remarkably, and I would still trust this version of the machine to beat every robot that Clown 2 beat.

6. Tut Tut. Really solid all-rounder, jack of all trades but master of none.

5. General Chompsalot. Like CrashBash, I have no idea why this robot was so good, and it was the successor's powered weapon which allowed it to beat robots like Manta and Rocky-Bot-Boa (kinda) so comfortably, but somehow it made its weapon work, and ranks at fifth simply because its weaknesses (exposed wheels and inactive weaponry) were less fatal than those I've ranked below it.

4. Tricerabot. I honestly didn't think I'd rate this so high, as the cardboard lid was an intentional weakness. Of course, with Razer, Tornado, Firestorm III and Chaos 2 included, you could argue that it's far from the real Top 5 of the series! Every robot between 10-4 had a weakness, but Tricerabot's was an intentional one which the Judges may well have ignored, so I'll give it a pass.

3. Pussycat. I don't just judge the robot based on its combat performance within that series, but also on its performances in fights filmed in the same time period for other series. This same Pussycat is the Pussycat which won the Annihilator in Extreme among other accolades, and built upon the current UK runner-up. It's also completely undefeated in America. No reason to shy this from the top three just based on a lack of US fights (even Panzer Mk2 only has a 3-1 record!), we know how good Pussycat is.

2. Drillzilla. Just a few weeks ago, this would be my certain No. 1, and yet when we hosted Drillzilla vs Panzer Mk 2 in Audited Extreme Warriors 1, it was Panzer Mk 2 that won the fight. These two robots were the best in the season, even above Pussycat, but in a head-to-head-fight...

1. Panzer Mk 2 ...I would back the actual series champion. The two were completely comparable for push, maybe Panzer was even a bit better, as it's less suspect to wedges. Drillzilla had better defence, but Panzer Mk 2 also had a weapon. Panzer's only weakness was a lack of a working srimech, and that also affects Drillzilla, you're just less likely to flip that over. It's a really close call, but I do think Panzer Mk 2 would win the fight (and the wiki voters agreed), so that's the main criteria.