User blog:Jimlaad43/Ranking every Out of the Arena in Robot Wars

Throwing an opponent Out of the Arena (OotA) is one of the most iconic ways of defeating an opponent in Robot Wars history, and is almost a rite of passage for strong robots. There is a lot of kudos associated with being a robot that has thrown a robot out. However, with so many spectacular moments, it's obvious that some will be better than others. With 105 televised in total, this is going to be a long list, so let's cut the chat and get on with it. Oh yeah, the House Robots also count in this one.

The ranking will be determined by a scoring system, as was my last ranking, but I may keep the actual scores confidential this time (unless there's enough demand to see them).

What I will be scoring them by:
 * Killshot or Coup de Gras? - A simple Yes or No answer. Did it immobilise a working robot, or was it a final BM on a defeated robot? Killshot scores points, Coup de Gras doesn't.
 * Start of attack distance - How far away from the point where it went over the wall did attack that caused the OotA begin?
 * Height - How high did the robot go over the wall? Did it fly well over the top, graze over it on its way, or did it only just topple over?
 * Inevitability - Was the OotA something that had been laboured and attempted loads of times before it happened, or was it out of nowhere, and did that matter?
 * Against the grain? - Did the robot that scored the OotA look like the one that would have? Were they winning the battle, or was it a turnaround in fortunes and did that matter?
 * Shock result? - Did the OotA end up giving the result expected before the battle or not? Was the OotA a massive coup for the robot that scored it?
 * Style - How good did it look?
 * Control - Was it a well planned OotA that really highlighted what the robot could do, and did it go out how the roboteers would have wanted it to?
 * Jim's modifier - This is the reason I am hesitant about sharing the scores. This ranking of the scores is great for the "run of the mill" OotA's I don't have a massive reaction to, but it may throw some I really enjoy too far down the list, or overrate some I don't care about. At the end of the day, this is my opinions of the OotA's, so I do want to change some positions, as my favourite OotA might not score very well. Most moments will have a x1 modifier, but I hold the power to change this for any OotA where it suits.

105-93: Most of Sir Killalot's OotAs
Despite scoring the most OotAs of all robots, Sir Killalot's were pretty much all terrible. As much as it being a great way to deal with an embarrassed and defeated robot, the claw was mostly a slow and laboured way to do this. As these 13 are all pretty much the same, I've combined it into one block. Let's talk about them in order from 105.
 * vs Vortex Inducer: Coming in last was the Vortex Inducer faff. Vortex Inducer was one massive and ungainly robot that couldn't do anything, and nothing could be done to it. Sir Killalot chopped it into pieces and then proceeded to drag bits of it near a wall, and then took an absolute age to wiggle it over the wall and onto the floor. A disaster if anything.
 * vs Dragbot: Dragbot was a dead robot that Sir Killalot took too long to dispose of because he picked it up wrong. Sir Killalot has a good reach, but it managed to balance Dragbot on his claw and the arena wall. Dragbot balances precariously for what seems like an age, just extending the pain, before finally falling to the ground.
 * vs Rick: Penalised for being both a boring OotA, and an OotA on a perfectly working robot that was unfairly dumped out. Sir Killalot's removal of Rick was always going to be low. House Robots defeating active robots with OotA's will still feature later, and be done much more stylishly later.
 * vs Dynamite: A stock robot that was supposed to be trashed once it lost, Dynamite was always going to go out, but the distance Sir Killalot travelled across the arena made it pretty obvious we were going for an OotA by a camera. Killalot turns up with the claw too low, so Dynamite is dragged over the wall, shedding more bits, and eventually falling down.
 * vs Soldier Ant: Scored by the reboot Killalot, this was back to basics for Killalot. What I mean by that was it was a defeated robot being inexpertly picked up, lifted over a wall and then dangling for too long before eventually clattering onto the floor.
 * vs Stinger: Another robot that was winning a battle being dumped out, at least the Stinger vs Killalot rivalry was fun and the drop was just after Cease...
 * vs Paul Bunyan: Once again, a robot gets caught in the claws and on the wall.At least Killalot picking it up by the wheels scored something for style.
 * vs Saw Point: By now, Sir Killalot is starting to drop them out properly without much effort. Still doesn't make it that interesting.
 * vs Ruf Ruf Dougal: Dumping a joke bot out of the arena is actually a fitting end, and Ruf Ruf was hilarious enough and precarious enough that it was the right thing for it. The satisfying grab of the underbelly was followed by a competent dumping. Still not good, but better than nothing...
 * vs Joker: Interestingly, this was a "caught on the claw" OotA that actually looked cool. Rather than requiring a shake or another whack to displace Joker, Killalot just opened to claw and Joker slowly slid off satisfyingly, gathering speed as it descended down the curved cutting surface. That sentence was much more dramatic than the OotA was, but that is literally all it takes to defeat quite a few of these other Killalot OotAs.
 * vs Nightstalker: This scores "highly" because it's a clip of Sir Killalot dealing with a large robot effectively. Killalot drives across the arena to the wall, dangles Nightstalker over and drops it over in one downward chop. Again, I've been overly dramatic with the words, but what else can I do?
 * vs Bamm Bamm: Bamm Bamm is picked up, lifted cleanly over the wall and dropped well clear. This OotA is exactly what Sir Killalot was supposed to do on all of the other 11 OotAs talked about until now, but failed to do so.
 * vs Napalm: This was the Bamm Bamm OotA, but on a bigger robot that was held higher in the air, and made more of a satisfying splat on the floor when it landed.

Really, Sir Killalot was a bit of a one-trick pony when it came to OotAs. Pick up a defeated robot with the claw and drop them out with varying degrees of (in)competence. The next few you're going to see on this list initially finished somewhere within this list of Killalot OotA's, but I decided to use the Modifier to bring them out because they do have something interesting to talk about. The less said about 13/15 of Killalot's OotAs the better though. This really proves that Quality>Quantity, as more robots will show in the future.

92: Eruption vs Cherub (Head to Head)
We head straight to the reboot for the first time to award it the worst true OotA performed in Robot Wars by a competitor. It seems odd to place a stylish OotA like this as last, but it suffers so badly for the rest of the battle.

In essence, we have a powerful flipper up against a small, light and most importantly - immobile - robot from the off. Cherub literally didn't move for the entire fight, it was only able to handstand after taking massive damage from its previous fight where PP3D got up tae speed. Eruption spent the fight trying and failing to flip Cherub out of the arena. A quick flip out is usually fine if it's by the robot you'd expect to win with an OotA, but you can't excuse Eruption - which already had two fantastic OotAs to its name - for taking forever to deal with a sitting duck.

This kind of battle and OotA is what the Inevitability category was put in for. Eruption throwing Cherub out was obvious from the off, and Eruption basically failed to finish the job off early enough for it to start taking points away from this. A missed flip from a prime location near the end cemented this as the worst OotA overall by a competitor. A good final flip ruined by the context it is viewed from. Talking of context ruining something, if Eruption took forever to flip an inactive Cherub out, I wonder how much it would struggle against a working Cherub..................

91: Firestorm 5 vs Ripper
The next entry is sadly a poor OotA despite being the 100% correct thing to do in the situation. The best battle in Series 7 earlier in the series had thrown up a very similar situation, where Tsunami propped X-Terminator up on the arena wall immobilised. Tsunami went to flip X-Terminator out, but failed and instead put X-Terminator back onto its wheels where it staged a remarkable and thorough comeback. In this battle however, Firestorm left Ripper trapped on the wall.

As I stated, this was a brilliant bit of driving to flip and prop the impressive Ripper up on the arena wall and angle grinder. Firestorm 5 truly showed why it was a feared robot and triple Grand Finalist, as it got Ripper stuck, but crucially backed off. Ripper were trapped on the angle grinder and going nowhere. Firestorm retreats to allow Refbot to come in and count Ripper out. As Refbot presented the Red Card, Firestorm swooped in to push Ripper effortlessly over the wall, in no fear of it going wrong. If they had botched it and Ripper had somehow been righted, it wouldn't have mattered because it was eliminated by this point.

The OotA itself was therefore an unremarkable overbalancing of an already precarious and dead robot. Nothing special, especially as all the work had been done before.

90: Cyclone vs Hyperactive
The first few entries are definitely along the same theme - took too long to score an unremarkable OotA. Here we actually have a spinner scoring an OotA in Cyclone, doubling its tally by spinning a similarly weaponed robot over the wall.

Hyperactive was a big robot, meaning it isn't too hard to prop up and plop out. Or at least with a flipper it isn't. Sending someone out with a spinner is a mighty impressive acheivement, seeing as only 5 robots ever did it, but that's where the credit ends. Because you require a lucky hit with a spinner to lift it up, Cyclone spends too long trying to get it out, wasting hits until it is propped in a "you can't fail now" position, eventually crawling over the wall. This just scored minimum points for distance and height as you would struggle to get any lower over. A dead robot being toyed with doesn't score well or look good compared to others. It wasn't even the shock of an OotA in the US series or with a spinner, seeing as Cyclone had chucked another robot out in the previous battle. Good achievement, poor OotA.

89: Thermidor 2 vs Napalm
Napalm and Napalm 2 seemed to have one job in Extreme 1/Series 5 - be fodder for other robots to bully and smash up. However, they were very good at somehow winning battles they were supposed to lose. Napalm and Napalm 2 ended both series' with 3 wins and 3 losses. Napalm got itself dumped out of the arena in both its battles in Extreme, with the second one being at the mercy of Thermidor 2.

This "vengeance" seemed to be contstrued for no real reason, as I'm sure the Thermidor 2 team didn't say the sexist comments with any kind of seriousness, they just wanted a reason to throw Napalm out of the arena - or Napalm wanted a reason for Thermidor to thrown them out of the arena. I really have no clue what the point of the battle was apart from filler, but it ended up with a ridiculously obvious result.

Thermidor 2 was vastly superior to this Semi-Finalist from Series 2 and killed it within the first few flips. Thermidor gets it to the edge of the arena and leaves it, just as Firestorm did to Ripper a few series' in the future, to be counted out by Refbot. As the counter hits 10, Thermidor flips it up, retreats and has another go, lifting Napalm over and out. The only reasons this places higher than the Firestorm/Ripper OotA is because Napalm was lifted higher, and I can forgive the failed first flip because Napalm's awkward shape is tough to flip well with Thermidor's tiny flipper, but it can't go any higher than 89th.

88: Matilda vs King B Remix
The first RebOotA was a bit of a dud to be honest, showcasing a bad bit of arena design and ruining a record-breaker from extending its lead.

Dantomkia vs King B Remix was a solid battle as a Dantomkia fan, with the OotA record holder eventually getting a great drive towards a gap in the walls to flip King B Remix up and over. However, King B Remix didn't fly over the wall it hit by the pit release - oh no! Instead what we get is King B parking itself in a little recess, completely pinned in place. Could King B escape? No. Fine, so Dantomkia can surely go in and flip it out? Well no, because the design of Dantomkia prevents it...

The front forks protrude too far to get the flipper underneath King B remix where it is parked, and the poking out sections of the wall stop it being able to come in at a different angle to push it off the wall onto the flipper. As such, Matilda is forced to come in and finish the Coup de Gras in the defeated King B Remix. It's a disaster really because Dantomkia's attack to pin King B there was a brilliant bit of driving and deserved an OotA. It would have been Dantomkia's 10th official OotA, extending its lead at the top. However, it showed a weakness in the arena design and prevented the OotA king getting the first of the Reboot.

Matilda's flip was standard, but King B flew quite high, so that was nice. It was a momentous OotA for the House Robot, as this was the first time a robot scored an OotA with a different weapon to ones it had used before. Up until this point, all of Matilda's had come courtesy of the flywheel, but this was the first for the tusks.

87: Apollo vs Coyote
Two rebOotAs in a row here as the Series 8 champion partakes in another killshot on an already dead robot. Coyote were severely hobbled at this point in the Head-to-Heads, only able to move on one wheel. This pretty much mirrors the previously mentioned Eruption vs Cherub OotA in that Apollo took too many flips to deal with a sitting duck, eventually scoring an uneventful poke over the wall. No height, no distance, just an OotA. The only thing that places it higher than the others is the fact that it was the only OotA Apollo did on Coyote and we don't have proof it could do better...

86: Dantomkia vs Scorpion
Reading between the lines, you may be starting to see a theme with these early OotAs - inevitability can ruin an OotA if the battle is just a load of failed attempts to chuck a robot out. This battle is one of the worst for it.

What is a breath of fresh air here is that Scorpion was working fine and Dantomkia was absolutely the better robot, completely dominating Scorpion for most of the battle. Scorpion really should have been out of the arena twice earlier in the fight, and both of those would have scored highly, but it took Shunt to basically hold Scorpion propped up on a wall for Dantomkia to finally achieve the flip. Dantomkia deserved to get Scorpion out, it had done all the work and should have succeeded earlier, but by the time Scorpion was chucked out, it was more a case of "finally" rather than "wahey!". The OotA itself was eventually unremarkable too, as a trapped and side-stranded Scorpion was dropped just over the wall without too much height gained. Poor.

85: Mr. Psycho vs Hassocks Hog 2
Mr. Psycho has one OotA to his name, and it is a lot better than anything Sir Killalot did given similar circumstances. That said, it's pretty much exactly the same as all of the mentioned Sir Killalot OotAs, but with a bit more height involved and no struggle to get it over the wall.

Hassocks Hog 2 has been defeated at this point and was counted out. Mr. Psycho was employed as the bearer of bad news to dump the flipper out of the arena. Mr/ Psycho showed in this one moment why it should have scored most of the OotA's Sir Killalot did because the claw could actually lift a robot high enough that it would easily clear the wall. It gets points to keep it above the Killalot fails, but no more - it's still an unremarkable drop of a dead robot.