Vertical crushers

Vertical crushers are one of the most prominent forms of gripping weapons. The pioneer of this type of weapon was double world champion Razer, and Tiberius 3 won the University Challenge with similar weaponry.

However, some of the more ignorant of the Robot Wars community insist that all vertical crushers are merely "clones" of the famous Razer. Many called the other vertical crushers "A poor-man's Razer". This belief has been fueled by Jonathan Pearce's unhelpful calls of a claw being "Razer-esque". However, most of the Robot Wars community have more respect for the effort put into vertical crushers.

Definition

 * A vertical crusher is meant to attack the top of a robot, usually with a spike or crushing claw. To maximize attacking potential, these were almost always hydraulically powered, often allowing the crushing arm to deliver several tonnes of pressure.

Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
 * They are effective at trapping opponents, and are even capable of lifting robots off the ground (without the need for dedicated lifting weapons), which Razer and Tiberius have managed on several occasions.
 * They can often immobilise a robot in a single attack, by piercing into the mechanics and damaging a vital motor.
 * It is easy to affix a srimech to the mechanism, demonstrated by Razer, Tiberius and Ming 3.

Disadvantages
 * The main weakness of vertical crushing weapons was that they often had slow, inefficient, or non-existant self-righting mechanisms. This is coupled with the fact that it is difficult to implement a vertical crushing arm on an invertible machine without leaving a high ground clearance after being flipped.
 * The weapon is necessarily slow, so required a skillful driver or secondary weapon in order to trap the opponent in place long enough to pierce the robot.
 * The weapon is often exposed to damage, usually from rotating weapons or overhead bladed axes.

List of Robots with Vertical Crushers
Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots that are not heavyweight are listed with a green background.