User blog:Toon Ganondorf/Top 10 Least Impressive Battles in Robot Wars

Welcome to Top 10.

I'm going to start doing weekly Top 10 lists on Robot Wars content. Knowing me, I'll probably do three this fortnight and lose interest forever, but let's call it weekly because right now I'm full of ideas.

There's a hell of a lot of good battles out there in Robot Wars, but some of them just don't reach their full potential. Whether because of breakdowns or bad luck or lack of finishing power, these battles immediately go on the bottom of my rewatch list.

Honourable Mentions

 * Terrorhurtz v Tornado - Extreme 2, Challenge Belt, Challenge - After all that build up, the battle was over in about twenty seconds.
 * Firestorm 4 v Razer - Extreme 2, All-Stars, Final - Pretty much every one of Extreme 2's All-Stars Tournament battles were boring, but this one takes the cake for having Firestorm's performance against Razer drop down to pathetic levels. Of all of the trophies Razer won, this was probably one of the most anti-climactic.
 * Hypno-Disc v Nasty Warrior - Extreme 1, UK v Germany - Don't overthink ways to make Hypno-Disc destructive. It manages it just fine without your help. Wood is exactly the sort of thing that gets jammed.
 * Disc-O-Inferno v Bigger Brother - The Sixth Wars, Heat L - Disc-O does zero and then runs away down the Pit-O.....Oblivion.
 * Evil Weevil v Panzer - The Third Wars, Heat L - Panzer doesn't even get started.

10. Hypno-Disc v Barber-Ous 2 v 4x4 v Granny's Revenge 2 - The Sixth Wars, Heat K
Hypno-Disc had three seasons of Grand Final performances and crushed roboteer dreams, and according to the team the Series 6 version was deadlier than all who'd come before. Perhaps in anticipation, the producers had crammed Team Monad, a plastic barber's pole and a manikin in a second hand wheelchair into its first round battle.

How is it then that the plastic barber's pole becomes the MVP of the whole battle? Hypno-Disc is MIA while Barber-Ous 2 knocks Granny's Revenge almost out of the arena and KO's 4x4 with a few choice hits. Hypno-Disc seems to realise its not getting the lion's share of the limelight, and comes in at the end to KO the already victorious Barber-Ous 2. The battle is low on the list because Barber-Ous 2 manages to make it interesting, but whether Hypno-Disc was avoiding damage or playing up or being off screen for any other reason, it made for a lacklustre start to a very unimpressive Hypno-Disc performance.

9. Dominator 2 v Tornado - The Sixth Wars, Semi-Final 2
A battle over far too quickly and without much of a challenge, the battle is partly ruined by Tornado's insistence on using its dull front wedge and by Dominator 2's dreadful driving. Fights like this give Robot Wars a bad name.

8. Spawn Again v Spam - The Sixth Wars, Heat I
Many Robot Wars fans tremble at how close Spam actually came to being a Series Semi-Finalist in The Sixth Wars. Spawn Again and Supernova both had tremendous reliability issues, and Spam - which looked like a robot custom made on Extreme Destruction by an eleven year old - was actually making all the right moves during the fight with Spawn Again. Far cry for me to tell a robot they don't deserve to go through based on how they look, but then Spam drives itself down the pit!

7. The Grim Reaper v Gyrobot - The Seventh Wars, Heat B
The Grim Reaper was a competent robot in Series 7, but still took a ridiculous four out of four judges decisions to go with its prior judges' decision in Series 3. I could have picked any of the fights to criticise here - Big Brother being unable to finish off a robot without a wheel, Storm 2 being uncharacteristically incapable of finishing off, Kan-Opener and Barbaric Response's uninteresting tug of war - but I opted for Gyrobot, the spinner that never really spun to the deadly potency of Corkscrew or Typhoon. Make yourself a Gif of The Grim Reaper flipping Gyrobot once and that'll pretty much sum up the whole fight.

6. Mighty Mouse v Kronic the Wedgehog - The Seventh Wars, Heat J
Mighty Mouse's battle against Thermidor 2 is frequently hailed as "brave" and "tenacious", which has always confused me. Humour aside, a robot like that has no business in the heat final. Kronic, on the other hand, got my intention in Series 4 by skilfully immobilising Gravedigger, and even more so in later seasons when it became a bulky and more powerful looking wedge. Imagine my disappointment when it fell at the hands of Mighty bloomin' Mouse, simultaneously putting a waste of space into the heat final and depriving us of one of the tantalising grudge matches we get to see far too infrequently.

5. Razer v Bigger Brother - The Fifth Wars, Grand Final
The Series 5 Grand Final might be one of the most exciting episodes of Robot Wars. The fight between Bigger Brother and Hypno-Disc resoundingly won the Wiki's favourite battle - for good reason - the fight between Firestorm 3 and Razer does a lot for a lot of people, and even the playoff for third is the most exciting playoff we ever got.

Contrarily, Razer v Bigger Brother felt more like a formality to hand Razer the trophy than anything else. With every roboteer on hand helping Bigger Brother patch itself up, it was to hope against hope that Bigger Brother could take out a third giant in a row. But what really kicked the teeth in was that Razer couldn't even win its overdue UK Championship by knockout. Instead, Bigger Brother got pierced and then pushed around until time ran out. The experience of watching this battle so soon after the bout with Hypno-Disc was like seeing Rocky Balboa make a comeback against Clubber Lang but then get run over by a truck and linger in pain for several days. Because Razer never gave Bigger Brother a chance to respond, we couldn't even admire Bigger Brother for having a go. It soured an amazing comeback story (which don't need to end in a win for the person coming back, see Rocky 6) and tainted Razer's trophy by denying it a decisive victory, which it hadn't achieved since defeating Spawn Again three battles prior. It could have played over the end credits and been more interesting.

4. Bulldog Breed v Hard - The Seventh Wars, Heat K
Bulldog Breed had wowed everyone in Extreme 2 by nonchalantly flicking Pussycat out of the arena. The natural response by a producer is to ensure that they have a chance to repeat it, especially in a heat as weak as this one. The episode is filled with Mantis, Infernal Contraption, T-Wrecks, Velocirippa and Jabber - all robots well suited to being flipped out of the arena, given their physical similarities to past and future OotA victims Tetanus 2, Stinger, Corkscrew Two, Mighty Mouse and Chip respectively. But the take the cake robot was Hard, a little box wedge who pretty much anyone could have tossed out of the arena - except Bulldog Breed, it seemed. It got more than enough tries, and if you looked at the images you'd just assume it ultimately did go out, but instead we got an uninteresting interior damage KO at the hands of Mr. Psycho.

3. M.R. Speed Squared v Foxic - 2016 Series, Episode 2
Along with Team Death, Team Monad and T-Wrecks, Foxic joins the relatively short list of robots that I wish had never been allowed on TV. It was horrendously underweight, and its only interesting moment (out pushing Dead Metal) was sabotaged by Shockwave, who had the opportunity to help pit a House Robot but attacked Foxic instead. Foxic qualified for Round 2 because M.R. Speed Squared (the new robot from my old soft spot Revenge of Trouble & Strife) obliterated Chimera and Draven while Foxic was running away.

What makes this battle take the cake, though, is that M.R. Speed Squared showed absolutely none of the same destructive potential that made it stand out in Round 1. Instead M.R. Speed Squared had an inactive weapon and spent the whole battle running away from Foxic, who in turn couldn't do anything to anyone. The judges had to make a call and I don't envy them one bit. At

2. Firestorm 2 v Bolt from the Blue - The Fourth Wars, Heat C
If you have a robot with low offensive pressure and small ground clearance, they'd make for an interesting battle with Stinger or Mousetrap, but instead the producers chucked it up against Firestorm 2, one of the few semi-finalists who had no offensive capabilities to counter it. The resulting battle gave Firestorm 2 no chance to attack, whilst Bolt from the Blue's pitiful offense meant that they couldn't do anything either. I would argue that this might challenge Foxic and M.R. Speed Squared for worst decision the judges have ever had to make on a scale of evenness and boredom. I wonder why - Fire Storm was an easy to love robot that placed third, why would they throw such a difficult opponent at it and risk losing it so early on?

1. Napalm 2 v War Hog - The Fifth Wars, Heat E
I could easily have made this entire list full of battles with Dartford Girl's Grammar. It was obvious from Season 4 onwards that Robot Wars desperately wanted Napalm to be destroyed beyond repair. Shadow of Napalm was placed up against Disc-O-Inferno, a neat looking horizontal flywheel that ran invertible, neutralising Shadow of Napalm's only offensive weapon. However, the producers had no idea that Disc-O-Inferno was about as reliable as phone reception in a lead bunker, and Shadow of Napalm ultimately fell in a brutal but still somewhat wanting fight with Dominator 2.

In Extreme 1, the team dragged not one but two versions of Napalm into the arena, but none were destroyed with the gleeful abandon that we had anticipated. Napalm took damage at the hands of The Steel Avenger and Suicidal Tendencies, but this still left us wanting. It fell apart twice upon being thrown out of the arena, but we saw Napalm's flimsy construction and we saw blood. We wanted Hypno-Disc v Splinter Round 3 - a battle so bloody that it actually counted as Hypno-Disc v Splinter Round 2 and 3.

Napalm's shock qualifier for the annihilator must have been a cause of dismay for all producers who wanted Gemini in the thick of the action, but at least it gave a second attempt for Disc-O-Inferno's flywheel to rip it to shreds. Failing that The Steel Avenger's bladed axe/battering ram just smashed King B Powerworks' wheel clean off, so it should be more than capable of hurting Napalm's unique armour of rusty spider web. Little did they know, Napalm was barely functioning by this point and had to be pushed into the arena. And when the battle started, Napalm was pushed into the CPZ by the least destructive robots in the arena (Fighting Torque, Spirit of Knightmare and Panic Attack) and forgotten. It then withdrew quietly without a hint of blood or oil.

So now, Napalm's final chance to be destroyed comes in Series 5. Warhog is our last chance. It may not be reliable, but the ring spinner is deadly powerful and it buckled the stout Dreadnaut XP-1's forks the previous Series. It only has to hit Napalm once, maybe twice. Please Warhog, please.

Sadly, no. Warhog barely moves and doesn't get its spinner moving. Napalm limps around like Lieutenant Dan and attacks with the ferocity of one of those desk birds that drinks water. It basically confirms its status as the worst full body spinner in Robot Wars history, and Napalm gets to retire without obliteration.

As a closing thought, one has to wonder why they didn’t just put Napalm against Hypno-Disc. It was the most destructive spinner in history, and with a few exceptions, it was by far one of the more reliable. In Series 5, semi-finalists from Series 2-3 weren’t considered worthy of respect status and were stuck in first and second round bouts with experienced robots (Gravedigger against Tornado, King B Powerworks with Dominator 2). So why not swap Napalm out for Bulldog Breed? Or in Series 4, find an excuse to push Shadow of Napalm up to the 18th seed? Or put Napalm in the first annihilator instead of the second? In all three main series that both Hypno-Disc and Dartford Girls Grammar fought in, the earliest they could have met was in the first round of the Grand Final. When you’re looking for something, go to a place you know you’ll find it, and don’t put it off. What are your top 10 least impressive battles? Let me know in the comments.