St. Agro

"Named after the patron saint of roboteers"

- Jonathan Pearce

St. Agro was an invertible wedge-shaped robot that competed in Series 6 and 7 of Robot Wars. It was driven by a pair of 800W motors with custom-made gearboxes, and had a top speed of 12 mph, but the team were worried about their exposed wheels. The batteries and chassis were salvaged from a Merlin helicopter. The team described the robot as a "double-sided double flipper," as it was armed with a flipper on each side, and could flip robots just as powerfully whichever way up it was. St. Agro was eliminated in the first round of Series 6 but was improved in Series 7, reaching the series semi-finals before eventually being knocked out by future grand finalists X-Terminator.

The team previously failed to qualify for Series 4 with Tor, a robot armed with a lifter and covered in plastic wildlife. Tor was going to be rebuilt for Series 6 armed with jaws but it either failed to qualify or never got rebuilt. The team that entered St. Agro also failed to qualify for Series 5 with Pendragon.

Series 6
In the first round of the heats in its first appearance, St. Agro was the only newcomer in this battle as it went up against S.M.I.D.S.Y., Warhog and Comengetorix. St. Agro began by attacking Warhog as it nudged it slowly towards the arena wall, St. Agro wedged underneath Warhog, but couldn't fire its flippers in time before Warhog got away. Its flippers had then become stuck open, so it stayed out of the way of the other three robots as it then hit the pit release. Unfortunately, its lack of a working weapon left it completely defenceless, when S.M.I.D.S.Y came up behind it and pushed it down the pit, eliminating it from the competition. After a fairly heated battle, St. Agro was eventually followed by Warhog as S.M.I.D.S.Y. gave it a piggy back to the pit.

Series 7
"It's a double-sided-double-flipper"

- The weaponry explained In contrast to its appearance in the Sixth Wars, St. Agro proved itself a powerful machine in its opening match of the heats where it was placed up against Robot Wars veterans Mega Hurts LT, newcomers The Scrapper and New-Blood competitors Revolution 3. In the battle, the Cornish machine began by constantly flipping Mega Hurts around the arena, with the Laptop constantly recovering well. St. Agro then eyed up the limping Scrapper machine and brought it over to the arena side wall, then flipping the newcomers clean out of the arena. St. Agro then turned its attention back to Mega Hurts LT, trying to do the same to them. St. Agro couldn't flip Mega Hurts LT out, so it merely flipped it over instead, with Mega Hurts LT unable to self-right the wheels of the laptop machine were still running slightly, but the Refbot counted it out, and Growler eventually put it down the pit. Despite being immobilised at the end, Revolution 3 went through to the next round, along with St. Agro to the next round, despite St. Agro's flipper being locked wide open by the end of the battle. "Look out for St. Agro"

- Jonathan Pearce, prior to the second round

In the second round of the heat, St. Agro was placed up against one of the many Dutch entrants Scraptosaur. St. Agro was flipped many times by Scraptosaur, but since it was invertible, and the Dutch robot's flipper couldn't flip it very far, it was unaffected. St. Agro eventually managed to get under Scraptosaur and flip it over. Scraptosaur couldn't self-right, so it was counted out, and St. Agro went through to the heat final. In the heat final, it faced newcomers Ceros. St. Agro flipped Ceros, but Ceros self-righted. It then pressed the pit release button, and came extremely close to shoving Ceros into the pit, but Ceros refused to let it. By accident, St. Agro steered into a CPZ, where Matilda took a big chunk out of its exposed wheel. It then flipped Ceros again, crucially, Matilda wandered from her CPZ and accidentally got in Ceros's way at just the moment it came down. This meant Ceros ran out of gas and couldn't self-right. St. Agro did a victory wheelie, while Matilda tossed the defeated Ceros out of the arena with her flywheel, this put St. Agro through to the Semi-Finals.

St. Agro was placed in the first of the two Series Semi-Finals. St. Agro was placed up against the number 11 seeds X-Terminator in the first round. In this battle, St. Agro tried to get under X-Terminator, but X-Terminator buckled one of its flippers with its flywheel. X-Terminator then smashed the wheel of St. Agro in a similar fashion to Matilda in its Heat Final. St. Agro went for the pit release button, only to have X-Terminator get underneath it and grind away at its underside. St. Agro was now immobile, and after it had been counted out, X-Terminator pushed it into Matilda's CPZ, where the house robot tore up St. Agro's armour and wheel. After being thrown by the floor flipper, St. Agro was finally put out of its misery by X-Terminator, who pushed St. Agro into the pit of oblivion. St. Agro was subsequently eliminated from the competition.

Results

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Wins/Losses

 * Wins: 3
 * Losses: 2

Series Record

 * Series 1-3:Did not enter
 * Series 4: Failed to qualify with Tor
 * Series 5: Failed to qualify with Pendragon
 * Series 6: Heat, Round 1
 * Series 7: Semi-Finals, Round 1

Robot Wars Live Events
St. Agro, under its new name of Maelstrom, competed in the first live event of the new Robot Wars at Barnsley in February 2013, winning on a judges decision. Maelstrom also reached the finals at Portsmouth and Widnes in 2013. It also won the Robot Wars live event at Colchester 2013.

As of 2014, there was little of the original St. Agro chassis left. Maelstrom was retired but Maelstrom 2 is currently being built. It will have the same design but it will have a new chassis.

Outside Robot Wars
St. Agro was taken out of competition after Robot Wars, only to be sold to Team Shock, who have since rebuilt the robot and renamed it Maelstrom. This is not related to the currently inactive robot owned by Team S-tec that used to have the same name. Team Shock helped it reach the final of the Roaming Robots 2009 UK Championship, only to lose to Terrorhurtz, and the Robots Live! UK Championships where it lost to Big Nipper.

Trivia

 * The team always wore floral Hawaiian shirts when entering Robot Wars, to much despair from Jonathan Pearce.
 * St. Agro's name was a pun on the team's home town, St Agnes.
 * St. Agro was the only Cornish robot on the televised show not to come from the Bodmin Community College.