User blog comment:RA2/Robot Wars Rankdown: Extreme 1 & Series 5/@comment-1770349-20180719214947

11. Disc-O-Inferno. I honestly thought someone would’ve done away with Disc-O before now. I didn’t as, despite hardly being tested in the Annihilator, it was at least reasonably reliable, for once, and only broke down once thanks to Matilda. Deserves a high finish for its victory nonetheless, but top ten? Not quite IMO.

10. Wild Thing. That disc was supposed to increase its offensive potential, but in reality, all it did was rob it of what made it such a dogged robot in Series 4: the excellent front scooping wedge. Loses points for that, and for choking when it had the chance to get Chaos 2 in the pit.

9. Dominator 2. After its impressive rise to fame last series, things were just a bit… bland this time around. We didn’t really see anything new from it across either series, more or less the same as before, only not as spectacular as we knew what to expect. Shame, but at least it was consistent.

8. S3. Defeated five good, seasoned veterans en route to a semi-final defeat to the eventual champions; just about sums up a successful first campaign.

7. Pussycat. Loses points for that performance against Fluffy, and for losing to an ailing Firestorm, albeit only just. Gets points back for the wins over Panic Attack and Razer in Extreme, the only robot to properly kill Razer.

6. Chaos 2. By now, it was obvious Chaos 2 was falling behind the times, and nothing displays this better than its two defeats to Tornado, a robot it had easily dealt with the previous year, albeit at the third time of asking. Still, it deserves this high a finish overall.

5. Firestorm 3. A troubling campaign, but it still finished third respectably; ironically, its best performance of the series was the defeat to Razer. Though the Wild Thing win was decent as well.

4. Bigger Brother. After a disappointing performance in Series 4, Bigger Brother was so much improved here, and while it didn’t get a great deal to do in Extreme, it’s magnificent underdog run to the final battle of Series 5 proves it worthy of such a high finish.

3. Tornado. In contrast to the above, Tornado’s excellent showing in Extreme, in both the All-Stars and the Challenge Belt, propels it further up this list, and I’m sure it would’ve reached, at least, the Series 5 grand final had it not been for that unfortunate loss. And probably won the second Annihilator had King B not spiked it in just the right place. In fact, I’d say only 2001 robots could beat Tornado: Panzer MK2 (was doing so until Philipper interfered), and the following…

2. Drillzilla. The American Razer, as CrashBash once called it, may have had a dubious advantage compared to the others on this list, but there’s no denying it to be a terrific fighter, very hard to think of any robots, apart from Razer obvs, that could beat it. It’s not second in his ‘unbeatable robots’ list for nothing, after all. If it had been in the UK series, I think it very much would’ve beaten all bar Razer, and had the US championship used a proper knockout format, I think it would’ve won.

1. Razer. This will probably be unanimous. After three years of frustrating underachievement, tempered by success in pretty much every other side event, this was when Razer finally got it right and went all the way to a well deserved victory. Any other robot that reached the semi-finals at its fourth attempt, we’d be talking about it for years, but with Razer, no-one batted an eyelid, that says a lot. It finally got the chance to become the all-conquering phenomenon it was supposed to have been the last three series, and grabbed it, literally, with open arms, literally!