User blog comment:RA2/Robot Wars Rankdown: Extreme 1 & Series 5/@comment-4700688-20180719230017

11. Disc-O-Inferno. The absolute blotch on the Top 11, and the fact that it's here in place of HYPNO-DISC is just so bad it's not funny. I admit that Disc-O-Inferno wasn't far behind the next in the list, but I still don't trust this robot's reliability. It lost some of its mobility or its weapon in two Series 6 fights, and we all know about Series 4, so can we be certain that it's fully reliable in Series 5? We can't, because it was immobilised in one of its wins, and it didn't even enter Series 5 anyway...

10. Dominator II. On principle, this should be ahead of Wild Thing, based on its higher finish in Series 5. However, Dominator II directly lost to Wild Thing and generally wasn't that impressive in its own wins, all of which were against robots not within this Top 11.

9. Wild Thing. We now reach Wild Thing's time, it was wonderfully plucky and performed so well in combat, but had very visible weaknesses, and ultimately did not succeed in winning any of its valiant efforts against Tornado, Chaos 2, S3 and Firestorm III.

8. Chaos 2. As I mentioned when I pooled it, Chaos 2 mysteriously GAINED weaknesses for Series 5, as it overflipped repeatedly and struggled to self-right now - a terrible combination which led to it KO'ing itself against S.M.I.D.S.Y., and basically repeating it against Tornado. Underweight.

7. S3. What an unfortunate robot in the sense that it lost to the winner AND runner-up of Series 5 in one tournament! That said, the edit basically showed it lose to Wild Thing, and it may only have won based on hitting Spawn Again. S3 had a brilliant weapon, but had various weaknesses including thin armour, exposed wheels, poor form against flippers, and a very large pittable shape, which keep it just shy of the Top 6.

6. Pussycat. This is such a weird one to rank, because it cruised to the Top 8 of Series 5 through little-to-no effort, against robots that were either crap, broken, or died while winning. However, Pussycat had an extraordinary Extreme, beating Razer, winning two side events (one being much more impressive than the other), and this same version of the machine provided more evidence of capability in Extreme Warriors. I just wouldn't pick it to win against any of the remaining five machines.

5. Bigger Brother. This is controversial, I admit, but if you look at the remaining robots in my pool, Bigger Brother actually fought none of them in Series 5 or Extreme except for Razer (which it lost to), and I don't think it would beat any of them. Bigger Brother had such a wonderful run to the Grand Final, but was a little bit fortunate to have a run of robots it was capable of beating, while the remaining machines were elsewhere in the bracket, in my opinion. The armour wasn't the best yet, the flipper was good-but-not-great, and it really shouldn't have lost to Spawn Again and Comengetorix in the Tag Team.

4. Drillzilla. In awe at the size of this lad, absolute unit. I would confidently back Drillzilla to beat any of the robots below it in this Top 11 apart from maybe just Chaos 2, and it even managed to beat the #3 on my list within Extreme! I have always factored Extreme Warriors success into my votes throughout this rankdown, as it's evidence of potential which pertains to that exact version of the machine, and Drillzilla reaching a World Final in the UK is hardly a lacking result. If you put Drillzilla in Series 5, it would make the Grand Final, easy.

3. Firestorm III. Once a Firestorm, always a Firestorm. Gets the edge over the Drillzilla it lost to thanks to its greater results, you really had to be a master to beat Firestorm.

Space for where Hypno-Disc would have been

2. Tornado. Yes, it lost to Diotoir, but I do not care - no roboteer should have a countermeasure for the opponent genuinely breaking the rules. Peter Redmond has completely admitted that he put tears in his fur so that it would specifically entangle Tornado's drum in a match it was clearly winning. I'm still perfectly happy that Diotoir won the fight, but it can be disregarded here, leaving only The Steel Avenger as a dodgy loss. That's in comparison to ELEVEN wins across Extreme and Series 5, almost all of which were against strong opponents. Tornado beat three of the robots in the current pool, beat two of them for a second time, and then went on to best two more of them with almost exactly the same machine in the following series (discounting Razer because that wasn't what you'd call the same Tornado). We KNOW Tornado is this good, and I'm not going to use the Diotoir loss to hold it back.

1. Razer. This was never in doubt.