User blog:Jimlaad43/Robot Wars Wiki Arena Tournaments - Rating all Grand Final battles!

Here's a different blog. I am going to go back through all the Grand Finals of the main tournaments in each Robot Wars Wiki Arena tournament and rate and review them. I will be looking at how close the battle was, how the voting panned out, how fun it was to vote in that battle, the arguments put forwards and the robots themselves. Were the robots expected to be in the final or not, and did that work for the tournament? Was it a detriment that it was one-sided or was it a sweet surprise to see one of the robots there? We'll see as this blog goes along.

This ranking is purely based on the Grand Final battle only, and is not a reflection of the whole tournament's ranking.

(Warning, there will likely be a slight bias towards tournaments I voted it as I was more involved with how the tournament went on so can talk about the context a bit better)

Honourable Mentions and ineligibles

As with all lists, there's usually a few awkward entries that don't fit the criteria of everything else, but still deserve to be mentioned to avoid someon epointing out that they've been ignored.

• Alternate Series & Competitors

This tournament ran the post-Heat competition for all Main Series' of UK Robot Wars, plus Extreme Warriors 1 and some Annihilators assuming that the Heat Final losers actually won the battle. With so many concurrent Grand Finals and minimal discussion, I decided not to rate these tournaments, especially as it was basically a message board for people to run it themselves, rather than battle voting.

• Alternate Heat Winners (2012)

In the same vein as the previous tournament, Alternate Heat Winners version 2 actually turned the heat final losers into Semi-Finalists with a proper battle voting format. However, with so many different Grand Finals of the same prominence, I decided against rating all of them individually. There were some fun Grand Final battles like Behemoth vs King Buxton in Series 3, Razer vs Behemoth in Series 4 and the Judges' victory for Tsunami over Spawn Again in Series 7. This was certainly a great tournament, but just a bit too awkward for this list without cherry-picking.

• Extreme 1 Audited and Extreme Series 3

The Extreme format tournaments were great, but because it's a bunch of mini-tournaments, there are actually a lot of finals, none of which can really be called the overall Grand Final. As such, I decided to take the finals of the All-Stars and World Championships held in each respective tournament for the list, and every other smaller competition is here as an honourable mention. These honourable mentions include: Wild Thing vs Diotoir, Kadeena Machina vs The Cat and Ironside3 & MeggaMouse vs Tough as Nails & Cobra.

• The Best Episode of UK Robot Wars

While this final was an absolutely massive debate between the two best episodes of Robot Wars, I decided against including it in the main part of this list as it isn't a battle between robots, and as the only tournament here that isn't that, I wasn't happy to include it. Especially as it was going to place pretty high otherwise.

Ranking

I will not be numbering each rank as I hope to add future tournaments to it as they complete. Thus I just need to say that this is an ascending list, which starts at the Worst final and gets better as the list goes down. Tournament winner is highlighted in bold at the start.

The Ultimate Free Pass - Anarachnid vs Mammoth

Somehow we had to work out which of these two would actually win the rematch, so we could subsequently award the loser the title.

Starting off this list and crowning itself as the Worst Grand Final in the wiki's history is...the Grand Final supposed to be the worst. The Ultimate Free Pass was never supposed to be an official tournament, but it seemed quite popular on my userpage so it got elevated to a proper one. At the end of Ragnabot 2, a tournament in which the phrase "Free Pass" was thrown about a lot, I held a knockout competition where robots which had collected no votes were placed together, with the losers from each fight going to the next round. In the end, the two worst robots in the whole tournament faced each other, and oh boy was it a stinker!

Actually, that's unfair. Judging Anarachnid vs Mammoth was a lot more difficult than the 8-1 victory by Anarachnid suggested (hence crowning Mammoth the tournament winner). This was a rematch, as the two fought each other in their only fight and it was dire. Neither could move effectively or fast, meaning neither robot met and certainly didn't show themselves off to be good, hence they were awarded a draw IRL. This played into the voting as two users actually voted for a draw, giving half a point to each robot. However, the rest of the voters decided that Anarachnid at least showed some kind of movement in a direction, it got the votes to win the fight. As such, Mammoth was crowned the Ultimate Free Pass®™°C to score its first (and most definitely only) tournament victory, even if it is such an odd format.

Featherweight Championship - DTK vs Typhoon Cadet

It won't take long for this to happen

The Wiki's featherweight championship of 2013 was a great little tournament which pitted all the Featherweight robots against each other, combining official competitors from the Extremes, Series' 2 and 7 plus the Featherweight competitors from Series 1. This produced some interesting results all the way up to the final. Series 7 champion DTK understandably eased its way there and found itself facing the ultimately charmed run of Typhoon Cadet in the final. The smallest and least successful of the Typhoon robots, the Cadet's only really notable time on screen came when DTK flipped it over with ease. In a single head-to-head fight, Typhoon Cadet has no chance to avoid being chased and flipped without causing much damage to DTK. A unanimous 7-0 "seen it" and "One flip and done" vote ensued, which is shame but it just went to show how good DTK was as a Featherweight.

Tag Team Terror 4 - Winners of the Second vs Winners of the Third

This probably happened at some point during this TTT4 battle

Seen it is bad. Seen it convincingly is even worse. The two most fancied real-life tournament winners meeting in the final sounds like a brilliant recipe for debate, but this was the first round battle of the third Tag Team tournament. Bulldog Breed ft. Robochicken started their whole campaign by thoroughly dominating the defending champions, so nobody disagreed with that result hence the 5-0 win. A good battle to watch it may have been, but the fact that a previous fight had 8 voters and this - the final - had 5 speaks volumes. It's a shame because the play-off was a close judges' decision.

Christmas Special - Firestorm 5 vs Razer

Even the Series 7 steel strip wouldn't have stopped this rout

When you have a battle which is a seen it, you sometimes have votes that reflect the random luck in the fight and therefore disagree with the result. See a battle like Pussycat vs Fluffy for example. Pussycat won the fight IRL, but I'm sure Fluffy would always pick up votes and could win sometimes in tournaments if the draw came up. However, if a couple of robots fight multiple times, using the seen it argument can either get clouded or more solid. Ironside3 vs Pulsar is one that will always be a solid debate as they always flip-flopped either way so we don't have a definitive answer, but Firestorm vs Razer is a perfect example of it being as solid as diamond. Razer has fought and convincingly defeated Firestorm on three occasions in the post-weight increase period, where Razer's infamous reliability issues have gone away, ripping away that argument from people wanting to remove the frankly OP Razer from tournaments. So the fact that Firestorm picked up 2 votes actually works against it here. I think it's worth calling this out, as one of the votes seemed to be based on a pullbacks battle between the two...

Audited Series 4 - Chaos 2 vs Pussycat

This is the most "seen it" of all the seen its you could choose from

In an Audited Series, we are essentially rerunning a series to have some fun and get different results. Big names crashing out early and plucky underdogs flying high with a good draw is part of the fun. What you don't really want is for an Audited Series to basically confirm that the actual finalists were the rightful finalists because, well, where's the fun in that? Audited Series 4 was the epitome of reruns as the final could not have been more predictable, as Chaos 2, Pussycat and Stinger made it to the final 4, with Firestorm being the only non-finalist from that series - and we all know Firestorm's credentials. The draw for the first round gave us Chaos 2 vs Stinger, a battle we saw at that stage anyway, before setting up...exactly the same Grand Final as Series 4 gave us - Chaos 2 vs Pussycat.

Now, I'm not here saying that Chaos 2 vs Pussycat in their respective Series 4 versions is a bad fight; quite the opposite. It was a brilliant Grand Final, but to judge? No. It was a convincing win for Chaos 2 which leads to little debate and a near-unanimous victory. Seen it is bad, seen it at the exact same stage with a lack of reasons to go against what we saw is really not good. You want the Grand Final to be a hotbed of debate or at least pining for a good theoretical battle, even if it's a dominant display by one, but not this. Audited Series 4 served up an anticlimax we didn't need.

A Fantasy Audited War 2 - Anarchy vs Dantomkia

Really, we can only guess how this robot fares if/when flipped over

A surprise finalist is fantastic. I love it, most of us love it. However, just the one surprise finalist is a problem, as it means the other robot is not a surprise and is going to cake walk the fight most of the time. This was one of the more extreme examples of this. The walkerbot Anarchy scored its greatest ever tournament run here, beating some big names comfortably (somehow one of those was a full-power Hypno-Disc in a close one) to make the Grand Final battle in a massive shock. However, it faced the well-fancied Dantomkia in said final, a battle Anarchy had no chance of winning.

So it's a 7-0 victory for Dantomkia, what's special about this which places it so low? It isn't a seen it and it's not the worst of surprise finalists, Anarchy is still plenty competent? Nope, it's probably the fact that the battle would likely be an easy Dantomkia victory, even though it would have failed to do much. Anarchy's extra weight would make it tough to get a good, clean flip on the walker, meaning Dantomkia will end up taking a good few attempts to do anything meaningful, which would most likely be a side-stranding flip. A boring KO victory does not translate well to a Grand Final, hence the very low placing here.

Redone Series 4 - Chaos 2 vs Mortis

This is the likeliest outcome if Chaos 2 didn't want to end on an OotA

One of the earliest tournaments, and it's Series 4 again. Series 4, like 3 to be honest, really only has a small pool of Grand Final quality robots who will only not make said Grand Final by meeting each other. Mortis was not one of these robots, so this battle is another case of a very obviously one-sided vote. Chaos 2 unanimously took it by 5 votes to 0 for a battle that most voters agreed would be over quite quickly when Chaos 2 flips Mortis over and feeds it to House Robots. Not the most enthralling fight to watch.

Extreme Series 3 - All Stars - Aftershock vs Carbide

Carbide makes preboot Razer look like a pansy when it comes to Arena tournament OP-ness

The All-Stars of Extreme Series 3 had a small pool of powerful robots from the first two Reboot Series', and was made on the back of Series 9, which Carbide completely dominated without ever breaking a sweat. Really, everyone was hoping Carbide would face Terrorhurtz, the only robot which Carbide had fought and lost to, without having beaten them at another time - and it did! In the round 1 melee with Carbide, Eruption and Terrorhurtz, Carbide's only vanquisher was knocked out leaving Carbide to have a clean run to victory basically. Aftershock was the robot it fought in the Grand Final, and it was pretty easy to vote for Carbide here. Carbide had torn Aftershock apart in the Series 9 final, and Aftershock had also suffered against another horizontal spinner in Ironside3, so it was no fluke. 10-0 was the score and it can't really be disputed.

Audited Series 6 - Firestorm 4 vs Dantomkia

Yeah, t'was a good fight and all, but not as something to vote for

Firestorm 4 and Dantomkia ended up as the final two in our Audited Series 6 tournament, despite there being no OP robot culls put in place. Razer and Tornado were both knocked out well before the final, which came as a surprise to many. So why was Firestorm 4 vs Dantomkia a bad Grand Final? Well, like a lot of the lower placings here, it is another case of comprehensively "seen it". Both these robots fought in Extreme 2 and Firestorm dominated the whole battle, leaving us with no doubt as to who would win between the two. The one vote for Dantomkia hinged on the fact that Dantomkia did manage to flip Firestorm over once, and tried to spin a victory out from that one moment, but to no avail as Firestorm took a comfortable seen it victory.

Wikia Series 8 - Storm 2 vs Firestorm 5

The first ever Arena tournament threw up a brilliant final, which unfortunately ends up as another seen it. The vote was closer than you'd expect for such a dominant seen it victory - as Storm 2 only won this 4-2. The votes for Firestorm had some logic behind them, but overall, as expected, Storm 2 romped through the whole tournament without a scratch basically to take the win. 6 votes for the first tournament ever is fantastic and in that context it's great to see, but really this is a kind of battle that needs more votes to see if the upset was really on, or just a fantasy by a small amount of people. As a seen it though, the scoreline doesn't reflect well.

Welterweight Tournament - Smash vs Blenda

The most damage Smash ever did

The Welterweight Tournament was awesome in every way, except for the finals. If it weren't for the fact that Smash vs Blenda is such an interesting and unique pairing for a final that we'll never really get a chance to see again, then this final really deserves to be even lower. It is an absolute cacophony of types of Arena battles that are undesirable.

This isn't a 'seen it' battle in the sense that we've seen it on Robot Wars, but it was a battle already fought previously in the tournament. The one issue with Losers Melee type redemption brackets is that it can sometimes throw up rematches for battles already seen. You just need to see the Heat Finals of Series' 8 and 9 to see why repeat battles are very often terrible and not worth it. This battle was no different as Smash took another victory by 6 points.

Now that's bad, but this isn't the only sore thing about this fight. There are certain types of robots I don't like seeing pick up votes in Arena tournaments: Non-qualifiers who we never saw on TV, Gabriel, Robots which work in the live events but never did on the show, Cherub, and Robots which work in theory but never showed it in multiple battles. This last one is what both Crackers and Smash suffered from the whole tournament. Smash's drum I'm sure works in theory and would cause a load of damage, but it never did anything in its many televised battles. Blenda on the other hand showed its spinner doing an awful lot, and would have been a much more satisfying winner of the tournament, but Smash working in theory and the live events was enough to carry it through to victory here unanimously.

A pre-tournament seen it and a robot that works in theory beating robots we saw be competent in the show hurts this rating a lot, but the uniqueness of seeing Smash vs Blenda in a final, and the fact that the battle would probably be quite spectacular with two light robots with massive spinners means the battle itself would likely be awesome, means it gets raised above the previously mentioned battles.

Series 5 Audited - Hypno-Disc vs Wheely Big Cheese

Somebody Photoshop Ming out please

A bit like the Welterweight Final, this fight was also an in-tournament seen it, as Wheely Big Cheese made the final having gone through the Losers Melee after being defeated by Hypno-Disc in the first round of the Semi-Finals. This is also an almost exactly seen it too, as Hypno-Disc has beaten Wheely Big Cheese in a Mayhem qualifier featuring Ming 3, when both robots were in the same guise.

Hypno-Disc took a pretty convincing 8-2 victory, with the Wheely Big Cheese voters rightly playing up the titanium flipper of WBC as something Hypno-Disc would struggle to break, but completely ignoring WBC's very vulnerable and obvious targets in the wheels. As a head-to-head this battle would be pretty entertaining, but as a vote it's pretty obvious.

Extreme 1 Audited - All Stars - Behemoth vs Firestorm 3

I wouldn't put it past Firestorm chucking Behemoth out

The Extreme 1 All-Stars had some, ahem, funky results to remove some of the big hitters in the early rounds which left us with an obviously one-sided final. Behemoth and Firestorm have never fought each other and the two would likely put forward a pretty decent battle. Firestorm's wedge and flipper would be great for dumping Behemoth over multiple times - it would win the battle of the ground clearances quite often - and won't be at risk of being overturned itself. Not much to say here except it's a clean sweep which needs little thought.

All-Stars - Spawn Again vs Terrorhurtz

This fight it was not

This tournament final is punished in the ranking as it is one which deserved a lot more debate and thought than the votes suggested. Spawn Again and Terrorhurtz fought in Series 6, and Terrorhurtz won the fight quite convincingly. This arena battle was to be fought between the Extreme 2 Terrorhurtz and the Series 7 Spawn Again. The votes pointed to the fact that Terrorhurtz improved in E2, probably to the same amount that Spawn Again did, but we know that that wasn't the case.

Series 6 Spawn Again was awful. It was unreliable and flawed in controlling, and basically won the heat by a miracle, so as soon as it faced something that wasn't going to break down like Terrorhurtz, it was screwed. Series 7 fixed all that, upgraded the flipper and made it a monster, one that certainly should have garnered more debate and a closer vote.

I will give it slack though, this was one of the first tournaments on the Wiki, when information and videos were either harder to come by or non-existent. But still, I think a 5-0 "seen it" victory for Terrorhurtz was a bit harsh on Spawn Again.

Old vs New - Thor vs IG-88

Thor's eventual fate

This is a second consecutive final in this list placed so low because of problems with voting. This time - numbers. Thor got through to the final of this tournament by beating Series 3 Pussycat on a 5-5 Judges' Decision. Sounds great right? So why did the Grand Final get a paltry 5 votes? IG-88 completed a clean sweep in what would have probably been an enthralling battle which certainly would have been nice to have had more people giving their opinion, and a fight that wouldn't have been out of place with a couple of votes for Thor. But no, 5 users who had voted within the last couple of days decided to not get involved for ??? reasons. Hell, the Third Place Playoff even got more votes than the concurrent Grand Final!

This is the absolute extreme of why there was so much complaining about people who cherry pick which battles they vote in. When the Grand Final - the one battle we do all these tournaments for and will wait weeks or even moths for - happens, why do people just not bother? One-sided or not, we want to hear your opinions. Cherry picking when you're in a rush is OK if you come back later and finish the votes off for the rest of the round. I don't believe 5 people suddenly went on holiday at the same time and were unable to vote here.

A potentially great Grand Final ruined by a lack of interest.

Series 3 Audited - Cassius 2 vs Chaos 2

It feels like this robot was being judged

I'll be honest, I straight up don't like this final and I had to bump it up to here because I had clearly underscored it.

I'll get straight to the elephant in the room. Cassius 2. Was it really Series 3 finalist quality? Well thanks to Rex's disgust at the behind-the-scenes incidents, it never was going to be. But this is an Audited Series, so it's fair to say that we can assume those incidents didn't happen and Cassius fought with all intentions of winning and with a full gas bottle.

The improvement of robot quality from Series 2 to 3 was massive, but I don't think Cassius 2 was in that band of upgrades to be honest. It still wheelied like crazy, and the flipper looked like it was probably a bit worse TBH. But Cassius 2 was judged to be as good as Cassius was against Series 2 robots. Put it this way, there is no way Cassius 2 should ever have beaten Fire Storm with all its wheelie antics, so Cassius's place in this final was not deserved, nor was the 3 votes it picked up against Chaos 2 of all robots. Chaos 2 in Series 3 is probably the most OP robot in any Audited Series and Cassius 2 will never be the robot to stop it.

Audited Extreme Warriors 1 - Manta vs Panzer Mk 2

This was not a disagreeable victory for Panzer

This battle can really just be summed up as a seen it whitewash result that ended a tournament with low voter turnout. I must admit to being one of those non-voters, it occurred as I was finishing my Uni Dissertation, and included robots from a series I am not as much of an expert on/didn't enjoy as much, so it didn't engage me much.

That said, Panzer Mk 2 and Manta are two very good robots who totally deserved to be in that final and would likely put on a good show. That said, Panzer comfortably beat Manta by battering it into submission in the fight, and none of the votes really disagreed with that outcome. Manta didn't really have a chance in the fight, so it didn't require any contrarian votes.

Also, SpaceManiac888 said this, but never answered. Now is his chance: Panzer Mk 2 will join two prestigious wiki tournament clubs if the results stay as they are, which I will explain after this battle ends.

War of the Weapons - Black Hole vs Firestorm 5

Firestorm would just be even harder to damage if Black Hole was overturned

This is one of those fights between two brilliant robots where no matter how you spin it, one of them will always come out victorious. Black Hole showed its undoing was being flipped, as shown by Philipper 2, and Firestorm is certainly able to overturn Black Hole. Firestorm's low shape makes it hard for Black Hole to hit in the first place, and even harder to damage. Add into that it'll be overturned quite quickly and it's screwed. Black Hole would try to make a fight out of this, but it'll just be pushed and flipped away at every opportunity. Black Hole would likely be tossed onto the arena wall and then out.

Nickelodeon Robot Wars - The Revolutionist vs Destructive Criticism

Destructive Criticism's history against spinners wasn't ideal

Nickelodeon Robot Wars is an interesting tournament to consider, as the rules with child drivers throw a little bit of a spanner in the works. As it happened, the final two were pretty predictable, with The Revolutionist and Destructive Criticism showing themselves to be some of the best robots in the American Robot Wars scene.

The battle though was tenuously one-sided. One-sided because The Revolutionist took a solid 7-0 victory, but tenuous because of The Revolutionist's weapon reliability lottery. It's always a struggle to judge unreliable robots. Something like Fluffy you can just say "will it be able to immobilise its opponent before it has a chance to break down?", but The Revolutionist always blew hot and cold, and you never know which one it'll do when it enters the arena. As such, The Revolutionist was just assumed to be working leading to a solid win over Destructive Criticism due to having a larger area of damage, and knowing Destructive Criticism's vulnerability against Ninjitsu.

Tag Team Series 5 - Supernova & Behemoth vs 101 & Fluffy

The two losing finalists are left in a corner, Supernova having torn 101 apart and Behemoth shoving the immobilised Fluffy into the corner

Tag Team Series 5 was a stunning tournament idea, pairing the first round fighters into tag team partners and drawing them together, it really highlighted how few round 1 battles had good teams. All the good robots effectively got given free passes, and only a few genuinely good pairings actually appeared. Hypno-Disc managed to carry Black Widow to a 4th placed finish!

Tag Teams are an interesting format to judge, especially as it has specific rules that are rarely enforced in the form of the "one robot at a time rule". That said, it didn't really need to be used in this fight, as the main consensus was that Supernova was the spinner most likely to come out on top, and Behemoth also the pusher most likely to come out on top, meaning a pretty convincing win. 101 and Fluffy were touted as undeserving finalists by some, but I disagree. It was a well balanced pairing with fighting styles that complimented each other, they just met an unstoppable force in the final.

Interestingly, Supernova is joint second on the list of all-time Arena tournament victories with 3!

North vs South - St. Agro (South) vs Behemoth (South)

St. Agro gloats as Behemoth struggles to self-right (for some reason)

North v South was a tournament held in late 2011 to find out the best robots across the North/South divide of the UK. Where possible, every battle was North vs South, and impressively it ended with two from each side of the border in the Grand Final episode. However, both Southern robots won the eliminators, setting up a South-only final.

St. Agro vs Behemoth was Cornwall vs Hertfordshire and should have been a doozy of a fight. The score of 4-2 to St. Agro says just that, but I can't say the reasoning for St. Agro's win is the most satisfying or interesting. It's not like they were saying "It'll be a great close fight which St. Agro will win on a judges' decision" or "St. Agro to throw Behemoth out of the arena", no, they pretty much all focused on Behemoth's supposedly unreliable srimech. Flawed and/or tenuous logic is just about acceptable for the occasional contrarian vote, but when it sways the victory? No thanks.

Don't get me wrong, if this battle was run today, I have a feeling this could be top 10 material on the list, but North vs South does not satisfy. I would also say that North and South should really have been separated all the time to find the representative of said region before a barnstorming final fight. This is definitely a tournament we can run again with that change to the format.

Classic Wars - Firestorm 2 vs Dominator 2

This didn't quite score enough points for Firestorm 2

This is a seen it. There's no way to sugar coat this, Firestorm 2 vs Dominator 2 in Series 4 guises in the Series 4 arena is a seen it. Dominator 2 won the judges' decision after a really good and close battle. But that's the downfall of this battle, not that it was a seen it, but that it was a close judges' decision.

As much as I prefer Dominator 2 to Firestorm, every time I rewatch the fight since voting in the battle, I always think "Firestorm was robbed there", so wouldn't put it against people to go against the seen it and argue against what the judges went for. It certainly is one of those seen its without a definitive answer. However, the score of the battle is kind of in the sorry middle ground of tenuous seen its.

Dominator 2 won this 7-2. If it was a clear seen it, we should have seen a score around 9-0 or 8-1. Even a non-clear seen it can still go 9-0 if everyone agrees it was close, but the judges got it right, but for a battle like this with good reason to vote either way, you'd expect at least a 6-3 to close it up, or even 5-4. As such, it felt like the spark for debate was sent, but didn't land on anything flammable.

Seen it battles can still be interesting (If we get Pulsar vs Ironside3 in a final, that would go straight to the top), and this pairing was set up perfectly to be one of these, but it missed the mark.