After a much needed break, we decided to start off our 2024 season with a couple of combat robot tournaments.
The first one was the NTBB February Battle in Ft. Worth Texas. This was a non-destructive tournament – which seemed like a good idea since we are still fairly new to this. At least we knew we would be able to bring our bots home in one piece! (Also foreshadowing 😬)
Since this was a non-destructive event – meaning the bots cannot have active weapons – we took modified Viper kits for the Antweight class and standard Turnabot kits for the Fairyweight class.
Landon had a rough time at this tournament. He competed in the Antweight and Fairyweight classes but, for whatever reason, we never got either of them working properly all day. Because of that, Landon ended up going 1-5 in his matches.
Chase promises he didn’t purposely make sure Landon’s bots were the only ones that didn’t work… but we’re not sure if we should believe him or not. 🤣
Our coach only competed in the Antweight division and his bot worked flawlessly. The only problem was that he’s a terrible driver. Even with a great bot, he could only manage a 1-2 record and got 5th.
Chase, on the other hand, was dominant throughout the day. He went 3-1 in Fairyweights and took home 2nd Place; while in Antweights he was a perfect 5-0 and won the tournament!
He looked like he was in complete control of his matches and showed that he has a special talent not just as a robot builder – but also as a robot driver.
Our second tournament was the Crimson Carnage event at the University of Oklahoma. We mentioned that our first tournament was non-destructive. This one was definitely very destructive – which was a feature we experienced early and often (Spoiler alert – none of our bots went home in one piece).
Since we are still putting the finishing touches on a couple of our more destructive bots, Chase and Coach decided to take our modified Viper robots for this tournament as well.
Coach got off to a decent start, but after winning his first match he was paired up against a bot called Doppler. We thought if our wedge was low enough to get under him, we had a chance to win this match. It wouldn’t have mattered even if it did. Doppler’s weapon and driving ability were way too much for us. Coach got thrown all over the box before finally getting destroyed in spectacular fashion.Â
That sent Coach to the losers bracket where he faced off against Brobot. This was another one where we gelt like we had opportunity to get a win. Our wedge is really low and we have a strong drive train. In theory we should be able to push Brobot around the box.
We weren’t entirely wrong about that. There were moments when we were able to get under him and push him around. But Brobot had a superior driver and his weapon was strong enough to send us airborne multiple times. So Coach lost again – but unfortunately the bot didn’t explode or anything crazy like it did in the last match. Either way, that was the end of Coach’s day.
Chase definitely showed himself to be a much better driver than Coach throughout the day, but his results weren’t too much different.
After winning his first match, Chase squared up against Undercutter. On paper, this match looked to be one that favored us quite a bit. Undercutter’s weapon would hit our wedge just where we wanted it to and we could definitely win the ground game.
Early in the match, that was the case. Chase was able to push Undercutter all over the box and had control of the fight. But what we didn’t anticipate is the toll that the vibration of the weapon would take on our bot. It ended up vibrating the screws right out of our wedge and exposed the battery – that was the end of the match.
Chase ended his day against a control bot called Cognito. Cognito lived up to its description as a control bot and pushed Chase all over the box throughout the match. Chase drove very well and had a few great moments in this fight. But he was no match for Cognito because it was just a faster, more agile bot.
Our overall record was 2 wins and 4 losses. That might not sound great but it was an extremely successful day. We had two bots get completely destroyed – which was so much more fun to see in person than we imagined – and we learned a TON. In fact, on the way out of the building Chase already had his CAD software out designing new robots to fix the problems we encountered in this tournament.
We can’t wait for the next tournament – we’re definitely starting to get the hang of this!!!
