Report

I took my new 12# bot, Trisector and Ant weight Thrasher to compete in DragonCon Robot Battles on Labor Day weekend. Sunday was the day for Robot Microbattles featuring 1 and 3 pound bots. It was single elimination format. Thrasher got a first round bye but had to fight the powerful vertical spinner "Haze" in the second round. Haze got in a few good hits knocking Thrasher against the wall and causing some ugly body damage but nothing that affected performance. My new shock absorbing wheels seem to work! Thrasher defeated Haze with the help of the "wheel of death" arena hazard. Next we fought "Pop Quiz" . Fortunately for me, Charles spilled some superglue into his weapon bearings and had to run as a weaponless pushy bot. I flipped him a few times and finally propped him against the wall. Thrasher won after sliding him down the wall into the pit. The final was against Da Froogin, a nice well built pushy bot. I screwed up and drove Thrasher into the pit. At that point the final was turned into best 2 of 3. (Microbattles rules can be fluid at times) The next two rounds went to Thrasher and we took home the trophy.

On Monday I took Trisector to compete in Robot Battles. This year, in a effort to handycap wedges, the combat surface was twice as large and littered with 1/4 x 1 inch steel bars and small fuzzy stuffed animals. These changes made combat much more interesting. Driving was more challenging too. There were fifteen 12# bots and seven 30 pounders. The competition was double elimination format. Trisector did pretty well but couldn't seem to defeat "Probulator", an invertable 4WD box with a powerful pneumatic probe/spike in the front. Trisector flipped Probulator 12 times in one round but still got knocked off the stage. I suppose I should have changed tactics and used the lift and push mode more often. The crowd seemed like all the flipping though. However, we did defeat Scorpian, Dagger, RoboChicken and Bar room Brawl. In the end Trisector didn't get to the 12# finals but won the Battle Royale. Trisectors win/loss record is now 5/2. Click here to see a list of all the teams, robots and results.

Robot Microbattles
1 and 3 pound classes