After cutting the cord 7-8 years ago, BattleBots kind of feel off my radar. That's why I was stoked when they added it to Max streaming service. And I've been binging it for the last month or so.

My absolute favorite thing to watch for is, when you can see the judges in the background of a fight, it never fails that Lisa will have the biggest grin on her face. I don't know why, but I love seeing a judge enjoying themselves like a fan would.

Will be fighting it for the first time this Saturday

My beetle Sir Macintosh got a few hits in, but prior vertical spinner damage allowed Wicked Twister to tear me apart pretty quickly.

I find it pretty interesting watching how other countries do robot combat.

Two new UK heavyweight from an event yesterday

Now that this is a new Battlebots community, it seems fitting to christen it with a reminder on how the Judges judge matches 🙂

• Defense, Aggression, and Control are judged off a rubric table which assigns the score based on how the two bots did relatively against one another. Furthermore, it's almost impossible to get a complete shutout 5-0 or 3-0 for any category.

• Defense: You get more points for taking out a robot's critical system, defined as either the primary weapon or its drive. When both bots critical system are equally damaged, it's only then that the judges look at damage to the other parts of the robot. In other words, it doesn't usually matter if a piece of armor hits the ceiling, but it does if a bot can't drive or attack well.

• Aggression: This is surprisingly complicated but in general, the robot who attacks the other bot more with its functional primary weapon gets the 2 out of 3 points. If both bots don't have working weapons, it becomes "Well who hit each other more with the non-functional weapon?" or "Well who hit each other more?"

• Control: Simplest one -- whoever controlled the fight more gets 2 points.

• Override for not using a weapon: If a robot has a functional weapon and does not use it in a meaningful way, it can NOT be awarded more than 2 control and more than 2 aggression points.

Source: Judge's Guide https://battlebots.com/rules/ as of the 2022 revision.

This is one of the wheels after my first fight:

I was tempted to post and tell them to blackout but being a commercial sub I doubt they would.