Robot Rebellion 2022 Event Report:

With Robot Rebellion 2023 coming up rather soon, I'm just doing some housekeeping and making sure all of my build diaries are up to date.

Robot Rebellion 2022, also known to many of the competitors as “Rapture”, was a rather unique BW event for a few reasons. The first of those being that the format of the event involved robots in heats fighting in a round robin format, before the top scorers in each heat moved on to a single elimination best of 16 bracket, closer in style to a FW event such as those run by Robodojo or Robochallenge. The second was that along with me running Babróg, basically unchanged from Brawl 2022, this would be my dad's first ever BW event, running Schnake, a four-bar grabber robot that was only finished a few weeks before this event.


Babróg looking fancy going into the event.

All fights are taken from the re-upload of the official Robot Rebellion stream, though there may be some video issues due to it not being the raw footage. Special thanks to Nick DSC for the Herculean task of timestamping all of the fights!

Babróg: Fight 1 Vs. Aggro Wobba Smidders Edition


Fight starts at 2:34:48

Due to the format of the tournament, every robot had a bye for one round, and so Babróg’s debut was delayed slightly. I was looking forward to the first fight, as Aggro Wobba Smidders Edition was a great control robot to spar with and see if the robot still worked as well as it did at Brawl. Aggro was super well driven, and had good traction, but a speed advantage and my front forks were able to help me massively in getting underneath consistently and try to lift them up. There was one scary moment where I ended up near the pit, and Aggro forced me to go the long way around, but I was able to basically reverse our positions, and catching them when they tried to escape allowed me to get my first pitting, and the first win for the tournament.

Babróg: Fight 2 Vs. Zephyrus


Fight starts at 4:13:32

Zephyrus was an incredibly unique robot to fight, with its “face spinner” design easily able to reach some of the more vulnerable parts at the top of Babróg. I ended up going with my horizontal config in the end due to being able to meet the spinner with my wedge, and would take things slowly while waiting for an opening. Ultimately after a little testing of the water, Zephyrus managed to land a hit on the sides, but this hit would end up causing Zephyrus to go flying around the arena, ultimately losing a weapon belt and getting stuck on its face. A slightly anticlimactic way to end, but I was happy to have a second knockout under my belt.

Babróg post-Zephyrus. Some weird geometry, but Babróg seemed to take it well.

Babróg: Fight 3 Vs. Ultra-Violence


Fight starts at 5:43:37

Ultra-Violence was probably the scariest spinner in my heat, but I had seen in previous fights that day that they were struggling with the weapon hitting the floor and bouncing the machine up and down. Fortunately for Ultra-Violence, this was the fight that the issue would be solved, and thanks to the diagonal side forks on the robot, getting around and under was incredibly challenging. I was only able to get around UV once due to some fantastic design and driving by Ari, and whenever Babróg was flipped, they wasted no time in going for any vulnerable points while the robot self-righted. Not surprisingly, I would lose the judges decision, though there was still a lot to be happy about the fight. The weapon assembly took several direct hits but stayed functional, and the only reason I lost drive was due to plastic gears in the gearbox which I thought I’d replaced; annoying to suffer, but at least not repeatable with a more metal replacement.


Babróg post-Ultra-Violence. Mostly functional, and took the beating well, though several parts are quite bent up now.


Once again, my inability to spot plastic gears cost me. Grrrrrr!

Babróg: Fight 4 Vs. Sproing


Fight starts at 36:45

While Schnake was out of the tournament, Babróg was still gunning for the top 16, and following Ultra-Violence winning its last fight, I needed a KO against Sproing to guarantee a spot in the bracket. By this stage of the competition Sproing had been heavily rebuilt multiple times, and so I started the fight with a mindset of at least giving Sproing one shot to show it’s weapon still worked (I’m well aware of the pain springs bring). After that, I was able to push Sproing around pretty easily with my forks, and nearly lift him out of the arena. I had a few scary moments bringing him close to the pit, but ultimately a driving error allowed me to get Sproing into the pit, securing my top spot in the group and allowing me into the top 16!

Babróg: Fight 5 Vs. Bby Shrekt


Fight starts at 3:36:41

I knew that going into the round of 16 that the likelihood of fighting some really nasty robots would shoot right up, and that was proven when my next opponent was one of the favourites for the event: Sam Price’s Bby Shrekt. Sam was smart in how he fought by running his weapon slower for most of the fight, reducing the gyro effect that I usually depend on to get around opponents. I was never really able to get around, and while Babróg could take the hits, my front piece had been bent in such a way that I couldn’t get underneath Bby Shrekt as easily. Eventually we ended up in a position where Bby Shrekt had its back to the OotA zone with the weapon ramping up, so I decided for a hail mary and ran straight at him, hoping my opponent would recoil up and over the wall. It nearly worked, but I ended up getting sent across the arena, and stuck in a position where I couldn’t get my wheels on the ground, leading to my elimination from the competition.


Babróg post-Bby Shrekt. Another case of being very bent but still functional.


The fork mount which caused the bending at the front. It was less the front piece being bent up and more the base plate being bent down.

Bonus Fights: “Grabber” Melee and “International” Melee


Fights start at 4:51:38 and 5:50:57 respectively.

With both bots out of the main competition, we had a bit more time to get some more driving time and iron out any more bugs with whiteboard battles. The first whiteboard was going to be mainly a rematch between Step Up 3D and Schnake, but very rapidly evolved into a general grappler fight with a few lifters as well. Then right after, there was due to be a fight involving all of the “International” competitors, and as a result we barely removed our bots in between matches. These fights were great as a torture test for both bots, as we could see how they’d manage a variety of weapons with no real time to tweak or charge things in between fights. Schnake got some good charges in, and Babróg finally managed to actually land some suplexes!

Conclusion:

This was probably the most hectic event for us since the UK FW Champs in 2019, and there was a lot to learn for sure. For Babróg this had probably been its best event yet, with three wins, two losses against very good opponents, and even winning its heat with minimal damage sustained throughout the event! The wheels have proven to be much more durable than before, and the only true mechanical failure suffered was from something I thought I had swapped over earlier.

This was another really fun event, and I’d like to congratulate all involved! Both robots will be appearing new and improved for Robot Rebellion 2023!


Not the most suplex-heavy event, but there will be more!