And so here we are again, another Christmas and another load of awards to dish out to everyone. Here€™s how things have ended up:

Most Original Design

Plenty of different types of robot this year€¦ we had the weird axlebot thing A Night At The Bar, the always annoying The Disc, the clusterbot cheese grater Mass Confuzzelment and the walking wonder Spyder. But topping them all was that unique invention BIACS-LE.

Most Original Designer

The award will have to be shared by Alex Holt and Aaron Knight this year, with Frank not so far behind in second place.

Best Design

This award is for the best overall designed robot and we had contenders such as MDU, The Disc and Shovearound 2. But in the end the most original design also turned out to be the best design, the winner is BIACS-LE.

Best Newcomer Vapourbot

This award ended up being split between the newcomer robot from the new guy on the block in Paul Cuomo€™s Nitro-Gene and a newcomer bot from veteran Aaron Knight in the form of Spyder.

Best Newcomer Vapourboteer

This ended up being a no-contest as only one person was nominated. From the newcomer that shows flashes of brilliance now and then, welcome aboard Paul Cuomo.

The Steven McGregor Award For Sportsmanship

In a turn up for the books, Steve has to fall to second and watch as his own award is passed onto new resident peacekeeper Martijn Benschop.

Idiot of the Year

In the end I couldn€™t be bothered to change the votes so I€™m just going to split this award literally down the middle and give a half each to Kody Kunz and Paul Cuomo. I don€™t think they would enjoy sharing it with each other€¦

Best Flipper (Front Hinged)

Only one robot voted for, the award goes to Disco 5.

Best Flipper (Rear Hinged)

And interesting crop of results this year as we saw Achilles, Wedga€™s Revenge and newcomer CRAPBAG all gain a vote while former king of the flippers Wedge Devo has to settle for second place. The award this goes to Chris Mason€™s uber-flipper Die Ceratops Re Invertus.

Best Axebot

There were a couple of votes for Killotine: EVO but after its successful run this year the award is going to Alex Holt€™s Black Panther Queen.

Best Spinner (Horizontal)

A couple of votes for Fragmentor and Parrasyte but the winner by some distance is Alex€™s Salamander III.

Best Spinner (Vertical)

This vote ended up as a tie between The Disc 5 and Disco 5.

Best Sawbot

A no contest here, Metal Sonic Spin Dash walks away with all the votes.

Best FBS/Ring Spinner

There was a vote for Tempest Evil-er-ution but this award is split between the spinning rings of Tengu VII and the spinning hammers of Psyclonised.

Best Translational Spinner

It was close, but MDU steals it over Cyberdemon by just a point.

Best Crusher (Horizontal)

By quite a large margin, this vote is going to Flank Attack: DT.

Best Crusher (Vertical)

With an outstanding 8 votes, the winner is Clawdius Decimus Murderous.

Best Clusterbot

Going Crunch came close but this year€™s winner is Mass Confuzzelment.

Best Interchangeable Robot

For the best robot with interchangeable weaponry, this one goes to NSBFR-X.

Best Rammer

A few votes went to MOABIE and Shovearound 2 but the joint winners are ForcePower 5.0 and Flick of the Wrist.

Best Other Weapon

As ever, the mousetrap of doom The Crashing Bore is the winner.

Most Effective Weapon

Interestingly the joint most effective weapon winners are the same as the joint best FBS winners - Psyclonised and Tengu VII.
Best Comedy Bot

Out of the three of Steve€™s bots nominated, the award is shared between Tails and Toby The T-Ram Engine.

Best House Robots

But they have no drive motors! :wink: Ah well, Kody€™s things win.

Best Walker

Spyder narrowly misses out and the winner is Archangel of the Abyss.

Best Shuffler

An even draw between MORD 2 and Whirligig 4.0.

Best Tracked

The winner here is Martijn Benschop€™s Sheer Heart Attack.

Best Other Motivation

Take a guess€¦ Blizzard!

Most Underated Vapourboteer

Many different opinions here, the award is shared between Alex Mac Williams, Martijn, Richard, Willow, Paul and Chris M.

Most Underated Vapourbot

Again lots of different winners, they are Cosmic Thunder 2, IDSFA, The Doomsday Project, Disco 5 and BIACS-LE.

Most Overrated Vapourboteer

Despite being the main Hall of Fame contenders, myself, Alex H and Aaron all have to contend with being overrated.

Most Overated Vapourbot

Slammer V is narrowly beaten by The Disc 5.

Best Extreme/Side Event

I counted Here We Go Again as a mini tournament so the winner is House Robot Rebellion 2.

Best Minor Tournament

Here We Go Again would have won even if I didn€™t add the votes when people voted it for best side event.

Best Major Tournament

Kody€™s Crash and Burn tournament came close but the eventual winner is Martijn€™s Mechanical Noise.

Best Battle

Fittingly the best battle of the year came from the best tournament of the year, and that was the Mechanical Noise final - Psyclonised vs. Black Panther Queen

Biggest Surprise of the Year

There were many surprises this year including the brief return of Matt McDonald, the arrival of new compeititors, the introduction of roboteers to vapourbots and the fact that we have carried on yet another year. But you voted the biggest surprise as Steve McGregor returning to the writing desk.

Best Custom Arena

Close, but Kody€™s Arena just beat €œThe Wrexagon€ to it.

Best New Writer

Even if his battles are not world class, we have finally found a new writer in the form of Paul Cuomo.

Best RPG

That crazy thing known as ATTTWI€¦

Best Overall Writer

Just like the best major tournament, this was between Kody and Martijn, and just like the best major tournament, Martijn is the winner.

Most Missed Vapourboteer

Votes for Nick, Tom and Dan, but the winner is Hector Gilbert.

Most Missed Vapourbot

A tie between The Business Ends, Stratos-Fear, V€™Ger and The Team That Wasn€™t There.

Best British Vapourboteer

This is a three way tie between three of the best in the game - Steve McGregor, Frank Goacher and Alex Holt.

Best Rest of the World Vapourboteer

This award goes to the Dutchman Martijn Benschop.

Best Overall Team

Team Bored and Team Braveheart came close but the winners are Team Doomforall.

Best Vapourbot

Many came close including Clawdius Decimus Murderous, Black Panther Queen, Shovearound 2 and Flick of the Wrist. But the overall winner is that phenomenal bot known as Psyclonised! Cheers guys! :wink:

Best Vapourboteer

The winner, by just half a vote is our flying Dutchman Martijn Benschop. This guy has brought us some inventive and successful designs this year along with one hell of a tournament with some excellent battles. Well done!

Hall of Fame Induction

Yes that€™s right folks, the three joint winners of the Most Overrated Vapourboteer award have been voted by you very people into the Hall of Fame!

First of all - Alex Holt! This guy has an incredible creative mind as shown by his multiple awards and achievements both this year and years past. His team of inventive ideas are both creative and effective and robots such as Tengu and Achilles have found amazing success. Alex never came up with an un-original design and has quietly improved his bots over the years to become one of the most successful vapourboteers around.

Secondly - Aaron Knight! Personally I feel this Hall of Fame would be incomplete without him. Aaron burst onto the scene with invention and creation, eventually using his knowledge of building featherweights to improve the standard of not just his but all of the vapourbots we see today. Like Alex, inventive ideas are always flowing and Aaron isn€™t afraid to try new ideas and new parts. The invention of possibly the best vapourbot ever MDU sparked controversy as technically it was like nothing we had seen before and revolutionised vapourbots forever. Big wins in big majors has made this guy one of the best of the best.

And finally€¦ me? OK, I€™ll give this thing a go. Basically this person came around some 7 or 8 years ago, beginning off by entering some quite comical designs into the earlier tournaments (a chainsaw flipper anyone?). Soon, people began to offer advice and basically set AJ away with a set of decent vapourbots. Following this, he suddenly won the first big major tournament. Becoming big headed, he went about picking arguments and fights with people, until basically everyone couldn€™t stand the guy. But unfortunately for them, he wasn€™t going anywhere! The designs continued, generally crappy, unoriginal, overrated and largely overweight. AJ is also famed for his perfection of starting major tournaments and ending them before they have even got going. To redeem himself he went about offering advice to others, pretending to know what he was on about, and unfortunately people listened to him. Now regarded as a legend of the vapourbots scene he was inducted into the hall of fame with two of the best ever. What on earth have you guys done?!

And on that note, lets round up and see who got how many awards€¦

Nick, Scott and Dave S all managed to pick up 1 award!
Richard and Chris M managed to pick up 2 awards!
Hector and Alex MacW picked up 3 awards!
Martyn, Matty and myself all got 4 awards!
Paul, Aaron and Kody picked up 5 awards each!
Frank and Steve received 6 awards!
Martijn picked up an impressive 8 awards!
Alex picked up an amazing 10 awards!

Please note all calculations are done by my very poor maths so don€™t be surprised if it is inaccurate! A big thank you to everyone that voted in the awards this year and an even bigger thank you to everyone that voted for me, especially for the hall of fame. For another year that should be it! So get designing and I€™ll see you back here next year! Merry Christmas to all!