Update

Well the champs came and went, and already I'm wishing there was another one round the corner - I want to get in the arena again!

Drumroll did exceptionally well by its usual standards, going all the way to the semi-finals. It sustained a little damage but nothing lasting and its all back together and ready to go now. Kaizer suffered considerably more damage and is now up for a rebuild.

In Kaizer's first fight, it took a hit from Miss Scorpion after ramming into Wedgie. Both Miss Scorpion and Kaizer became stuck in the corner and Wedgie came along to flip us out, followed almost instantly by Miss Scorpion.
Its second fight saw it take on Ploughbot and LS3, where it again took damage, more this time, against Team Nipper's creation and then became beached on its front forks, which were stuck in the below-ground-level position.
And for its final competition fight it had Savage Evo and Cyberon. It took another beating from Savage but lasted longer than Cyberon, so that left it on 4 points which wasn't enough to see it progress.
It did enter several whiteboards throughout the weekend too though and again took some damage so its in definite need of reconstruction and significant strengthening.

Drumroll started it first fight strongly, managing to flip Stripper over onto its back immobilising it (although Stripper did leave an 8mm deep gash in the HDPE side before this). I then decided that I couldn't cause much damage to Ironside so opted to open the pit......and then drove straight into it!! So I got 2 points for that battle.
Then up against Miss Scorpion and Annihilation, Drumroll took a hit on the side from Miss Scorpion's bar and then a drum-to-bar hit resulted in Miss Scorpion becoming immobilised. I think the bar got bent a bit too. Annihilation received some airtime and a couple of hits, and during a push the pit got opened. A couple of hits later, the bolt came out the end of the drum shaft (same thing as what happened at the industrial estate testing pre-Rebel) and the drum thumped to the deck, unable to spin. A tense shoving match ensued until somehow I managed to get Annihilation lined up behind Miss Scorpion and pushed them both into the pit! Drumroll seemed to gain extreme traction all of a sudden at that point but I won't complain because it won me the match. 4 points.
Final league match came against Mini Mighty Mouse. I was worried about this one becuase MMM is a tough little machine and while the flipper isn't the most powerful, it is effective, constantly flip flip flipping. The roll cage came out for Drumroll to hopefully survive that, but in the end it didn't need it, as Mini Mighty Mouse was suffering from drive problems and wasn't its usual nippy self. Drumroll was able to knock it about the arena a bit until it was immobilised drive-wise and then pushed it into the pit. The 4 points for that victory took me to 10 points overall which was enough to make it through to the knockout rounds.

Next up was Beauty 3, which was over quite quickly as Drumroll pitted it, but to be honest it felt like a hollow victory as Beauty 3 never moved - I think it was down to clearance issues on the floor. But that titanium chassis makes some nice sparks
Then against Aftershock Drumroll started strongly, getting some hits in but Aftershock's HDPE shell was never under any threat of major damage. Will managed to get a flip in and it was all that was needed - Drumroll's self-righting hoops buckled a bit when the robot was upside-down and it failed to self-right correctly and was counted out.

Into the losers melee against Explosion and LS3; both myself and Explosion opted to go for LS3 first as it was the one we both felt was the strongest and therefore had to go
After some initial impacts against each other, at somepoint Drumroll swung round and hit Explosion and it went flying out of the arena (flukey hit) which left me stuck with LS3! LS3 seemed to be suffering a bit with drive (I can't remember most of this fight as I've not got it on camera ) but Drumroll and LS3 went disc-to-drum, there was a huge impact, and LS3 stopped! So Drumroll went back into the main competition (woo!) Post mortems revealed a huge gash in the rim of LS3s disc where we had collided. I hadn't expected that :shock:

So this time it came up against Beauty 2, but when I spun up on Activate the drum suddenly stopped working and I was caught in a second of hesitation - before I knew it Beauty 2 had me flipped and then OOTA'd. This left me fighting for 3rd place against Savage Evo.
One impact was all it took. Savage Evos disc smacked the very side of the drum at the pulley and pulled the drum out at one end. It also lost all power at this point and since Savage Evo was still going on one wheel, it went on worthily to claim 3rd place.

So all in all a reasonably successful and unbelieveably fun event. Drumroll has been donated a brushless motor and controller which has some insane speed and power to it. I'm going to try and test it with the drum over my uni easter holidays (in a couple of weeks) but the forces going through it as a result of the extra power may be too much for the current chassis and might have to be kept for Mk.2 (coming 2010).

For the mean time, here's some pictures from the event:
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...champs%202009/