Post-Champs Event Shakedown
(TL;DR warning - champs were awesome, bots did well)

Can't believe it's been over a week already since everything kicked off, time goes way too quickly.

The World Championships were an absolute blast! Thanks to everyone involved, from the Coopers for organising, to all the roboteers for the laughter and socialising. This year's event will stay in the memory for a long time.

It was a reasonably successful event overall for the team. Drumroll made it all the way through to the top ten (10th to be exact :P) and Reaver managed a respectable 8 points by finishing second in each of its fights, despite some rather questionable driving. Here's a quick run-down:

Drumroll v Mini Mighty Mouse v Galactus - Mini Mighty Mouse was out from quite early on, leaving the main tussle between the two drums. Scored some pretty big hits on Galactus, bending his thick tooth quite a lot while damaging the teeth on Drumroll's new drum a bit. Galactus was down to one-wheel drive and gyro-danced into the pit. KO - 4 points

Drumroll v Minimoth v Hannibalito 3 - Got flipped about a few times by Minimoth and managed a little nibble on Hannibalito 3. H3 died quite early on and Minimoth seemed to be struggling with one side of drive. My drum had stopped as well due to the small on/off switch cable getting pulled into the timing pulley and mangled. Should have just kept out of the way with Minimoth's drive misbehaving, but I went back in and suddenly Minimoth's other drive kicked in, catching Drumroll at the edge of the arena and flipping it OOTA. 2nd - 2 points

Drumroll v Hatchet 2 v Conker 3 - Spun up and headed for Hatchet, who dived out the way and set me on a collision course with Conker 3. C3 caught the side armour and launched Drumroll into the air. Landed back down but kept on going, unlike Conker who conked out. Hatchet then struck a blow on the underside of Drumroll (no damage - puny axe!) and its link promptly popped out. Victory to Drumroll! KO - 4 points.

Drumroll v Loki 2 v Minimoth - Figured I only needed 1 point to make it through to the knock-out stages, but was gunning for 2 or 4. Landed a good hit on Loki early on an flipped it over, but it self-righted. A short tussle later, I drove away from Minimoth in a bid to avoid being flipped out again, and slammed into a wall. In a split second Loki, who was next to me, drove forward and shoved Drumroll down the pit, sending itself in too. Last - 1 point

Thought 11 points would be enough to go through but it was looking like a massive play-off was going to be necessary. It literally hinged on the result of the very last qualifier. If Night Fury won by a knock-out, we'd have a play-off. If it won by judges' decision or came 2nd or 3rd, no play-off. It made for nervy viewing and almost went the full three minutes against No Toy minus the axe, but a huge cheer went up when Night Fury ended up in the pit with about 20 seconds to spare (no offence guys!)

The knock-out stages were as follows:

Drumroll v Beauty 8 - Kicked Beauty's arse after it was rebuilt following its fight against Conker and Shard. The flipper wasn't working and the chassis was damaged, but some bad driving from me allowed it to push me in the pit. Damn.
Drumroll v Galactus v Little Hitter - Mangled Galactus's teeth again (one sheared off) and employed some skillful tactics against Little Hitter after its axe failed. Stayed away from the pit and finally managed to immobilise LH on its back.
Drumroll v Explosion - Got flipped out in about 20 seconds. Damn.
Drumroll v Beauty 8 v Rabid M8 - Two went through from this losers' meleé, and since B8 dispatched Rabid M8 pretty quickly, I didn't need to do anything.
Drumroll v Tiny Toon - A good ding-dong battle lasting the full three minutes despite the pit being open for most of it. Tiny Toon was the more effective/aggressive though and deserved to progress.
Drumroll v Disturbance v Mr Mangle v Little Nipper v Minimoth - Third losers' meleé of the competition for me, but not third time lucky. Got nipped by LN and in my panic to get away I drove across the arena and ended up right near the pit. I was upside down and pushed forward to get away, but that sent me backwards, into the pit and crashing out of the competition.

Drumroll v 722 v Galactus v Shiny - The drum-off! Dave made a trophy specifically for it, comprising of pieces from all the entrants. Galactus got OOTA'd by Shiny, who then broke down(ish) and 722 and Drumroll went at each other for the remainder. Got flipped a few times by 722 and it definitely had the upper hand, when Drumroll's fuse blew. Damn. Ultimate bragging rights to Mouldy, although Drumroll is statistically still the best drum-bot in the UK

Gladiator - Went in for this one. Didn't have the battery life to last 8-10 minutes, so I planned to stay out of trouble and use as little battery as possible until the last couple of robots remained, and then attack. But when the battle started and the mayhem ensued, I just went for it. Was doing alright as well until the fuse blew again. Boo.

So 12 fights in total. Doesn't sound that much, but that's enough to keep you busy across four days. Quite happy with Drumroll too, took a lot of hits and forces from impacts, but kept on going until the fuse issue kicked in in the last couple of fights (going to have to look into that).

Not really got detailed recollections of Reaver's fights, except that it was expectedly random and barely got to use the claw. My dad then broke the claw when trying to test it in the pits (he's got boulders for thumbs ) so we took that out and just ran it as a pusher for the rest of the event. It did a few whiteboards, got one wheel smashed by DB10 and had a banana installed later in the weekend. Standard.

So, all in all, I'm happy with how things turned out. Drumroll's chassis is relatively unscathed though I've got a couple of things to change on it. The drum, though an improvement on last year, has a couple of quite bashed teeth and a couple of not-so-badly bashed teeth, mostly due to the impacts with Galactus. The needle roller bearing cage on one side is partially damaged too, having lost five bearings, but it still runs well enough. Will probably keep it as a spare and get a new one made, with a couple of improvements to combat the tooth degradation. The outer armour needs a little work on it but, again, nothing major. Will get some strip-down photos when I'm back in my workshop next weekend.

As for Reaver, not really sure what to do. With the claw, it doesn't run upside down and it was bang on the weight limit, so no scope for adding something to aid self-righting. I'm thinking of remaking Carcinus for my dad, then getting Onyx back up and running as a whiteboard/non-spinner robot. Don't really need more robots than that, so will probably just pilfer bits from Reaver for those bots. Nothing's set in stone yet though, will see what's what, again when I'm back in the shop.

If you managed to sit through all of that, here are some pictures as means of a reward: http://s31.photobucket.com/user/ayrs...onships%202015

Got videos as well which will be uploaded eventually, and a montage down the line too.