Thanks everyone for voting, the lines are now closed, the results have been counted and verified, whatever that may mean, and without further ado may I present:
THE FIGHTING ROBOT ASSOCIATION VAPOURBOT AWARDS - 2010
Most Original Design: We had an almost unanimous vote here - one of last year's joint winners retains its title outright, the winner is Steven McGregor's VENUS FLY TRAP II.
Best Design: This is, somehow, another reprise of last year's winner - it's one of my own, Joey McConnell's NIDHOGG³.
Most Original Designer: By just one more vote, the winner is...hang on here...*is reassured that the votes are correct*...myself, Joey McConnell.
Best Designer: This is, deservedly, a shared award - a big round of applause to both Andrew Jackson and Kody Kunz, both consistent producers of brilliant and effective machines.
Most Improved Vapourboteer: This award honours the people whose contribution to the community, design quality, and battle quality has grown the most over the past twelve months - deservingly it goes to Jack Orr, whose performances with O.I.D. and I.A.N. over that time speak for themselves.
Best Sportsman: Another tied award - perennial Dutch sportsman Martijn Benschop shares this with myself, Joey McConnell. It'd be unsporting of us not to share
Best Clusterbot: A majority decision, from what is admittedly becoming an increasingly narrow field - the winner is Frank Goacher's DOOR STOPS.
Best Interchangable Robot: This award is another that serves a smaller pool of potential winners, but the performances this year of Alex Holt's SLAMMER VI fully deserve recognition.
Best Antweight: We - that is to say, myself and Andy - added this category this year in recognition of the increasing number of both real and fictional antweights and tournaments on the vapourbot scene. The inaugural winner of this special five centimetre high trophy is Kody Kunz's FLAMBERGE - well done and don't lose your award!
Best Walker: This was an unusually tight category this year - in the end Daniel Stickler's (with input from J McConnell) HEX APPEAL won out to prove it was the best.
Best Shuffler: And at last a winner that isn't Whirligig!...no offence meant to Mr. McGregor of courseIt's Lian Walsh's METALLIC DOOM that proves good enough to steal Whirly's crown.
Best Tracked Robot: An award that honours truly the most refined and perfect form of all terrain locomotion designed by man, this goes to a robot that could also fit that description itself with some tweaking, heh - Alex Holt's DARKESTAR.
Best Rammer: Martijn Benschop's FLICK OF THE WRIST gains this title, owing partly to a very successful current run in the Vapourbot Grand Prix.
Best Flipper: This category has, somehow, resulted in a three way tie! My own GABRIEL V shares in the title, but the real spoils go to Andrew Jackson with, amazingly, two of his robots - WEDGA TRITON and GEHENNA.
Best Axe: The winner this year by a clear majority is Alex Holt's BLACK PANTHER, hatcheting its way to some strong tournament performances including a heat victory in Fanfic Wars.
Best Vertical Spinner: ...we have another three way tie! Frank Goacher's THE 6ISC, Daniel Stickler's 9.9 ON THE RICHTER SCALE, and Lewis Matthews' EXOTHERM shared and indeed shredded the votes.
Best Horizontal Spinner: For the second year running, this goes to one of mine, EYE OF RAN II, which tore its way into some peoples' hearts. (for the record, the best way to a man's heart is straight through the ribcage, ideally at low throttle to avoid excessive inaccuracy and ludicrous gibs)
Best Full Body Spinner: This was quite a diverse category, with the eventual victor being the quietly impressive, fantastically named SIT ON THIS AND ROTATE by Tracy Farber.
Best Crusher: Picking up a concerning amount of awards tonight, this year's winner is Joey McConnell's NIDHOGG³.
Best Other Weapon: Celebrating the innovative, the weird, the wonderful, and the just plain 'none of the above', this year we have another tie - the winners are Steven McGregor's VENUS FLY TRAP II, with its flipping and trapping device, and Matt Fowler's ASSEGAI, with its kinetic energy battering ram.
Best Minor Tournament: With so many minor tournaments going on, it was difficult to find any one winner - ultimately this category was decided by one vote, and it is Lewis Matthews' MECHANICAL MAELSTROM - ANNIHILATION that triumphed over the Vapourbot Grand Prix.
Best Major Tournament: Perhaps an unlikely winner, but certainly the biggest and most consistent tournament currently running and very much deserving of the title - it's Samuel Park's ROBOBASH!!! SERIES 2.
Best Battle: This year was unusually tight, with both battles nominated coming from one tournament - and what a tournament that was, with Steven McGregor's Dutch Grand Prix pipping his own British Grand Prix to the title, with a battle in a very unusual arena that featured water, danger from falling crates, and Flick of the Wrist ultimately triumphing in a judges' decision over 9.9 On The Richter Scale, Killobite Sigma, Axeon 4.0, O.I.D., Slammer VI, Eye of Ran II and Delirium Tremors.
Best Writer: And the writer of the best battle, Steven McGregor, deservedly takes the writer's award home too.
Best New Vapourbot: In what was sadly a reduced field, the winner was one of the earlier new machines to be designed and also one of the most effective and simplest - Andrew Jackson's EXERTION II.
Best Team: TEAM ZLAYERZ, assembled by Kody Kunz, were the winners of this award - an incredibly diverse, numerous, colourful and effective group of robots across all weight classes.
Best Vapourbot Of 2010
Unusually this was a close vote, even considering that only six people placed votes in this category. N³ garnered one vote, Flick of the Wrist two, but with a majority of three votes the best vapourbot of 2010 is the simple, elegant, and frighteningly effective GEHENNA by Andrew Jackson, which sets the standard all all-rounders must live up to.
Best Vapourboteer Of 2010
This was not quite as close - the only barriers to the winner were a handful of people who had totally the wrong idea about, bizarrely, myself.
INDUCTIONS TO THE VAPOURBOT HALL OF FAME
We induct four robots this year, from a very strong field of nominees including past champions, award winners, and iconic designs:
THE CRASHING BORE, created by Frank Goacher
One of those original vapourbots whose creation can be traced back to the dawn of fanfic, and which probably happened some time before that, The Crushing/Crashing Bore has been around more or less unchanged ever since, a four wheeled boxy wedge with a mousetrap/guillotine weapon, and is one of the very few vapourbots to ever progress beyond the stage of 'vapour' (even if ultimately it never progressed beyond a rolling chassis). It won 'Best Other Weapon for three consecutive years, has always won fights and stayed competitive, and is probably Mr. Goacher's iconic robot.
It isn't his most successful though...
THE DISC, created by Frank Goacher
...because this is!Winner of Velociraptor's Fanfic Tournament Series 5, up until today the single most decorated vapourbot in existence, and recipient of the Best Vertical Spinner award for an amazing five consecutive years - and again this year! - there isn't a lot that can be said about the 'barbell of doom' that hasn't been said before - as a design its combat record speaks for itself, and it demonstrated perhaps more than any other vapourbot in the early days what culd be achieved technically if you let slip from the bounds of practicality just a fraction. And it remains competitive to this day, while remaining the same vertically spinning axlebot design we've all come to know and...know.
DARKESTAR, created by Alex Holt
Darkestar is a difficult robot for me to induct personally since I have to take some of the responsibility for its success, hehe...the concept of a tracked vapourbot with a triangular flywheel went through two iterations as a horizontal spinner, the triangle points effectively cutting through the sides, front and rear of the robot, before it settled into a modular design with a vertical weapon and was entered into - and went on to win - the Chevron Championship, a then new tournament, and subsequently gained wider respect and, for the past two years, the Best Tracked Robot award. It is personally a design I have always admired greatly, from both a technical and artistic point of view and with it now being firmly established on the scene, the induction could prove to be the beginning of greater things.
NIDHOGG, created by Joey McConnell
...ye gods! XD I honestly never thought this would happen...Nidhogg, in all its forms, has been my take on the Tiberius design; something that focuses on controlling and pitting opponents rather than causing damage by using forks and a crusher to hold opponents in a position from which they cannot escape. Its battle record is modest - a victory in the first Mechanical Maelstrom Annihilator being the highlight - but I am led to believe its induction is more down to its technical innovation; while nothing in vapourbots can be said to be truly engineered, with the current incarnation N³ I did considerable research into hydrostatic technology and produced something realistic yet incredibly powerful, and when I look back at the stats I have to wonder what on earth I was thinking - and indeed, how that could have led to where I am now.
It's in there though, so I must have done something correct ;P
INDUCTION TO THE VAPOURBOTEER HALL OF FAME
*reads results* *collapses*
...if it has come to this...then the world has seriously gone quite mad. Many thanks to everyone who voted me in though...it means an awful lot to me...and also thanks to absolutely everybody who has ever helped me out in my vapourbot career. You know who you are, even if you don't. ^_^Originally Posted by Andrew Jackson
FIN
That brings this year's self-celebration to an end! Congratulations and thanks to everybody who participated in 2010, especially if you won or were nominated for an award, and here's hoping for a healthy 2011 and a similar, if not better turnout 12 months from now.
And
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