Some nice videos there
It may take me a little while to get my videos uploaded. I'm afraid I wasn't as dedicated with my camera this time so footage may not be the best quality (i.e. might not always be pointing at the action!) but there are a good few fights in there nonetheless.

Congratulations to Mark and the Big Nipper team for taking the top spot with Little Flipper 3; you have some of the toughest and most reliable machines around and have been consistently excellent for years so it's only fair that you finally have the title of No.1
Well done also to Michael with Explosion for coming a close 2nd and to Will for, quite frankly, a brilliant 3rd place finish for a first-time machine. Congrats to Alex too for reclaiming the Annihilator championship.

As usual, a great deal of thanks has to be expressed to the Coopers and Co for once again running a fantastic event. The integration into the exhibition ensured that there was always a large audience watching the fights which is always nice, and the Repair Zone was a handy addition that was well used throughout the weekend!
I don't know if it's just me, but the Gadget Show Live itself definitely seems a lot more impressive when they're promoting it on the programme; after one wander round it I didn't have any inclination to go and see anything again (girls clad in tartan short shorts aside ) but maybe I'm just not gadgety-minded enough.

Drumroll was total and utter pish, but I'll save that for my build thread

On the topic of judges' decisions, the Boner v Beauty 4 and Annihilator semi-final fights were the only two that stuck out as being controversial in my opinion. I don't want to open up a can of worms (as they probably wouldn't taste very nice) but Boner lost his fight despite being the superior machine because he was reduced to one wheel for roughly half of the fight, yet another robot earlier in the event (can't remember who) took two points in the qualifiers despite running on one wheel for the majority of the battle and one of its opponents only got one point after it drove into the pit near the end despite being fully functional up until that point.

I probably ought to read the judging rules again but I thought that if a robot can't demonstrate controlled translation across the arena within 30 seconds - in other words, move forward or backwards, left or right using both drive wheels - then it gets counted out. If that's the case the Boner v Beauty 4 decision was correct, but going by the earlier precedent set in the aforementioned qualifier, it should have gone to Boner.

With the Annihilator fight, there are two strong arguments for the two different possible outcomes and it's already been covered in this thread, so all I'll say is that a restart would have been the fairest thing to do.

But hey, it's all done with now, so let's let the winners enjoy it
And I hope the Robo Challenge guys will get a chance to recover now!