Slap 'Em Silly vs. Rambite 2.0
The judges say: 24-21 victory for Stealth Terminator
The fans say: 23-22 victory for M.O.E.
Scott: I'm actually a little stuck on Damage here. As we saw, M.O.E. spent the majority of the fight without a working spinning weapon. But near the end, it spun up again, so Stealth Terminator did not break it. Hmm... I guess if it's temporary, it's not really damage, is it? Bots can't repair themselves mid-fight... Okay, since no detectable damage was done to M.O.E., and a fair amount of detectable damage (missing skirts) was done to Stealth Terminator, M.O.E.'s getting the sweep in the Damage category.
Stealth Terminator was clearly the aggressor in this fight. M.O.E. spent a lot of time running away to try to spin its blade, and that doesn't count against its aggression. But as M.O.E. did that, Stealth Terminator was all over it. The bold charges in the very beginning, plus keeping M.O.E. from spinning up a good deal of the time, give Stealth Terminator four of the Aggression points. M.O.E. gets one point for holding Stealth Terminator by the screw and for that final charge (the hit came in after the buzzer; the charge did not).
Strategy... Stealth Terminator rarely deviated from its strategy of "charge forward, try to put the arm under M.O.E., and lift." When M.O.E. first lost its blade, it spent a good deal of time trying to escape to spin up. It took M.O.E. a while to realize its only chance was to push. And then M.O.E. briefly tested whether its front end would push more effectively (shouldn't you know which end of your bot is better for pushing before a fight begins?). Finally, at the end, when M.O.E.'s blade comes back to life -- watch M.O.E.'s tires as Stealth Terminator pushes it along the spike strip. M.O.E. is trying to push backward on Stealth Terminator! That's just plain bad strategy when you have a big spinning thing working in the front. However, because Stealth Terminator had a little trouble successfully implementing its strategy and because M.O.E. did stick with pushing backward for a part of the pushing match, I'll give M.O.E. a point.
Shin: Eeyah, this...wasn't too fun to decide between. Some certain inconveniences in this battle made it REALLY tough to determine, at least in my eyes, who should've won. So here goes nothing, I guess.
The battle started out with a pretty obvious scene of who had the advantage and who didn't. Plate after plate of armor was being torn off Stealth Terminator; I figured, had M.O.E.'s weapon not been idle for a good chunk of the fight, the fight itself would kind of be like a HW version of Minion vs. Toro from Season 3. Except a lot less devastating and sparkly and stuff. But seeing as I'm kind of a damage-biased person, I was easily impressed with the evil damage M.O.E. was giving to Stealth Terminator. Even at the end~ BAM! Really entertaining, and it certainly looked painful.
However, once it died down, Stealth Terminator started making up for his damage...except in my mind, he never really DID anything to M.O.E. Never was M.O.E. thwarted by a hazard, nor was he even flipped. It was basically, as Neil Muzzy said, a bunch of pushing and shoving crap. Even then, it didn't seem to me Stealth Terminator was dominating the push/shove scene all too much. I think it's obvious he has more torque than M.O.E., but not necessarily to the point where he was pushing M.O.E. around all over the box. Stealth Terminator made a LOT of flipping attempts, and save for one time where M.O.E. was tilting on his side for a while, all those attempts were more or less a waste of COČ or whatever it is that Stealth Terminator uses. He actually used that flipper better as a carrying device, but even THEN, with M.O.E. at Stealth Terminator's mercy, no destruction resulted in holding M.O.E. up for a little period of time.
Despite the fact that M.O.E. was pretty wussy without his ditch-cutter, he did at least put up a fight, as he repeatedly backed in to Stealth Terminator, which I'm sure helped make sure M.O.E. wasn't completely made a bitch out of. Of course, that was the only other thing M.O.E. could really do. So it was a pretty repetitive strategy~ but in some ways, I think it worked in keeping M.O.E. undamaged.
To Stealth Terminator's credit, somewhere later in the fight he got in a good pop to M.O.E. that sent him flying into the wall, and soon after he was able to get M.O.E. stuck under his lifting arm...yet once again, this doesn't really DO anything except trap M.O.E. (after closely looking at it, it seems M.O.E.'s tires weren't getting any traction)...and the two just end up...sitting there for a while. Whee. The action doesn't kick up again until M.O.E.'s released, where his blade FINALLY works again and he gets that last pop in. I'll commend for Stealth Terminator never chickening out to strike M.O.E. throughout the fight...even while the ditch-cutter was functional. But M.O.E. wasn't exactly playing chicken himself...thus is why the Aggression points are so close.
Oh well. That fight was pretty tough to sort out...
Xrayspex: MOE starts off dominating the fight, putting a number of hits on Stealth Terminator and causing a lot of damage to ST's armor. Then the ditch cutter weapon breaks, and the whole fight changes. Without fear of damage from the ditch cutter, ST becomes more aggressive, actively chasing down MOE, getting under MOE with the lifting arm, and lifting/pushing MOE a number of times. Now the lifting arm may be lame because it cannot invert or toss MOE halfway across the box, but a lift is a lift, and it scores points. Overall, I did think that MOE was the more aggressive of the two so I gave MOE the 3-2 aggression point advantage.
For damage, MOE caused a bunch of damage to ST's armor, but ST's lifting arm and drive system continued to function. MOE's ditch cutter stopped working, and in the grand scheme of things, a broken primary weapon is more catastrophic than some missing armor. That said, it did not look like ST actively sought out the weapon and destroyed it, in fact it didn't look like ST had the ability to really inflict damage at all to MOE. And eventually the weapon started up again, at which point more damage was inflicted on ST's armor. So MOE loses 2 points for spending half the fight without a weapon, because without the weapon, MOE could not damage ST at all.
For strategy, MOE's strategy was to destroy the opponent with the weapon. MOE partially executed this by tearing off a bunch of ST's armor, but nothing majorly critical on ST was damaged/rendered unusable. And without the weapon, there really wasn't anything that MOE could do to stop ST. MOE tried the alternate strategy of pushing ST around, but ST was the superior bot in a pushing match. MOE had no strategy at this point. ST's strategy appeared to be to get the lifting arm under the opponent, then lift and carry. Once the ditch cutter was gone, ST was able to effectively implement this strategy. When MOE changed strategies to try and push, ST was able to adapt and win the pushing fight. Because MOE appeared to be without strategy during parts of the fight, I gave the strategy advantage to ST.
Slap 'Em Silly vs. Rambite 2.0
The judges say: 29-16 victory for Slap 'Em Silly
The fans say: 39-6 victory for Slap 'Em Silly
Scott: Aggression is actually a really interesting situation here. The Judges' Guide specifically states that pushing an opponent to hazards does not count too much toward Aggression. But that's all Slap 'Em Silly did in this fight. And Rambite made maybe one aggressive move the entire time. So how in the world do you score this? Obviously Slap 'Em Silly gets the advantage, but by how much? Looks like a case of some aggression against no aggression whatsoever. If it was none against none, I'd score it 3-2. But when it's some against none, I'm giving no aggression no points.
Thankfully for me, Slap 'Em Silly used the sledgehammer to break Rambite's spinner, so Damage is easy. No damage versus disabling a weapon means all the points go to Slap 'Em Silly.
Slap 'Em Silly's strategy is simple -- remain on the opponent at all times and push it to hazards. And dang, Slap 'Em Silly is really good at carrying that strategy out. But Rambite did have its own strategy -- run away. And Rambite constantly stuck to that strategy, I have to admit that. For sticking to one strategy, Rambite gets a point from me. And that's it.
Shin: Ahh, this was pretty...sad. Rambite's so fun to watch...I guess it's pretty obvious that Rambite's not beefy enough of a spinner to do any significant damage to Slap 'Em Silly. Something Phrizbee-sized could take that thing on...but Rambite? Nah. Even after a few good clean hits, it was pretty obvious that Rambite was powerless against Slap 'Em Silly.
Rambite did try his best though-- the best a...dinky little spinner could do when he wasn't spending time going Mauler and doing an awesome self-right. Or being...tossed around the box by a killsaw. Try as he might, he still couldn't make a significant scar on Slap 'Em Silly...who was also all over Rambite, and of course throwing him into any hazard possible. Which is why Slap 'Em Silly got the edge in Aggression.
Neither bot got too thrashed...well...um...Slap 'Em Silly didn't. Except most of Rambite's damage was inflicted by the hazards. But since Slap 'Em Silly PROMPTED many of those hazard damages...I guess he gets the credit for it.
There's not too much strategy available for Rambite...being a spinner and all...Slap 'Em Silly had a pretty effective strategy, though, and he executed it well. To summate, Slap 'Em Silly pretty much dominated the fight, but, we all knew that, didn't we...?
Xrayspex: This fight was a blowout. R2.0's spinning arm was completely ineffectual against SES. It went over the top of SES, which allowed SES to easily get under R2.0 with the wedge and deliver R2.0 to every box hazard.
SES was easily the aggressor of this fight so he got all the aggression points. For damage, R2.0 sampled every box hazard, while inflicting no damage on SES. SES gets all the damage points. R2.0 gets one strategy point because there were two times where R2.0 tried to run away from SES long enough to spin the arm up to speed.