Last updated November 28, 2002

Welcome to The Fans Judge! At this site, fans of "BattleBots" will take a good, close look at all of the televised bouts that did not end in a knockout. For each of these bouts, the fans will give the combatants points in the categories of Aggression, Strategy, and Damage -- just like the real BattleBots judges do. The points will be tallied, and we'll see which robots the fans choose as the winners.

Why are we doing this? There are a couple of reasons:

  • We want to know exactly why each robot won. Sure, it's kind of obvious in a 42-3 decision, but when the totals are close, we want to see exactly what made Bot A triumph over Bot B.

  • Hey, we're fans. And like fans of any sport, we get mad when we feel the wrong call has been made. This is our chance to express our views on which robot we think should have won. Or at least be humbled when we find out the right decision was made, after all.

Do we pretend to be the ultimate authority on which robots were actually victorious? No, of course not. The official BattleBots judges were selected based on their knowledge of all things robot, and we're just fans. But that doesn't mean our scores are worthless. While the real judges only get to see each fight once, we have them on tape, and we will watch each fight multiple times before making our decisions. We're also not under any pressure to submit our scores immediately after the fight ends, allowing us to reflect on what happened for a longer period of time. We know that it's hard being a judge live at the competition, and we wouldn't do any better. But we like to think that our scores here are a pretty good assessment of what happened in the Box.

Click on an episode below to see a breakdown of exactly how each of the fans voted, along with explanations from each fan on why they gave out points the way they did. After each episode number is a list of the fights that are being judged, so don't read unless you've already seen the episode (or don't mind reading the results).

(If you don't know how the BattleBots scoring system works, click here for an explanation.)


Note: The pages utilize tables to summarize the scores. While the tables are perfectly readable in Netscape, they do look better in Explorer. Sorry.


Season five

Episode one -- No non-KO fights
Episode two -- M.O.E. vs. Stealth Terminator -- Slap 'Em Silly vs. Rambite 2.0
Episode three -- Wireless Wonder vs. Wedge of Doom -- Twin Paradox vs. S.O.B.
Episode four -- No non-KO fights
Episode five -- Wrath Jr. vs. Complete Control -- Phrizbee-Ultimate vs. Toro -- Vladiator vs. Pro-AM
Episode six -- Gammacide vs. Dreadnought -- Sublime vs. Death by Monkeys
Episode seven -- Vlad the Impaler II vs. Spitfire -- T-Minus vs. TriDent
Episode eight -- No non-KO fights
Episode nine -- Minion vs. Codebreaker
Episode ten -- Hexy Jr. vs. Sallad
Episode eleven -- T-Minus vs. Double Agent -- BatteRat vs. OverKill
Episode twelve -- Diesector vs. Dreadnought -- Mauler 51-50 vs. MechaVore
Episode thirteen -- Dr. Inferno Jr. vs. Tentoumushi 8.0 -- No Apologies vs. Son of Whyachi -- Huggy Bear vs. Bad Attitude




Questions? Comments? E-mail the editor.
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