Four robots remain in the competition. During the opening, the announcer hangs a label on each of the builders in an effort to make the audience root for somebody based on first impressions. He describes Bite Force's Paul Ventimiglia as "the young gun who signals a changing of the guard." I personally have seen Paul compete since at least 2005, so I'm not entirely sure how accurate that is. Alexander Rose and Reason Bradley of Inertia Labs are "the childhood friends that buck the competition... like a raging bull." Which is certainly a nice nod to the names of their previous robots, although I hesitate to point out that a bronco is a horse.
There are rapid-fire clips of the fights to come. There are generic shots of San Francisco. And then Molly welcomes us by asking, "What is it that makes a champion? Is it will? Skill? The ability to thrive under pressure? Or is it some other intangible -- an unknown force reserved for the select few?" Is she being rhetorical? 'Cause I'm fairly certain that in this case, it's the ability to build and drive a machine that is capable of defeating other machines. Also, it's the luck of the draw of who you face in the brackets. Are those the answers you're looking for?
Chris reviews what's left of the bracket with not one but two allusions to the NCAA basketball tournament. Does that mean the builders aren't getting paid? Hey-oh!
After the hosts pump up the audience (wait... they really shot these studio segments while the audience was present?), Molly tosses to a package about the fights Tombstone and Bronco have fought earlier in this tournament. In addition to the spinning bar that we saw Tombstone break in its previous fight, several internal components also broke due to the forces generated by all of those impacts with Witch Doctor.
The recap of Bronco's progress is used as an excuse to show those amazing flips it delivered to Stinger in its previous fight. Fine by me. In the pits, the members of Inertia Labs are making secret modifications to Bronco in preparation for its fight against Tombstone. We see a shot of the Hardcore Robotics team members looking over at Inertia Labs. But because the camera was shooting Inertia Labs from the other side while they were making their alterations, the image is flipped horizontally so it doesn't look like both teams are facing the left side of the screen. The editors just hope you don't notice that all of the text in the Inertia Labs shot is backward.
Back in the studio, the hosts impart what might be useful information, but it's framed in the context of the made-up rankings, so I don't pay any attention.
Then it's time for the robots to enter the arena. As Bronco is wheeled in, the cover is still concealing its modifications for this fight. It isn't until after the robot's introduction that the cover is removed to reveal what we pretty much expected -- the base of Bronco's lifting arm has been given a roughly two-foot extension, designed to get under Tombstone for the flip before Tombstone's weapon has a chance to reach the body of the robot. Fork-wedges have also been added to each side of the lifting arm to guide Tombstone into position. I don't see any apparent reduction to the side armor of Bronco, so I guess it was underweight for its previous fights.
The danger, of course, being that with the tip of the flipping arm now being so far away, and moving so fast when the flipping arm activates, there's a danger of warping the shape of the extension if only the end of it catches Tombstone during a flip, thereby reducing its functionality. Let's start this fight and se what happens.
The lights turn green. Tombstone spins up and Bronco doesn't bother with the full-length box rush (since its weapon is presumably scraping the floor, it more likely than not would have hit a seam in the floor, anyway). Instead, after briefly inching forward, Bronco instead decides to back itself into a corner, away from all of the arena hazards. It's going to sit there, weapon facing its opponent, and wait for Tombstone to approach.
This is essentially the same strategy we saw Inertia Labs employ back in the Comedy Central days when Toro fought Phrizbee-Ultimate. They willingly forwent any potential aggression points in the interest of avoiding unnecessary damage to the sides or rear of their robot. I understand that one bad hit will render the robot useless, but I maintain that if they had just gone for it and actively attacked Phrizbee-Ultimate from the beginning of that fight, they would have won.
Still, Tombstone is a more dangerous opponent, so they're going to make sure that during the first collision, they have the opportunity to activate that flipping arm. Tombstone knows that there's no point in trying to go around (Bronco will just pivot in place to meet it), so it slowly drives in, spinning bar first. Bronco lunges and activates the flipping arm. There's a shower of sparks. As Bronco lands on its wheels, Tombstone goes off balance, ultimately flipping upside down. Bronco tries to take advantage of a disoriented Tombstone, but misses. Tombstone can't turn around in time to take advantage of Bronco's miss.
In the next collision, Tombstone is able to hit the side of Bronco and bounce away before Bronco can fire its lifting arm. Naturally, the hit bends the side armor protecting Bronco's wheels.
Bronco, a little more slowly, turns in one place. Tombstone uses the opportunity to attack the rear of Bronco. This causes Chris to exclaim, "Bronco uses its tail to jam up Tombstone's blade!" Et tu, Chris?
Tombstone then maneuvers itself into the corner, with Bronco positioned lengthwise, blocking its escape. Chris says that Bronco is trying to box Tombstone in. Sorry, Chris, but to my eyes, it looks like that previous hit pressed Bronco's armor up against its front left wheel, inhibiting its functionality. Bronco is just trying to figure out how to compensate for the reduced mobility -- it was Tombstone's idea to attack the rear. And then Tombstone glanced off the wall, putting itself in the corner.
With the side of Bronco wide open, Tombstone attacks, partially disconnecting the right side armor. Tombstone drives out of the corner and in its next attack, tears that piece of armor clean off. Bronco responds by getting the very end of its flipper extension under the front of Tombstone and lifting. Unfortunately, Tombstone isn't knocked too much out of balance, whereas Bronco is now on its head.
It takes Bronco multiple attempts to get right side up, all while Tombstone is buzzing around underneath. When Bronco finally lands right side up, it does so by landing on Tombstone's spinning bar, which tears the right front tire off of Bronco's body.
Bronco is up against the wall -- its right front tire is missing and its left front tire is pressed against its crumpled side armor. I see a brief twitch, but Bronco's mobility is severely impaired. Tombstone tries to finish the job with a strong blow to the left front corner of Bronco. The hit causes Bronco to land tilted against the arena wall -- it uses its flipping arm to get back on the floor, but that appears to be its primary source of movement at this point.
Bronco can't drive -- maybe it's caught on a piece of debris? To check, the flipping arm is activated, and Bronco performs a 360° flip... onto its discarded piece of side armor. Well, that won't help. Bronco activates the arm again, but that just puts it upside down in a position where the wall will get in the way of its next flip.
Bronco keeps flopping around in the corner with its flipping arm, but since it can't drive anywhere, the referee begins the countdown. As the countdown nears its end, Bronco lands right side up. Its unprotected right side is facing Tombstone, so Tombstone attacks. Bronco is knocked away (and counted out), while Tombstone is knocked sideways across the arena... with its batteries hanging out!
I daresay both robots are now immobilized, but Bronco has already been counted out. Tombstone wins the fight and has some repairs in its future.
After the replays, Alison interviews Ray and asks whether he'll be able to get Tombstone back in fighting shape for the finals. Ray is confident that he will, acknowledging his hard-working pit crew, Justin and Rick. It's nice to acknowledge that it often takes more than one person to get these robots to work.
A commercial break occurs, and now it's time to turn our attention to the Bite Force vs. Ghost Raptor fight. Bite Force is going to go into this battle looking pretty much the same as it did for its previous fight against Overhaul. For Ghost Raptor, the strategy will be to put a horizontal claw-shaped piece of metal on the end of the lifting arm and try to disable one of the tracks on Bite Force. Chuck Pitzer provides a sound bite about how he intends to rip Bite Force to shreds, shoehorning in a really blatant plug for his sponsor, Neato Robotics, in the process.
Nothing noteworthy happens during all of the introductions, so let's just get to the fight. The two robots meet in the center of the arena. Bite Force is able to get underneath Ghost Raptor, pushing it toward the corner. After a little more positioning, Bite Force is able to lift Ghost Raptor up and off if its wheels. It's a good thing Ghost Raptor's body is so compact -- I'm surprised Bite Force was able to stay right side up as it did that.
Ghost Raptor slides down Bite Force's lifting forks, so now the two robots are stuck together, with Bite Force's forks trapped inside Ghost Raptor's side wedge. None of Ghost Raptor's wheels are touching the floor, so Bite Force drives Ghost Raptor over to one of the hammers the team controls. It takes two tries, but they're able to hit Ghost Raptor with the hammer and dislodge it in the process.
Ghost Raptor is upside down, but even with the hammer getting in the way, it's able to right itself. But Bite Force is right there, forcing Ghost Raptor to hit reverse and receive another blow from the hammer. I don't think those hammers are capable of doing much damage, but they look impressive.
Bite Force chases Ghost Raptor around the arena. Ghost Raptor is able to get its lifting arm into Bite Force's body, but can't capitalize. Bite Force tries to take control of Ghost Raptor. Arena hazards start going off randomly and get in the way.
Bite Force flips Ghost Raptor onto its head. One of Ghost Raptor's front wheels just falls out of the robot. Ghost Raptor doesn't seem to be doing much moving at this point, but Bite Force decides to make sure it's dead by pushing it into a nearby screw. The screw drags Ghost Raptor up and onto it. Because the screw is directly in front of the announcers' table, Kenny says that Ghost Raptor is being chewed up -- he can't see that the weight of Ghost Raptor has stopped the screw from spinning.
The countdown begins and Team Raptor doesn't even bother trying to wiggle Ghost Raptor free. That's a knockout -- Bite Force advances to the finals.
Chris and Kenny get all hyperbolic during the replays. Alison interviews Paul Ventimiglia, who's happy that his robot functioned exactly as intended, and Chuck Pitzer, who's frustrated that Ghost Raptor was having power issues throughout the fight.
So now we know that the final fight will be between Tombstone and Bite Force, but we're only halfway through the episode. And much to my surprise and delight, they're going to fill the time with a grudge match!
After the commercial, the introductions get underway. Megan and Faruq call this a rumble, although in my opinion, you can't properly call a three-robot fight a rumble. In any event, Nightmare, Witch Doctor (and Shaman), and Overhaul are all inside the arena, ready to participate in an every-bot-for-itself fight.
Three minutes on the clock, no prizes or anything on the line -- this is just an opportunity to watch robots try to beat each other up. And I'm glad to see some destructive weapons in this fight -- I completely understand builders not wanting to risk damaging their robots when there isn't an opportunity to win anything, but most grudge matches wind up being pretty boring to watch, since they're usually between wedges (or occasionally lifters). This one should be fun.
The fight is on. The first two robots to meet are Nightmare and Overhaul (now with googly eyes on the clamping spike). But before Nightmare can do any damage, Witch Doctor attacks it from the side. Shaman tries to activate its flamethrower, producing only gas instead.
Witch Doctor hits one of Nightmare's wheel guards with its disk. Shaman gets its flamethrower working. And then all four machines get into a big chaotic confrontation near a corner of the arena. It's impossible to coherently describe, but fun to watch.
The robots all drive away from one another. After some positioning, Nightmare and Overhaul wind up double-teaming Witch Doctor. Overhaul flips the non-invertible Witch Doctor onto its head. Somewhere along the way, Overhaul's lower forks have become severely bent.
As Shaman tries to flip Witch Doctor back over (Witch Doctor is far too heavy for that to work), Overhaul focuses its attention on Nightmare. Nightmare starts to advance toward Overhaul, but then realizes that Shaman is wide open, so it changes course and uses its spinning disk to severely warp the corner of Shaman in a puff of gas.
Now Nightmare and Overhaul meet face-to-face. A few sparks, and Overhaul tries to get away. Nightmare chases after it, making several small dents in Overhaul's side armor. The two keep trying to find the best way to attack one another. Meanwhile, Shaman stays by the inverted Witch Doctor, which is now near a hammer. Whether Shaman is trying to use the hammer to flip Witch Doctor over -- or whether it's just trying to use the hammer to hit Witch Doctor -- is unclear. Anything goes in a grudge match.
Nightmare and Overhaul keep meeting face to face, but the side wedges on both robots repeatedly prevent weapon contact from occurring. Finally, Nightmare is able to reach Overhaul's lifting weapon... and separates the upper curved spike from the lower lifting apparatus! Well, I suppose Overhaul wasn't using that anyway.
That hit allows Overhaul to get underneath one of Nightmare's wheels, pushing Nightmare toward the wall. On the other side of the arena, we see that Witch Doctor is now resting face-first on its front wedge as the hammer keeps hitting it.
Overhaul is no longer driving. Witch Doctor is just getting hit by a hammer. So the referee starts a countdown. He reaches zero, and Nightmare is the winner of the fight. I love a good grudge match.
Well, that was fun, but now it's time to turn our attention back to the tournament. After the commercials, the hosts prepare to analyze the remaining two competitors. At one point, the cards that Molly was holding disappear between shots.
We see clips of the fights that we just watched earlier in this very episode. Ray goes through a list of all of the things on Tombstone that were damaged during that fight. Paul points out that he has defeated Tombstone before with his robot Brutality, a Hazard-like overhead horizontal bar spinner. That was about eight years ago, so I'd say a rematch is well overdue.
The hosts take one last look at the rankings for the two finalists. And because this is the big final fight, let's have one final appearance from their favorite verb!
"You know, this is where Paul's experience and Bite Force's modularity is a real strength. With that new big wedge he's got, I think he's going to use what's called a box rush. Right after the green light, Bite Force is going to bolt across the arena floor and try to jam Tombstone's weapon."
Thank you, Kenny! I also like that that analysis had nothing to do with the rankings, showing that even the hosts are ignoring the numbers now.
Discussion turns to how Bronco, by sitting in the corner, allowed Tombstone to get its weapon up to full speed. Thing is, Tombstone can get that weapon up to a deadly speed in the one second it takes to drive across the BattleBox. That's why you rarely see box rushes in combat robotics these days -- it almost never works.
Still, that's the color commentator's analysis of the best strategy for this fight: "Jam him early, jam him hard." Ooh, an encore!
The robots are brought into the arena. As expected, the upper clamping arm has been removed from Bite Force and a thick steel wedge has been attached to the robot. It isn't the same wedge that we saw in its first two fights -- whether this is a backup wedge or a wedge that they were saving specifically for Tombstone is unknown.
The over-the-top introductions present throughout the season somehow feel even more over-the-top for this fight. Over at arenaside, Chris and Kenny discuss what's about to happen. And not surprisingly, they take a commercial break before any fighting occurs.
After the commercials, we watch the pre-fight procedures. And remember: This is the edited version of what actually happened. It took even longer in real life.
Eventually, the fight actually begins. Bite Force does begin to drive straight across the arena, but it is far too pokey to reach Tombstone before that spinning bar has become a blur. Tombstone drives around and delivers a glancing blow to Bite Force's wedge. Not a direct hit; no damage done.
The next collision between the two machines knocks Tombstone off-balance and sends it toward the wall. It's a subtle difference, but it appears that Tombstone is a little bit slower in getting it weapon back up to speed after each collision with a wall or the floor. Given all the internal damage that Tombstone has suffered throughout this tournament, that isn't surprising.
Bite Force takes advantage, and gets Tombstone into a corner between the wall and a screw, preventing the bar from spinning. Bite Force wedges underneath, lifting both of Tombstone's wheels into the air. Bite Force lowers its lifting forks, but since they're on the other side of the wedge, that doesn't do any good.
A competitor is allowed to pin their opponent for ten seconds, and since that's ten seconds that Tombstone won't be hitting Bite Force with a terrifying spinning bar, Bite Force uses every last second available. Soon, it has to release. Tombstone spins up again.
Tombstone smacks the wedge and sides of Bite Force a few times. Holes are produced in the wedge, but the metal stays put. Bite Force briefly corrals Tombstone toward that same corner. As Tombstone escapes and once again powers up the weapon, the spin-up time has become noticeably slower. Another collision between the two, and now smoke is starting to pour from Tombstone's body.
Ray identifies his batteries as being the source of the smoke. Which means that that's pretty much the end of Tombstone's weapon. And with 1:40 left on the clock, there's not much for Tombstone to do other than stay alive and hope for an unexpected breakdown on Bite Force.
Bite Force wedges under Tombstone and pushes it around the arena. It briefly pushes Tombstone into a screw, though not far enough for the screw to drag Tombstone upward. The screw stops spinning anyway.
Tombstone gets away and tries to spin its weapon, but can't get it going fast enough to do anything to the heavily armored Bite Force. As Tombstone struggles to drive (controlling a two-wheeled robot is difficult), Bite Force is having its own trouble with its left tread.
Of course, Tombstone's one and only offensive choice was its spinning weapon -- it can now bump into Bite Force to try to show aggression, but that's about it. Bite Force wedges under Tombstone again and pushes it toward some screws. Tombstone escapes.
Bite Force raises and lowers its forks and drives in wide circles. Ray sees the driving difficulties and knows that he still has a slim chance. He tries to push Bite Force around, but Tombstone isn't designed to be a pushing robot. Still, aggression.
For the first time in this entire fight, Bite Force uses its lifting forks to lift the corner of Tombstone's immobile bar. Then gets under again for another brief lift. That isn't doing much, so for the final ten seconds of the fight, Bite Force goes back to using its wedge. Time is up, and this goes to a judges' decision.
Two episodes ago, I talked about how it's vaguely controversial that in a weapons-required tournament, a robot can win a fight by ignoring its active weapon and instead using a wedge to dominate its opponent. Once again, Bite Force has used its lifting forks only a miniscule number of times at the end of the fight, to no real effect. I'm not pointing this out to criticize the team -- it's unreasonable to expect a builder to plunge their weapon directly into the death whirlpool that is Tombstone's spinning bar. But where do you draw the line between "wedge used for self-defense" and "wedge used for offense even after the opponent no longer poses a deadly threat"? If BattleBots wants to keep holding tournaments where weapons are required, this is an issue that they're going to have to address.
The hosts look at the replays. Chris praises Kenny for correctly predicting that Bite Force would try to box rush Tombstone. Kenny says that Bite Force executed it perfectly, even as we watch a fully-spinning Tombstone drive around Bite Force and initiate the first contact.
After several more replays, we see the judges considering their votes. Naturally, the show goes to commercial before the ultimate champion is revealed.
So let me play armchair judge. Since nobody has explained exactly how the judging criteria in BattleBots should be applied, I'm just going to go by the Robot Fighting League's "damage and aggression" scoring system which I'm familiar with.
As for damage, Tombstone obviously lost use of its weapon. Bite Force received a relatively small amount of damage to its wedge (however, the wedge was still able to perform its job as a wedge), but more importantly, it lost one side of its drive. Let me check... yep, loss of weapon and loss of drive are considered equal. So the two robots are tied in the damage category.
Which means this comes down to aggression. And even though it didn't always have complete control over its drive, Bite Force was pretty consistently aggressive. Tombstone was almost as aggressive, but not quite as much. And Bite Force's aggressive moves resulted in more control over Tombstone than vice versa. Yeah... I'd split my points as evenly as possible, but I'd have to say that Bite Force was victorious.
Back from commercial, and now Chris is in the arena with Faruq as he announces the grand champion. There's another too-long pause, and Faruq lifts the hand of the builder with the winning robot... Bite Force!
Handshakes and hugs all around, then Paul Ventimiglia is presented with the giant nut trophy. The trophy is presented by, I assume, Trey Roski and Greg Munson, although they're never identified and the speech is edited down so much as to be meaningless.
And that's pretty much it. Some brief good-byes, but not much dwelling on the championship. Paul has his trophy, Molly says "We hope to see you again soon in the BattleBox" like she's a flight attendant, and "This has been 'BattleBots' on ABC." So there.
It's too early to know whether the show will come back for another tournament (if it does, we'll probably have to wait until next summer, so the network still has plenty of time to decide). If it returns, though, they're going to need to come up with some new ways to subjectively compare the robots. Aggression, Control, Weapons, and Defense are all well and good, but as the hosts pointed out, once a robot starts breaking its spinning arm, the Weapons ranking you hastily assigned it at the beginning of the tournament loses its meaning.
In the interest of being helpful, here are some categories which would be equally as meaningful when comparing combat robots:
Astrological sign of the driver
Total point value of the robot's name in Scrabble
Distance between pit table and arena entrance
Ability to transmit sound waves
Number of Facebook friends (for the robot itself, not the humans on the team)
Altitude of hometown
Anthropomorphism
Weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100
Relationship status
Highest karate belt achieved
Assists
Whether its lineage contains any Kentucky Derby winners
High school win-loss record (senior year only)
Warranty
Allergies
Calories from fat
Vacation days accrued
Number of bolts divided by number of wheels
Violations of the Geneva Conventions