Check out this fight in BattleBots Season 6, Episode 10.
The race for the Top 32 continues! Our final fight of the regular season is against the 1-1 Switchback. Switchback is coming off an untelevised win over Slammo! a few weeks ago, and is a much more experienced team than their “rookie” status lets on. Plus, the robot showed good weapon power in that fight, and we knew that they had fixed the issues that knocked out their arm against Gruff. We knew this matchup was coming once Switchback started calling us out during the preseason, and we admit the thought of a 70-pound drum flying into our face isn’t our favorite. Thankfully, when a team starts calling us out, we know to put together a plan and armor package just for them!
For this fight, we made a number of strategic changes. The tegris wheels from our fight with Retrograde were kept, as they provided the best coverage to keep Switchback’s drum away from vital components of our drivetrain. We put on our strongest metal top armor, and changed over to our longest 2-toothed blade to do our best attempt at reaching out to touch Switchback before they could hit us. We also added tegris “chins” to the front of the frame, to try to absorb any blows from Switchback coming up from under us. Did we mention that this fight was at the end of the same day we fought Retrograde? Talk about quick turnaround for changing up the armor and checking out the bot!
One by one, these changes were all put to the test! Switchback was able to score hits to the thickest portion of our top armor, a hit to a front “chin”, hits from the side of our wheels, and a whole load of weapon-to-weapon hits. One of these weapon-to-weapon hits led to an odd intermittent drive fault, causing HUGE to spend the rest of the fight crab-walking. But our armor held up, and let us stay in the fight long enough to knock out Switchback’s weapon, before finally disabling their drive for a knockout. In the three prior seasons of our Battlebots career, we had scored just two knockouts… and now we’ve scored two more in our last two fights! Which means we got two knockouts on the SAME DAY! It’s amazing to see our big design changes paying dividends, it really feels like HUGE is achieving some of the potential that we always knew the design had.
For the fourth season straight, we performed well enough to make it to the final season’s-end tournament. To celebrate this achievement, we compared seeding numbers, and did the math, and double-checked, and figured out that our matchup was……..
Uppercut.
gulp
Photo Gallery
Needing every pound to stack armor on this time…
This weapon-to-weapon hit near the start of the fight was the beginning of our drive issue
Once Switchback’s weapon died, we began to feel a little confident. We took the opportunity to hit them while spinning downwards to see what would happen - a great photo happened!
The killshot!
Neither bot came out unscathed, but this version of HUGE can do some serious damage.
The chin which took a direct hit from Switchback! This was gifted to the Switchback team, alongside HUGE’s bent eye. The tegris did its job.
The arms which support Switchback’s drum.
Our trophy, Switchback’s damaged pulley guard
The clean cuts are very satisfying - another improvement designed into this HUGE!
Photo Credits: Dan Longmire, JCRB Photography, and the Switchback team