Mass Destruction (November 2016)
Mass Destruction is a local competition held every couple of months at the Artisan's Asylum in Somerville. Because the original organizer moved to California to work on Megabots, Fred Moore (fellow MITERS member) took over the task of running it. This time there were 4 weight classes; plastic ants (1lb), ants, beetles (3lbs), and 12lb Sportsmans (no high KE weapons). Having so many robots that were not broken, I made the mistake of trying to fight as many of them as I could.Luckily things still managed to work out!
Ricochet: 5-1 Winner!Ricochet ended up winning the beetles with a series of mostly knockouts. Unfortunately the later matches didn't get filmed but we do have my first two fights. This being Ricochet's first competition, I had to dial it in, but after the first two matches, it was locked in and quite deadly. Look familiar? Cartesian Product fought PMTH2 at the last Mass Destruction and ended up knocking it's wheels off.
Ricochet is POWERFUL. We exchanged a few good hits, but then I think similar to last year, I ended up shearing off CP's weapon shaft and pulley. From there I just continued to charge him until he eventually tapped out. However, I did sort of lose drive (it was kind of going in and out), which was a result of me not battle hardening my drive motors. My gearbox's screws came a little loose and the pinion was no longer making contact with the spur gears. A little loctite later and it was good to go!
My next fight was against one of the WPI robots; a drum spinner named Bumble Bee. After the first weapon on weapon exchange where I sent him flying, I tried to slam into him again but missed and hit the wall. One of my drive motors seized, blowing up a drive controller and from there I was only able to move by gyro dancing on my one good motor. Luckily Ricochet is built like a tank and sustained literally zero damage for the rest of the match. The judges ruled in his favor and that was Ricochet's first and only loss.From here Ricochet was very dialed in and had very little trouble for the rest of the day.
Next I fought a very colorful titanium wedge robot, where I managed to rip off the entire top panel resulting in an eventual tap out.Then came the championship bracket.
Single elimination. 8 robots -> 1 winner. Because Fred was running the event, he got to decide who fought who and of course every one of my matches was designed to be the most troll. First I had to fight K-Too which is very analogous to Recoil/Ricochet. Big blade in front and a wedge. The big difference was that he had 4wd and was not invertible. There was a great first hit and I managed to flip K-too on his head. I didn't want the match to end after just one hit, so I hit him again to flip him over and the process repeated until his electronics actually died (Sorry Brian!). Once again no damage to Ricochet!
Next I had to fight the undefeated Melii who you'll read a little more about later. This match was personal (JK I didn't actually know until later but it sounds more epic). This was another WPI robot with a 4130 horizontal bar spinner. I charged them at the start of the match, hitting them into the air and bending their waterjet aluminum frame. Unfortunately, they also managed to clip the bolt that held my shaft in (sounds familiar huh?) and my weapon started to fall apart. It turned into a pushing match but they ended up losing their drive and Ricochet won. Only minor damage (the retaining bolt was stripped).
Now time for the finals! This match was against Quicksand a Trilobite kit (wedge) heavily decorated and very effective. Luckily my drive was faster and I was able to hit him from the sides, bending his top plate sides up and eventually flipping him over so that his robot was high sided on the bent lids
.Minitaur/Reptar: 3.5-2
Fred being the troll and great friend he is, paired up Reptar against 7 minute Korea in the first round. 7 minute Korea was made by a fellow MITERS member (Michael Detienne) and was the only other weaponized plastic ant there. We knew "Dis gunna be guud". I wanted to see how Reptar would do weapon on weapon. RIP. Bad decision. Luckily only the wedglets were destroyed and I had brought many spares.
My next fight was against Bananbot, another WPI robot, but unfortunately their weapon wasn't working so it just turned into fodder for Reptar.
After that Reptar fought Mouse Trap; a robot built by some freshman at MITERS. It was a wedge/lifter robot so I was worried about getting flipped but somehow I managed to get around and tear up his frame. Even after that Noah managed to get the frame back together enough to fight in the actual antweight rumble!
Of course for the finals it was Reptar vs 7 minute Korea again. Fred wanted best 2 out of 3 but we all knew the robots wouldn't last 3 matches.Learning the useful information from the first fight I did not go weapon on weapon with Korea. Instead I snuck around the side and ripped his wheels off, similar to how Minotaur usually wins.The next fight I tried the same strategy but Mike swung around and destroyed my wedglets all over again. RIP. Because I was busy fighting Ricochet, we decided for the 3rd round, we would just do rock paper scissors. Of course I got lucky and somehow Reptar won! Lolz. Time to print more wedglets for next time.
Recoil 0-1
Recoil was put up against Dain, a very unique and durable hammer bot, built by the same guy who built Ripto. The match started off well with Recoil getting a couple good hits on Dain but eventually a nasty collision knocked Recoil on its ears and brushless drive simultaneously failed resulting in me tapping out. I decided it was too much work to fix Recoil and Ricochet was doing well so I dropped Recoil for the rest of the day
PMTH3: 0-1
I had thrown together the remains of PMTH3 so we could have more fights, but I knew I wouldn't have time to drive it. Austin, another MITERS member offered to drive it, but unfortunately had the worst possible match up. Melii, the WPI horizontal bar spinner. Needless to say PMTH3 got shreked.
Trashmaster: 1-1
Trashmaster; the 5 lb robot fighting in the 12 lb class was hilarious.The first match was against Plan X ish, another severely underweight robot and it was hilarious. Needs no words
Next I fought Charles and 12'0clocker which went as you'd expect. Lolz
Overall Mass Destruction was amazing and there was certainly a lot of destruction. Beetles are becoming more and more dangerous and it just makes the sport so much better. Shoutout to Fred for doing such a great job running the event and not competing in order to do so!