Team Worst Swordsman

Team Worst Swordsman
Participation Information
Series	R.E.D.D.I.T Reckoning: Revival ROBOT2 ICECrown The New Era 2 (meme tourney) Reckoning: Evolution Carnage At The Arcade Mobilize, Britbongs! (semi-combat) CBC 4 Vexed! RoBattle (semi-combat, withdrew) ROBOTS 3 (withdrew) CBC 3 (withdrew) Thunder Underground (withdrew)
Team Information
Team Members	Rocket
Home Town	Thanet, Kent, United Kingdom

Team Worst Swordsman is a fictional UK combat robotics team and one of vanishingly few to be headed up by a woman. Establishing itself comparatively recently in early 2018, the team prides itself on trying to be innovative rather than sensible or even slightly competent. Despite this, the team RPs are forever delving deeper into tryhard territory and occasionally spew up the odd upset victory. That everyone refers to those upsets as, er, "victories" tells you exactly what you're dealing with.

Competitors

Featherweights

Entropic Degeneration
ED is a combination crusher and sawbot, which is a combination that has had a lot of success recently in the superheavyweight class. This time, though, it has an extremely powerful horizontal crusher AND a souped-up saw to rip through enemy top armour. It's a great way of getting around heavily-armoured zones on enemy robots, and without the benefit of obnoxious dead memes! Though there's probably dick-all chance of it working now that there's already been a successful jokebot that used this combo. Oh well. At least it has a nice paint job...
Debut: ROBOTS 3
Tournaments: ROBOTS 3 (X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

PANIC! At Nabisco
Panic sports a powerful weapon, blazing speed, almost no armour, and a pointy bit on the front of dubious value and importance. Rumours that it's Hobart on a diet are completely unsubstantiated. I mean, for starters, it's got a hammer. The robot's a cookie-themed machine that looks like a joke, but it's still managed to dish out some serious hurt in its single tournament appearance so far.
Debut: Reckoning: Evolution
Tournaments: Reckoning: Evolution (2-2)
Lifetime Record: 2-2 (0.500)

Tree Surgeon
The original was a tracked chainsaw bot that saw a massive overhaul after being chewed up and spat out by anything even vaguely decent in ROBOT2. It's now a 2WD bot with a big triangle dustpan wedge that is in no way inspired by the works of anyone called Jamison, you can't prove it, and anyway you're not my real dad. Interestingly, the redesign now sports two chainsaws, because why only have one for the writers to laugh at? It also features a stabilizing tail at the back; this was previously because of the "snaptrap" arm setup that flung the arm down at ridiculous speeds. That little innovation has thankfully bitten the dust, but the tail stuck around.
Debut: ROBOT2
Tournaments: ROBOT2 (2-5), Thunder Underground (as Tree Surgeon 2, X), Carnage At The Arcade (as Tree Surgeon 2, 0-0)
Lifetime Record: 2-5 (0.286)

Lightweights

GPODAWUND
You don't get many robots themed after the Cleveland Browns, but this is one of them. An eggbeater spinner which uses it more as a flipper than anything else, this 2WD bot has shades of Black Dog about it. It's also invertible, which is oddly rare for a Worst Swordsman tournament entry; you'd think they'd jump at the chance to not call LifeAlert, but there you go.
Debut: Thunder Underground
Tournaments: Thunder Underground (X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Ilwoon
Ilwoon is an African-themed 2WD sword-bot whose weapon design is inspired by the team's superheavyweight axe/spinner wombo-combo Labrys. Inside the bot is a heavy drum with a great big clutch on it; application of the clutch simultaneously frees the driven gear at the other end of the chain drive, causing the sword to complete a full anticlockwise revolution and, by sheer happenstance, twat the absolute fuckery out of whatever's in front of it. Once the weapon has completed a full revolution or had its motion impeded by the unlucky recipient of its tender mercies, the clutch disengages (to prevent the whole thing burning out) and the weapon's weight allows it to pull down into the rest position shown in the pictures above. When it's returned to the rest position, the driven gear is locked in place and the weapon is ready to hit something again. This is your brain on misunderstood complex engineering. Any questions?
Debut: ROBOTS 3
Tournaments: ROBOTS 3 (X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Hobart
Another seminal bad ideas machine, Hobart is a tracked robot that sacrified armour almost entirely for drive power and the ability to smash things. Uniquely in ARC history, it used its vertical spinning flails as a kind of high-speed axe - when it wasn't sporting a much more conventional bar. The flails do have a 100% record though... so far. The sequel bot has been drastically reworked, making it faster, invertible, and a drum spinner rather than a vertical bar. It's still armoured with crisp packets and prayer, though; after an initial shock upset over turret spinner Evil Destroyer that led to the latter nearly being yeeted off a helipad in Dubai, its playoff hopes were dashed quite early on. Oh well. There's always next time.
Debut: ROBOT2
Tournaments: ROBOT2 (3-4), CBC 3 (as Hobart 2: Fear Naught, 2-4)
Lifetime Record: 5-8 (0.385)

The Revenge of Psychosprout
One of the worst CADs in human history, this was an attempt at a sit'n'spin thwackbot with a difference - a mono-wheel setup and convoluted array of magnets allowed it to basically be a big ball with a flail setup. Sadly, it never got to fight, as the team withdrew from RoBattle. Perhaps it'll see combat one day.
Debut: RoBattle
Tournaments: RoBattle (X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Trilobite!
A speed wedge with a curved front themed after long-dead sea life, Trilobite! has a potent drivetrain and googly eyes... and that's about all it has. Despite this, it's managed to record a win, but the rest of the tournament has seen it crashing down after discovering that it can't drive upside down. Whoops. Despite this, it remained a competitive machine, and the successor bot has already recorded a win in 2v2 tourney Vexed!.
Debut: CBC4
Tournaments: CBC4 (2-4), Vexed! (as Trilobite! 2!, 1-0)
Lifetime Record: 3-4 (0.429)

Middleweights

Dragonfist
Debuting as Riptide in Reckoning: Revival, Dragonfist was the team's earliest attempt to make the otherwise-unworkable flail weapon into a terrifying prospect. A shell spinner in a meta that made them deeply underpowered, Dragonfist nevertheless became the first Worst Swordsman robot to make the playoffs of a major tournament. It left immediately thereafter having drawn an enormous wedge. Whoops. CBC3 has been more promising for the veteran Worst Swordsman; after a tough loss to the kind of robot that seems purpose-built to hard-counter it, Dragonfist has won two in a row at time of writing and has a good shot at topping the division; since a lot of the bricks are taking each other out in its division, this means it has a fantastic chance at a deep playoff run. Will it bring home the team's first title? Er... no. A freak loss during the group stages meant it was on the wrong end of an idiot triangle and didn't even make the playoffs. Great. It's still got the team's best record, though, so that's nice, and it's continuing its winning ways into CBC4 even after rule changes meant specifically to counter flail spinners. This has resulted in the team's only playoff victory at time of writing, and with that particular curse broken, Dragonfist could go all the way.
Debut: Reckoning: Revival
Tournaments: Reckoning: Revival (as Riptide, 1-2), ROBOT2 (4-4), Thunder Underground (X), CBC 3 (4-2), ROBOTS 3 (X), CBC 4 (6-1)
Finals Appearances: ROBOT2 (Quarter-Finalist), Cherry Bomb Classic 4 (Semi-Finalist)
Lifetime Record: 15-9 (0.625)

Heavyweights

Ad Astra
Ad Astra was made for a semi-combat event alongside her sister bot Victoriana, and though they share a defensive overall design ethos they're designed to evoke very different eras of British robot combat. Ad Astra is the later model, the "Britflipper" ubiquitous to the British live scene and, bizarrely, almost nowhere else. We'll see how well Ad Astra does in the tournament as a whole.
Debut: Mobilize, Britbongs!
Tournaments: Mobilize, Britbongs! (0-0)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Helepolis
Helepolis was a good idea executed incredibly poorly. Essentially a Gabriel-style bigwheeler with a lifting arm on a rotating body powered by an electric motor, it was stymied by the crap CAD work and the fact that the team had to withdraw completely from its only tournament to date. Sad, really. Maybe a Helepolis 2 will show up some day.
Debut: RoBattle
Tournaments: RoBattle (X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Tabor
The first robot ever made by the team, Tabor was one of the worst and strangest robots in the competition. Like so many robots from the team's stable, it was a promising idea (esentially Breaker Box on a turret) that had a hilariously bad level of execution. With a turret larger than its main body and hilariously vast plough, the Mark 1 variant was given a complete pasting in its debut tournament and spawned several uncomplimentary memes involving Life Alert, though it still somehow managed to snag an inexplicable W somewhere along the line. The second iteration, however, did quite a lot better, securing actual wins and - more importantly - not falling on its face all the damn time. Experienced roboteers often find that this is a helpful characteristic to have. The third iteration has embraced a new secret weapon called "competence", and achieved its best results yet as it advanced to the playoffs of a major tournament for the first time (though it got immediately bounced out by a flipper). Recently, though, yet another ground-up redesign has finally solved the problems with high-centering, and she's got a boatload of new wedges; maybe this'll be the time she gets a real playoff run. It didn't happen in ROBOTS 3, alas, and nor with CBC4 - a quirk of the brackets meant that despite topping her group, the old Worst Swordsman warhorse found itself staring down the barrel of the division's defending champion - an almost total hard-counter to Tabor's design. Oh well. Tabor is proof that if you try hard and don't give up on an idea, eventually you'll bore enough people to death with the endless redesigns that tournament organizers hand you wins to make you shut up about it.
Debut: R.E.D.D.I.T
Tournaments: R.E.D.D.I.T (1-4), ROBOT2 (as Tabor Mk II: Omni-Directional Assault Boogaloo, 3-4), Thunder Underground (as Tabor Mk. III: Somehow There's A Third One, X), CBC 3 (as Tabor Mk. III: Somehow There's A Third One, 4-3), ROBOTS 3 (as Tabor Mk. IV: Fant4stic T4b-Four, X), CBC4 (as Tabor Mk. IV: Fant4stic T4b-Four, 4-3)
Finals Appearances: CBC 3 (Quarter-Finals), CBC 4 (Quarter Finals)
Lifetime Record: 12-14 (0.462)

Victoriana
Victoriana and her sister bot Ad Astra were made for a semi-combat tournament that could be essentially summed up as "what if Scandinavia And The World was a robot fighting show instead of a webcomic?". This meant that the bots were designed to evoke past eras of robot combat, with Victoriana representing the classic British control-oriented bot with the multi-weapon setup, in this case an axe and a lifter à la Mortis with a dash of Panic Attack. While the pair has a worrying lack of damage-dealing capability, the plan is to outlast the opposition - and in this, they might have a good deal of success.
Debut: Mobilize, Britbongs!
Tournaments: Mobilize, Britbongs! (0-0)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Superheavyweights

KEGATRON
KEGATRON, and yes you do have to spell it in block caps, is another very odd design. It's a full-body drum spinner with giant-ass HDPE Gabriel wheels and enormous weapon teeth that almost scrape the ground due to the flex and splay of the wheels. KEGATRON's greatest strength is its deceptive pointability, which basically means it's an lump of angry metal and plastic belting towards you at quite a few more miles per hour than expected, possible while The Ride Of The Valkyries plays at deafening volume over the arena tannoy system. KEGATRON's greatest weakness is, er, well... how long have you got? The drum isn't powerful enough to damage bricks, the armour isn't strong enough to tank spinners, it doesn't have any feeder wedges, and it can't close down other control spinners because of its low speed. No wonder it's in the basement of CBC 3.
Debut: CBC 3
Tournaments: CBC 3 (1-5)
Lifetime Record: 1-5 (0.167)

Labrys
ARC's first openly lesbian robot, Labrys is a combination axe and vertical spinner with a hell of a clutch and a petrol engine. Unlike most of the team's robots, it has at least serviceable CAD work, and it is (at time of writing) the only robot in the stable with a winning record, having won its only fight to date against a worryingly hardy brick. Whether this was a fluke or the start of a great tournament run, only time will it's a fluke. It's definitely a fluke. Still, it's technically got a better w/l record than some of the other entries over the years, so things could definitely be a lot worse... aaaaand things rapidly became worse once opponents stopped FFing. The redesign is much stronger, sporting 2WD, a chunkier disc, and an all-round better axe mechanism. Here's hoping it actually works this time.
Debut: ICECrown
Tournaments: ICECrown (2-4), Thunder Underground (as Labrys 2, 0-0)
Lifetime Record: 2-4 (0.333)

Other Weight Classes

CHOO CHOO MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
CHOO CHOO MUTHAFUCKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA was a machine made for the completely serious and not at all memetacular tournament The New Era 2: Electric Boogaloo, a tourney so utterly serious that CCM's weight is officially classed as "Batmanweight". Joy. A shaft-driven horizontal disc spinner themed after trains, it's a unique design that also manages to be of no use whatsoever. Oh well. At least the disc looks cool.
Debut: New Era 2
Tournaments: New Era 2 (meme tourney, X)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Fraxious
Fraxious was the team's first hobbyweight, a 2WD variable-config robot capable of sporting either a powerful pneumatic hammer or a control setup sporting horizontal crushing claws and a pneumatic spike. There are rumblings from within the team that the two configs might be split off from each other in future, but for the time being we'll see how it does. Even though the crushers look like a couple of toothbrushes.
Debut: Carnage At The Arcade
Tournaments: Carnage At The Arcade (0-0)
Lifetime Record: 0-0

Overall Team Record

Wins: 42
Losses: 51
Average: 0.452 (3 s.f.)
Playoff Placements:-
ROBOT2 Quarter-Finalist (Dragonfist, Middleweight Division)
CBC3 Quarter-Finalist (Tabor Mark 3: Somehow There's A Third One, Heavyweight Division)
CBC4 Quarter-Finalist (Tabor Mark 4: Fant4stic T4b-Four, Heavyweight Division)
CBC4 Semi-Finalist (Dragonfist, Middleweight Division)