THE SWARM AT BATTLEBOTS - MAY 2002

This was the third event for the Swarm, and the first with the reconfigured Locust.

Fight 1: vs. Little Pink Butterfly of Doom

The Swarm's first fight was against this very solid, steel framed bot with a Magmotor-powered spinning bar in the front.

This bot, built by a good friend, Greg Gibson, was coincidentally painted the same color scheme as The Swarm- Black and Green, so it looked kind of funny to have 4 similarly-painted bots fighting in the arena. Looked like some kind of funky evil art show. Maybe not.

Anyway, This fight was mostly a lot of pushing. Mosquito and Dragonfly pushed LPBoD around for much of the match, avoiding the spinning bar on the front. Fortunately for us, LPBoD had been having trouble with their drive system, so he was never really able to score a direct hit against any of the three Swarming bots.

Locust got two good hits in on LPBoD's sides before suddenly Locust's weapon shut down. I still don't know what happened, it was spinning up fine later, hmm.

The match went the duration and went to the judge decision a decisive 37-8. The Swarm's first ever victory!!!

Fight 2: vs. Final Destiny

"Um... guys? I know insects have wings, but..."

This fight was later dubbed by many builders as the BEST FIGHT EVER. It certainly was a great fight...

We had fitted Mosquito with a spring steel spatula scoop for this fight so that he would be able to get under Final Destiny's skirts. The idea was to get Mosquito underneath, where there was plenty of clearance under that evil spinning bar, and have him high-center or push FD, with Dragonfly's help, into the wall, stopping the bar, then Locust would proceed to chew away on those titanium skirts.

Well, as often happens in BattleBots, plans do not always work out the way you want them to.

What did happen though, was even more spectacular. After a couple failed charges and not hitting Final Destiny straight on, Mosquito ended up riding up one of the skirts, right into Final Destiny's blade at full speed. What resulted from that will probably forever go down in history as the longest, most graceful flight in Robot Combat history. Mosquito, a measly 108 pounds compared with FD's 340lbs, was thrown through the air and actually banked off not one, but two walls of the BattleBox, probably 6 to 8 feet up, in the corner by the arena entrance. The entire Box shook from the impact. Everyone went absolutely nuts, surely the little bot had been destroyed in the hit, but after only a beat or two, Mosquito got back up and continued the attack. The crowd went nuts. Meanwhile, seeing our opportunity because of the somewhat slowed-down bar on Final Destiny, Paul and I moved Dragonfly and Locust in for the attack. Both bots were promptly tossed aside as well, Locust smacked the wall of the BattleBox hard, but also turned around to continue the attack. Final Destiny's bar got up to speed too quickly for the 3 of us to really get close enough.

After another particularly solid hit on Locust, which completely bent the frame and warped the spinning disc into something that resembled a disfigured potato chip, Locust stopped moving entirely. After the fight, it turned out that the master power switch had been knocked into the OFF position. This all happened in the first 45 seconds or so of the fight, still a ways to go...

Dragonfly and Mosquito continued their attack, and remarkably, Final Destiny's bar stopped spinning! Both reamining Swarm bots attacked relentlessly, pushing Final Destiny around the rest of the fight. Mosquito finally got himself wedged under FD and pushed him around as much as he could. At one point, the referees had thought that the bots were stuck together, but Mosquito simply had to back out and continue pushing FD around some more. Dragonfly meanwhile kept smashing and pushing FD until the time ran out. Final Destiny could do nothing but try to push back, but couldn't.

We all were nuts from adrenaline after time ran out. We felt that we really could have won, after all, we pushed FD around most of the match and disabled his weapon, while he showed little aggression or strategy against us, but was successful in disabling our own weapon (Locust).

The judges saw it differently, however, and awarded the win to Final Destiny, 27-18.

What a rush!