CBC3 Superheavyweight Quarter Finals: Starfish Prime vs. Santangelo

[Hooray For Lexan]

Starfish Prime: Speed 4, Traction 3, Torque 1, Weapon 15, Armor 7

Santangelo: Speed 8, Traction 7, Torque 1, Weapon... sure, if you wanna call it that (fine... 1), Armor 12

Curved bar please.

Start inverted. Spin up, heading around behind the IED if necessary to buy time, then go on the attack. As normal for a horizontal spinner, back off when I’m not at full speed. Consider driving onto the floor spinner rings to increase my speed slightly / be able to juke him by moving from one ring to another.

Ideally I want to come at Santangelo a bit off-center in the direction against my spin, so that my bar can catch the top corners of his chassis. They’re actually really sharp, and look close to 90 degrees. Try to turn before hitting him – this both puts me off-center and thanks to the slight angle the bar’s at means I’ll hit higher up – and further back – on his chassis. If he’s trying really hard to get to my sides, give him what he wants and expose the side the bar’s spinning towards, then pivot into him. If he’s angling into my spin direction, he’ll be exposing his side a little but I can’t really catch a corner, so turn the same direction to put him further off-center than he wants to be and try to scrape up his side panels.

Being inverted has a couple purposes: first, hitting him further back and at weird angles as mentioned to try to catch those corners. Second, reducing the chances of my bar hitting the floor. Third, it may make him more confident with using his flipper, but he won’t be able to overturn me at full speed, he’ll be exposing his flipping arm’s edges, and I could slip/fall off in unpredictable ways. Corner hits on the flipper could bend it and jam it open, which would be amazing for me.

If I end up upright, keep trying to go for his corners, and get rid of those little white spikes. Every little bit of damage is important. If it’s turning out WAY harder to fight upright, consider turning off the weapon and carefully reversing one wheel onto the central IED to try to get inverted again.

All he’s really got to control the match with is speed, and it’s a big arena with no corners to box me into. My wheel positioning keeps him from high-centering me and being a horizontal spinner makes using his flipper difficult/dangerous. In the last minute the bollards will give him more leverage for a pin and would kind of suck to hit with a horizontal spinner, so be more careful after that point.

Good Luck Etc.

[Madman]

Santangelo: 8 speed / 7 traction / 2 torque / 1 weapon / 12 armour

Starfish Prime: 4 speed / 3 traction / 1 torque / 15 weapon / 7 armour

HFL is going to be reaching for anything that could give him the win, but the bottom line is that my bot has enough armour to tank him easily, enough speed to slow his blade and smother him, and no hard angles that he can catch.

Take my little wedgelets off since they might give him some cheap damage points and he has no wedge anyways. Come out like gangbusters, just for the sake of aggression points. HFL will obv avoid me and probably get to spin up. He's also going to pay attention to shit like attack angles, deflections, spin direction, and weapon torque because he speaks the language of engineering. So do I... kinda. Be cognizant of those, and use my better drive train to make sure that they play to my benefit instead of his.

HFL might get credit for a more thorough RP because I'm sure he has like ten strategies listed and lots of my hidden weaknesses, but the bottom line is that an 8 speed wedge with 12 armour is built to stuff a 4 speed spinner with 15 weapon. He's probably going overcutter so he doesn't tombstone-dance everywhere from me smushing his blade into the floor, but I can smush it into the wall and the mini-IEDs and my wedge instead. Once it's slowed a bit or stopped, I can flip him. My flipper's weak. It's a meme at this point, I know. Still, pin him, flick him up and let his own gyro forces do the rest of the work, or use the hazards for help. Just get him over and he becomes way more prone to slamming his blade into the floor and gyrodancing which looks even better for me to the judges.

In general, relentless aggression is what this is about. Nothing fancy, nothing that gives him an opening. Keep my wedge in his face and stop that weapon from getting to full speed. Bounce him off of it, hound him, and follow his movements when he tries to squirm free. Slam him into walls, into mini-IEDs, and flip him whenever his blade is at less than full power. Watch out for baiting, weapon-torque hooking, and the old 'give him your side and reverse' trick that I used with Black Dog. Just drive smart and hard and don't let up.

GL