Lists are in no particular order aside from the category they are in. I didn't include any bots that don't have a pic as of writing.
== MONEY IN THE BANK ==
Bots that will easily make playoffs and have a good chance of winning the entire thing.
FW
* Mean Bean Machine - No verts, no problem. Let's see if the writers have my shell work as intended.
* OTSC - Wherein YSM submits to the borg and makes a championship-tier brick.
* Bone Hurting Juice -
the last thing my mom sees when she tries telling me big chungus isn't funny
* Jackal - Loses to Bone Hurting Juice in finals when the spinner catches those slots in Jackal's plow. And yes, GF93
WILL complain about it on Discord.
LW
* Blood Diamond - How much you wanna bet adding "Blood" to the name and the red-black color scheme was Laz's idea?
* We Ran Out Of Sandwiches - I can't actually tell what the weapon's supposed to be.
* Endless Clowns III - Speed. I am speed. Speed and also massive amounts of shock damage. Not enough spinners to inflict that shock damage, so you're good.
MW
* Vovoka III - W0lf saw T-pose's statline and went "yea that's mine now". It works for Vovoka though, sooo...
* MURDERFACE THE SOUL DESTROYER - Don't call it a grave, it's the future you chose.
* Ritual - Wins all of it's group matches and then loses to Murderface or some other brick with better traction.
* Manglerfish - Base design is kind of suboptimal, but it has a bajillion setups and HFL is RPing for it so I'm going to assume it's good.
HW
* Night Slasher - saw nerf incoming when this wins lol
* T-Pose to Assert Dominance - Fun fact: putting lens flare eyes on your robot gives it an extra point of speed and traction. It's a rule the writers secretly agreed on before the tournament and honestly idk why more bots didn't get in on it.
* Death Metal - Every tournament until you like it.
* 8 wheels o Terror - Will get blammed in semis by someone who can exploit either the 2 spd:tra disparity or the narrow profile, but otherwise decent.
* Vertigo 4 - Lack of semis-tier spinners in HW means this'll do really well.
== 9/10 IT'S OKAY ==
Bots that will likely make playoffs but probably won't get past semis.
FW
* Galactic Terror - It's a all-weapon no-speed deathspinner, so it'll either do really well or really not-well. I think Badnik can make it work for a playoff round or 2 before he gets cucked by a 13arm brick.
* Post Traumatic Stress - It's a all-weapon no-speed deathspinner, so it'll either do really well or really not-well. I think W0lf can make it work for a playoff round or 2 before he gets cucked by a 13arm brick.
* Lockdown - It's a clamp, and clamp good. Watch it get mauled by spinners though.
* Darwinian Predator Gen II - I'm still not entirely sold on Billy's strategies, but this should do well enough.
* I Can’t Believe It’s Not Tanto - This is a good opportunity to mention that I'm copypasting these names instead of typing them out.
* Pizza 2 - Looks like shit, but sure won't perform like it.
LW
* Flash Flood - I would rank this higher if it had more ground clearance.
* This Side Down - I told Tri to use Phat Slug's statline and he actually did the absolute madman hahaha
* Trustfall - People aren't going to realize what it's party trick is until after they lose to it. Except for the one guy who does and takes you out of playoffs.
* Tidal Wave 2 - Has a lot of uncertain matchups, but IIRC this has gotten into finals something like 2 out of the last 3 tournaments he entered it in. Small enough drum to avoid gyroing too.
* The Thieving Magpie - Not sure why a 5 power flipper needs 2 torque, but don't fix something that isn't broken I guess.
* Tiny Torque 2 - everyone gangsta til tcrrr hit us with the minecraft spinning pig rp
MW
* Disposal Unit - Should make a good run once all the horizontals die off in groups.
* FREE ICE CREAM - I tried the 1/1/1 thing with Trashman back in CBC3 and only got into R1 playoffs. This will probably do the same.
* Abyss - It has Riptide's problems but this is slightly better off because of the 16 weapon and less obnoxious drum size.
* DRAGONFIST - I think a good handful of people have this bot's number by now and know how to counter it. Said people will also have at least one 13 armor spinner killer setup.
* The Act Of Being Polite - You have to look really closely for the weapon nub, but it's there. It's W:L record depends on how many of the writers decide to go "lol no get rekt" on it.
HW
* Tongue of the Fatman - How this bot does is entirely dependant on whether the bots that counter it get into playoffs or not. Namely The Big Spook, Vertigo 4, Wasp, and Death's Head Sarsaparilla.
* The Big Spook - WAGGLED.com
* Mania - Really doesn't need 10 chassis armor, but should do well anyway.
* Cookie Cutter - You had me up until "front wedgelets are hinged".
* Death's Head Sarsaparilla - This would get rejected in signups if anyone but MW!Alex entered it.
* TABOR MARK 4: FAN4STIC T4B-FOUR - Wins matches until the guy writing it realizes that the bot can't actually move when the turret-plow is pressed anywhere but the front.
* Xtreme pneumatiX - Those horns aren't stopping anything.
* Taskmaster V3 - Like SPINNERFOOD, moves down tiers if hide decides to not RP for it. Otherwise a generic brick that will win a generic brick-amount of matches.
* Wasp - No idea if carpdewhatever will give this thing good RPs or not, so it can move up or down a tier depending on that.
== PAINFULLY AVERAGE ==
Bots that may or may not get into playoffs.
FW
* Silcrow - The Big Spook except in the wrong division. I forget if this tourney has that "anything about 9 speed penalizes your traction" rule or not, but if it does, throw this into the uh oh stinky tier below.
* Runaway Rabbit - You're one tournament too early for this to wreck house.
* Violent Storm - It has an
alright matchup against other wedges and a horrendous one against spinners. Will probably barely miss playoffs.
* LARGE - See this one will actually win matches because it has more than literally a single point of speed. Not a ton of matches, mind you, but more than Leviathan.
* RipTide - It's performed okay in past tourneys, but the meta caught up to it and IDK if it'll deliver the same results. "It's hallow" also doesn't excuse the fact that your drum makes up half the bot's size.
* Nikkousen - Multibots are always going to be niche, but this one could do okay.
* Red Dragon - Flat wedge and too much chassis armor, but eh. I'm sure Shaba's got a plan.
* SPINNERFOOD - It's wacky and I like it, but
ehhhhhhhhhhh I dunno... too many spinners in the field, probably. This could either move up or down a tier depending on matchups and whether hide actually RPs for or not.
* Chinesium - actual chinesium would be 4 armor and also coated in lead paint
LW
* D-13 - One of my more eye-candy/thematically accurate bots, but I really should have angled the front and/or made it 16 weapon. I think there's enough horizontals in the field for the 15 armor Thunderhead setup to carry me into playoffs, but no doubt I'll run into This Side Down or Blood Diamond or something.
* HexaVortex - Shell spinners are probably some of the worst RA2 bots you can try and enter in ARC because of how many angles they have.
* Mini Urchin - idk about that wedge but the spinner will do spinner things
* Need For Spin - LET'S BEYBLAAAAAADEEEEEEE gonna lose cus melty lol
* GPODAWUND - 5 weapon drums don't get +4 armor anymore btw
* Golden MADD v2.0 - 16 weapon is going to kill at least a few bots, but doesn't have a win condition against any standard bricks.
MW
* Immolator - Fork setups gonna get gyro-baited + angled in on, the wedge setup's not quite bulky enough to take on spinners.
* GBJ 2: MY ONE WEAKNESS! - Tri will try the plow setup once and then ignore it for the rest of the tourney when it inevitably immobilizes on its face.
* Toasht - Quirky weapon choice, but forks are way too long.
* Mecha Shapeshifter - The statline's there, but the design isn't.
* Upchuck - I think you went out of your way to make the most generic flipper possible.
* Chronic Jobber - Why have a rear plow if it's just going to be 7 armor anyway?
* Harpy - Fast, but also hinged and less-than-stellar plow armor.
* Convict - Mediocre matchup against spinners. Mediocre matchup against wedges. Mediocre matchup against controlbots. Maybe you could say it's matchups are... painfully average?
* Killjoy 4 - Got tripped up for a moment and thought this was a LW. Really needs an alt config or 2 to do well if NG decides to enter it in CBC4.
* Poised and Narrow - No wedge means you're not going to control the match against anything but non-undercutting horizontals.
HW
* Squee-G - 16 weapon will win it at least a match or two, but I don't see it going any farther than R1 playoffs.
* Fork Bomb - Thanks for taking one for the team and being our guinea pig. Whether people enter hammer-saws into future tournaments is entirely up to you. No pressure.
== https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FveF-we6lcE ==
Will end up with more L's than W's for one reason or another.
FW
* window cleaner - 11 weapon, 5 body armor, armor-bonused wedge only has 9 armor, etc
* Leviathan - 1 speed means that literally any bot, including the 3 speed deathspinners, can cleanly flank this. It's invincible, sure, but that'll get old when you lose by JD for the 5th time in a row.
* Little Labyrinth - Gigantic 8 armor iceberg that has no plan [as far as I know] to kill bricks. Next.
* Botched Lobotomy - All the drawbacks of an overhead with none of the benefits.
* EVO - I'm almost certain Hoppin's gonna dip from the tourney after the first week or 2, so this goes here. Would be in championship-tier otherwise.
LW
* metal 3 - um
* Stream Edge - That 12 weapon is actually 11 because of multi-weapon rules. It might cheese a win, but there's too many designs that hard-counter this, especially with 5 chassis armor.
* Ring Destructor - 16 weapon rings are barely viable as is. What chance does a 15 weapon one have?
* Duck Stab! - Did you guys just like, get off to Epicer Waluigi THAT much?
* DO NOT CROSS - yeah no "up to the L's" is still 50% of your bot's surface area
MW
* the fast and the grabber - are you recognizing a pattern yet
HW
* wedge me once shame on me wedge me twice shame on you - I was actually gonna rank this one a lot higher, but then pat had to go and explicitly state that the red legobot with the dove soap wedge is a 4WD static wedge. Ya hate to see it happen.
* Avast! - Imagine editing your signup post 37 times and ending up with this.
* Frostburn - I think this has the same general strategy as Stream Edge, but is actually even LESS viable because the area of attack is so small.
* Dardanera - "Dardanera is designed to be both powerful, as well as tanky", isn't actually either of those.
* Chemical Explosion Mini - Almost makes you forget CE won a tournament once.
* Midas 2 - 6 speed 3 traction on a wedged vert, that's gonna a solid YIKES from me.
* Nightshade - Too slow for a long and narrow wedge-reliant design. It works for Tongue of the Fatman because I have 2 fuckheug wheels angled at the back, but this won't see the same success with getting it's weapon into play.
* Akoben - Same as EVO except it actually belongs in this tier because of not being invertible.