Its been a bit since the event but here's an overview of HORD 2019.
Since the beetleweight category had completely filled up, the team decided to sign up for the mantisweight class. We competed with the multibot Dual Disease which sported H5N1 and a modified Sean.
H5N1 is completely unchanged since the last event. Sean on the other hand now utilizes 2 of the kitbots 1000rpm metal gearmotors rather than silversparks and is running on a 4s lipo.
Our first match was up against the 4wd titanium block named T-34
Right as this fight began, we realized that not changing anything on H5N1 was a horrible mistake. The left drive motor locked up immediately after the first hit making it impossible to chase T-34 with both bots. When H5N1 got flipped over though, the drive kicked back into gear for some reason. I was able to get a few good hits off, one of which causing the weld holding the middle of T-34 to come clean off. The triumph was short lived though because the drive became locked again and we were pushed around for the rest of the match. After the fight when we opened up H5N1 the locked up motor had become extremely hot and nearly melted several of the wires inside. We were lucky to get away with minimal damage and moved into the losers bracket.
The second match was versus the powerful steel wedge of Piece by Piece
Both bots did exceptionally well in this fight. My teammate driving Sean was able to pin Piece by Piece several times which allowed me to get in there and do some serious damage. One of the issues we had was that many of the teeth on H5N1's weapon belt had been stripped during the fight against T-34 so the weapon refused to spin up sometimes. The clutch pit by my teammate at the end really saved the day as we could've been completely knocked out of the competition at this point.
Afterwards, we fought the menacing drum spinner American Banshee
Yeah we definitely didn't deserve to win this fight. After a hit on the side, one of banshee's screws came unthreaded and caused it to become semi-beached on itself. The ref was about to count them out but both us and him said that banshee was stuck. He stopped at first but then deemed it as a "stack" which can be counted out for. Other than that the all new wedgelet attachment for Sean worked good durability wise as taking direct blows did absolutely nothing to them. Unfortunately we weren't able to see how effective they truly were due to how quickly it lost drive. H5N1's wedge was completely bent up at this point and rendered the weapon unusable. The bottom panel was also completely shredded as well as the tires on both bots. There was a lot of repair work that needed to be done before the next fight.
Finally we fought the expertly driven wedge Derpy
Derpy's excellent driving certainly showed in this fight. The driver, being the builder of mondo bizarro, certainly had experience on his side and it showed. Banshee also got its revenge this round. Since we had to hammer down the wedge as best we could, it was very weak. This caused H5N1's wedge to jump back up right into the weapon and immobilize it once again during the fight. Now stuck as two wedges, my teammate and I desperately tried to do anything to get Derpy under our control. However, the weight and driving ability was too much for us to handle and both of us ended up in the pit.
This was the best event we've been to by far. The whole area was packed with spectators and everyone was into it. We also got to see plenty of amazing designs and brutal bots. I know we will certainly be making a return next year.
Oh yeah and here's some post event pics of the bots
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