EVENT REPORT:
Clash of the B ts 2
● by Pete Smith
The Schiele Museum ( www.schielemuseum.org) in
Gastonia, NC held their second
“Clash of the Bots” open day on
Saturday, July 23rd. Carolina
Combat ( www.carolina
combat.com) organized a Bot
Hockey and Insect Class combat
event as the main attraction.
The combat event had two Fairy
weights, four Ants, and five Beetles
entered, and three teams competed
in Bot Hockey.
The venue is almost perfect.
There was enough space for both
the Bot Hockey and combat arenas,
plus the pits in the main room.
There was a separate space for
charging LiPos and a rec room
where the museum provided snacks,
drinks, and lunch for the
competitors.
The combat fights were round
robin and there were some great
matches including Weta versus
Misdirected Aggression, and
perhaps the best fight of all,
Misdirected Aggression versus
Grande Tambor (Figure 1). The
fights drew standing room only
crowds (Figure 2) and many can be
seen on You Tube by searching
“Clash of the Bots.”
The Bot Hockey was much more
competitive this year with Team
Scotch Pies fielding new custom-built bots (Figure 3), last year’s
winners Team Pneusance, and a
new entry for this year — Team
Meatheads (Figure 4) — with two
custom bot hockey bots and
Hobbyweight combat bot Apollyon.
Team Meatheads bots proved fast
and powerful in their matches
(Figures 5 and 6) but lacked the
battery life and spare bots of the
other teams, so while they held their
own for the first half of the 10
FIGURE 1. Misdirected
Aggression vs Grande Tambor.
minute matches, they quickly fell
behind in the last minutes as their
bots expired.
Team Pneusance and Team
Scotch Pies both won three matches
each and the latter won the tie
breaker to get first place. Bot
Hockey proved to be very popular
with both the competitors and the
crowds, including one kid from the
audience who had played for a team
last year and waited patiently for
FIGURE 2. Standing room only.
FIGURE 3. Team Scotch Pies ready.
FIGURE 4. Team
Meatheads ready.
FIGURE 5. Team Meatheads
vs. Team Pneusance.
FIGURE 6. Team Meatheads
vs. Team Scotch Pies.
FIGURE 7. Great big trophies.
32 SERVO 10.2011