2024 World Championships Qualifier Spotlight: 3lb
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By Daniel Dischino
(Editor's note: Any opinions presented here are Daniel's, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NHRL.)
For three years, the 3lb division has been ruled by one robot.
Lynx (44-7, 36 KOs)
This bot has won each of NHRL’s last three World Championships. It first won by itself in 2021, then again in 2022, and then in 2023 as part of a multibot team-up with the first NHRL champion, 2020 winner Droopy, that took advantage of a loophole in the 2023 ruleset. This year, Lynx has not appeared at an NHRL Open event, and neither has Droopy. Therefore, neither bot will appear at the Championships, meaning we are guaranteed a new 3lb champion.
On December 7th, 25 3lb bots will compete for the right to this prestigious throne, and one of them will occupy it for the very first time. Here’s a look at three competitors who look particularly primed to put on a show as they fight for the Golden Brett trophy.
Eruption (52-26, 40 KOs)
The eruption has cooled off this year, its red lava fading to black volcanic rock. Or Brian just printed the side armor out of black for funsies this year.
Eruption is a 4 wheel drive vertical beater bar, and a type of natural disaster, and a song by Eddie Van Halen. This article will only cover the first one, unless there’s some secret demand for this robot combat event to cover influential guitar licks. It is built and driven by Brian Boxell.
The Story So Far
Eruption has long been the other great 4 wheel drive beater bar spinner at NHRL alongside Lynx. Thanks to the absence of the other king at Open tournaments this year along with some much-needed reliability improvements to Eruption, it looks poised to take the crown for itself.
Past versions of the robot have been limited by an extremely difficult to repair weapon system—it had to forfeit a fight in the 2022 Championships when the bot’s weapon couldn’t be fixed in the tight repair window, ending its shot at that year’s Golden Brett. These upgrades made the already great machine more reliable and easily serviceable, fixing Eruption’s last major roadblock to championship success.
This final form of the robot looked near unbeatable in the March tournament, ripping off 7 straight wins and coming into the Championships on a hot streak. This iteration is absolutely peak Eruption; that peak may have come at just the right time to win the Golden Brett and be crowned World Champion.
Strengths
4 wheel drive verts are currently the most dominant class of robot in the sport, and this new cooled off version of Eruption looks primed for a shot at the title of most dominant in the archetype. Brian’s gotten fantastic at that fluid and high-pressure drive style that revolves around hitting the opponent before they can think about a counter play. It requires a front-end assembly that will win weapon-to-weapon collisions against basically every robot on the planet. Eruption is one of a very small number with the bot geometry to match that intense style, thanks to its excellent ground game that allows it to get under and launch his opponents and the powerful weapon that wins almost all of its exchanges.
The updates to its weapon for this season have also been a godsend for reliability and repairability, which are often the two biggest determinants of a bot’s success over the long haul of a hyper-competitive tournament; Eruption itself has lost a couple fights by forfeit due to repair issues. Eruption’s hubmotor weapon has long been the source of many of its frustrations, due to its somewhat legendary complexity and tendency to break on Brian at inopportune moments. Even with the hubmotor, Eruption has been a consistent contender for top bot in its crowded archetype. Belt driven Eruption, free of this shackle, looks ready to take on anyone.
Weaknesses
Eruption’s wedge is fine, serviceable even. From several angles it can properly deflect horizontal spinners into its big honking weapon and/or avoid damage to itself. Several other angles, however, will result in either the horizontal throwing Eruption across the box or dismantling the wedge entirely, like the Teams final against Beetlejuice or the father-son match against Caldera (that seems to be only allowed to happen in Canada for some reason). With some other top-tier verts we’ve seen that this matchup can become downright unfair, but against Eruption top tier horizontals can find purchase.
Wild Card Factors
Brian is a tinkerer with his other robots, and with previous versions of Eruption, seemingly discontented with leaving a bot on a shelf to dust off and attend a tournament with every once in a while. He does have other bots, notably Barbie of Barbie and Ken, to try out new fascinating ideas that may keep him too occupied to make changes to Eruption, but seeing a new version at the Championships wouldn’t surprise me. This new version may be better than what we’ve seen already, or it may be worse, or somewhere in between.
Silent Spring (70-14, 40 KOs)
Lot of people don’t know Lebron’s middle name is actually Silent Spring. Real recognize real.
Silent Spring is a horizontal undercutter with shufflers for drive. At the 3lb scale, it was the first great horizontal undercutter, and about three years after that it also became the first great shuffler system. It is built and driven by Jamison Go.
The Story So Far
By the time NHRL came into being in late 2018, Silent Spring had already established itself as a local legend at competitions all over the Northeast United States. Even more impressive than this early success is the fact that it’s maintained a spot in the upper echelon of robot combat ever since, despite the explosion of new talent entering the sport. The one thing it hasn’t done at NHRL is win the Golden Brett, although it’s consistently threatened to do so with top 5 finishes in every NHRL Championship held so far.
Silent Spring had a really weird qualifying event this year, where it had drive reliability issues up until its last match where it sucked a bit of the opponent into itself and had to tap out. There’s no better way to rebound and remind the world how good this robot’s always been than with a strong showing here at the Championships.
Strengths
Silent Spring has been great in pretty much all the ways an undercutter can be great over the years. In the early days it was a violent force of chaos ping-ponging around the arena, strong enough to survive its own hits when no one else could. Once it switched to shufflers it transitioned into a slow-paced surgeon, taking out wheels bit by bit as opponents tried to figure out how to beat a bot with a pound and a half of weight on them that moved better than they did.
Last year Jamo pulled out all the stops with drive and weapon power, making the bot into, in my humble opinion, the most menacing spinner we’ve ever seen at the weight class. This new 2024 version looks to be a mix of the past two- a bit more slow and methodical with its hits and driving style, but with some of the devastating power we saw re-emerge in 2023. For the best view of this version in prime form, check out this fight against Under Destruction at a local Massachusetts event. Big, well-placed hits help Jamo control the pace of the fight from the jump against a durable but less experienced competitor.
Weaknesses
This section is where things get weird. Silent Spring almost never comes into a tournament with reliability issues, and yet that was a defining factor of the bot’s September 2024 showing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this bot face mobility issues like in this fight against Ice Blade, where that KO power bailed out a limping Silent Spring that barely avoided countout. I’d assume the version we see in December will be much less frustrated by such things, but since it is an issue the bot ran into this year I feel the need to mention it. The main overall issue the bot faces is in invertibility; it can drive and the weapon can spin whether its upside down or rightside up, but it’s much less effective when its weapon can barely skim the tops of opponents and its drive shows less control than normal.
Wild Card Factors
It’s hard to figure out what the malevolent little goblin in control of Jamo’s recent luck will decide next, after ending Silent Spring’s day twice in a row on getting stuck in TPU parts of his opponents, as well as the generally bizarre day it laid out for Silent Spring at NHRL this September. We’ll just have to wait and see what it has in store for Championships.
Mako (22-7, 10 KOs)
Mako is a two wheel drive overhead saw bot, one of the only of its kind and the only one in the 3lb Championships. Built and driven by Julian Papasian, it often runs alongside a wedge minibot driven by his sister, reigning 3lb Golden Dumpster winner Dima Papasian.
The Story So Far
Mako has been on a meteoric rise through the last year, starting as a base SSP kit just last August and modifying it into a custom championship-caliber competitor. Julian and Dima have shown a fantastic attitude towards the sport and an absolute love of the game that’s taken them to its highest levels at near-unprecedented speeds. The robot is the current best version of an overhead saw bot, a bot type that swings a saw down and attacks the top of its opponent. Most robots barely armor their top and bottom plates because most robots can’t reliably hit those areas. Mako’s saw arm can slice through in a way that even top-tier competitors frequently have to scramble to prepare for. This unusual attack style gives a great hammersaw the potential to pull off some tremendous, terrifying wins over top tier competitors- could it be enough to win the World Championship?
Strengths
Hammersaws are fundamentally control bots, and can only really utilize their terrifying weapon when they gain control of their opponent. Mako nails this first key as well as any hammersaw on the planet, as we saw when Mako fought the two other best control bots (or at least, slightly weakened versions of them) at once. Between excellent driving and great fork design, it can get under and push around pretty much every bot in the field. The weakness of the bot used to be horizontal spinners, as Mako used to lack a wedge configuration to deal with them, but judging by the fact that the new wedge worked pretty well against Silent Spring even that’s likely been eliminated. Once Mako can establish control, that saw can go to work carving up opponents like a hot knife through butter, or like a saw blade through carbon fiber and UHMW if you aren’t a fan of metaphors.
Weaknesses
The saw part of this hammersaw is particularly hard to build durably, and Mako has struggled to keep it spinning in past tournaments. It’s experienced a few different types of failure of this part of it’s weapon, with the motor that powers it smoking or the sawblade itself coming off at inopportune moments. Mako still has its controlling front-end assembly if this saw goes down, so it isn’t totally dead in the water, but expecting it to win against top-tier competition in this state is like expecting a shark to hunt with no teeth.
Wild Card Factors
Part of what makes Mako so effective is that hammersaws exploit a flaw in the design of most robots that competitors rarely patch in an effective way. If there’s ever going to be an event where competitors prepare properly for an overhead saw, it’ll be this one, where competitors are not only as competent as they come but more incentivized to win than any normal event. That said, Mako is also the only overhead attack robot in the 3lb field, and relatively new as a dominant force in the division, so if competitors pick any bot type to just hope they avoid and fail to prepare for it’ll likely be the hammersaw. Opponent’s preparation or lack thereof could notably change its performance in the Championships.
Also check out Daniel's NHRL World Championships preview for 12lb and 30lb bots.
You can find more of Daniel's robot reviews on his Medium page.