First real post of the new website! Feels a bit strange that it is a annual summary, especially since there haven’t been any even reports yet. But don’t worry, I’ll get those in in good time. Look forward to at minimum a report on the NHRL championship and NHRL all-stars events in the next month!
To say the least, 2023 was an amazing year for myself and my team! While we didn’t film a season of BattleBots this year, WCVII and Champions II aired which revealed Team SawBlaze as the world champions and runner up to the golden bolt! We had some remarkable battles: a season opener vs Hypershock, a chance to battle one of my lifelong heroes with Lockjaw, rematches against Aren Hill and Monsoon, a fight-of-the-year rematch vs Minotaur, and last but not least the championship battle vs Huge to celebrate creativity and ingenuity. This marks a career peak in Team SawBlaze with a record number of 12 fights in one season and total record of 10-2. Every year we strive for improvement and well… this season will be tough to beat!
Without a season of BattleBots, many builders focused on their campaigns in the smaller weight classes and I was no exception. I had my standard fleet of Silent Spring (3), Saiko! (12), and MegatRON (30) featuring upgrades (Silent Spring to a lesser degree) since the 2022 NHRL champs. Each bot entered for one NHRL regular season event and managed to not only to qualify but also win! Going into champs, they each held the #1 ranking which positioned them well for a top seed. I was just shy of the prestigious and non-existent NHRL triple crown award as each robot placed 2nd in championships with one loss each. And while it was disappointing to have come so close, I have to remember it wasn’t my dream; it was a goal that was thrust upon me. I am extremely proud to have won $15k in prize money for the year and raised $300k in donations for charity!
This year’s HAM was HAMshake! The crazy collaborative machine between myself and Aaron that moves like “Droopy at home” and performing surprisingly well nearly qualifying twice for the two NHRL events it attended. Next season will be much harder to field a HAM due to the reduced weight bonuses in the 2024 ruleset.
The end of year rounds out with the NHRL all-stars event which was an invitational experimental event across three weekday evenings. Saiko! was my only robot invited and went 1-1 being eliminated in the group stage. Fortunately I brought Silent Spring with me and I ended up in grudge matches against Synthesis and Droopy individually, back to back on day three as a farewell to the 2-lb weight bonus to novel-locomotion robots.
All in all, the following robots competed with their respective records:
- SawBlaze: 10 wins, 2 losses. World champion, Golden Bolt runner-up
- MegatRON: 8 wins, 1 loss. NHRL March champion, NHRL championship runner-up
- Saiko!: 10 wins, 2 losses. NHRL March champion, NHRL championship runner-up, all-stars invitee
- Silent Spring: 10 wins, 1 loss. NHRL June champion, NHRL championship runner-up
- HAMshake: 9 wins, 2 losses.
- Silent X: 8 wins, 3 losses, NHRL August 3rd place
I almost forgot, Silent X made a reappearance! Folks remember Silent X as the original testbed for new ideas for Silent Spring. Of course when Silent Spring adopted all the potential upgrades, Silent X was obsoleted and shelved. But then came a day where I was attending an NHRL and vacancies in the 3lb class appeared, I late registered a 2-year old version of Silent X (still has wheels) and managed to qualify.
What is next for 2024? Certainly all the robots need a bit of work and adjustments in their designs (rationale to come with the event reports). I’ll likely take an early year break to recuperate and plan out my thoughts and designs before making a mid-year resurgence!
Jamison Go 