With Rotator now dead and buried, joining the rest, we need to talk about the Horizontal Spinner Crisis happening in Battlebots today

Regular Season Records for Horizontal Spinners in 2021*

• Bloodsport 2-1
• Tombstone 2-1
• Valkyrie 2-1
• Icewave 2-1
• HiJinx 2-1

Ok, not so bad right? Well, all of those robots lost their first fight, then won their next two. Here are the second opponents for each

Bloodsport: Subzero, Claw Viper

Tombstone: Mammoth, Free Shipping

Valkyrie: Pardon My French…someone else

Icewave: Deadlift, Fusion

HiJinx: Kraken, Subzero

I don’t see any playoff teams on that list. Continuing…

• Rotator (2-0)

(The “Good One”, and the only with a victory over a playoff team in Black Dragon)

• Malice 1-2, but did make the playoff play-in

That’s the seven that made the postseason or equivalent. There was also Blade, who was bad

• Blade 1-2

Ok, so I could do the math, looks like these bots (assuming I didn’t miss anyone) were like 5 games over 500. Again, that sounds good! Now, how did the playoffs go?

• Bloodsport – lost first fight
• Tombstone – lost first fight
• Valkyrie – lost first fight
• Icewave – lost first fight
• Hijinx – lost first fight

(So far the only one that was “competitive” in their fight was Tombstone…and competitive is too strong a word.)

• Rotator – won first fight, lost second fight
• Malice – lost first fight

Oh wait, there’s one more. Ribbot used a horizontal spinning weapon in their first (and only) playoff match.

• Ribbot – lost first fight

(doing the math…)

Horizontal Spinners went 1-8 in the playoffs this year. That’s 7 games under 500.

(oh, but wait, there’s more. There were two full body spinners in the playoffs that certainly spin horizontally: Captain Shrederator and Gigabyte. I wanted to keep this post simple but they certainly could have been included in the numbers. For starters – they both lost their only playoff matches! But the interesting thing is that Rotator beat Capn Shred, so really the only victory by a horizontal spinner was over another horizontal spinner!!! Hey, at least Gigabyte did pretty well)

That is all. Thank you.