Introduction
NHRL’s new Pro Tour competition series was introduced earlier this year. The top 8 robots at open events would qualify for a chance to compete against the other top robots for a shot at bigger prizes than a conventional open event, and would get priority seeding for the World Championship at the end of the year. Pinevictus had qualified for the Pro Tour back in May, but I was not able to attend. Luckily, I was able to sneak into this event with a wildcard.
Preparing for this event involved using the great storage of spare parts that had been collected for Pinevictus version 8. The goal was to enter with 3 fully prepped robots that all could be trusted in any circumstance. The result ended up being 2 robots that were fully trusted, and 1 robot as an ultimate backup.
Packing the stuff is always the worst part. I was able to condense pretty well for the travel to New York.
Pinevictus was also still unqualified for the 2026 championships, which was an undesirable situation to be in to defend the title.
I drove up with Mitchell of the newly formed Team Spectra, and I fended off the recruitment effort for many hours of driving and New York traffic. After arriving, safety was straightforward and I felt ready to take on the day. I ate dinner and snacks with Team Spectra, and ventured off to my hotel to wait for my family to arrive. A few hours burnt playing on the Nintendo switch, and I was properly sleep deprived and ready for bed.
Group Fight 1: Caldera
The first fight of the day was against Glenn and Caldera, famously the beetleweight robot with the most wins ever at NHRL. I had not fought a midcutter in some time, and was interested to see what would happen. With the two high energy robots in the box, anything could happen, and chaos could work favorably for either of us.
Unfortunately, Caldera seemed to have some driving difficulties out of the gate, with one of the drive sides seemingly looking intermittent. The fight was kicked off, and it was up to me to take advantage. Out of the gate, huge hits and massive destruction ensued, however this match was not even broadcast on DAZN. Caldera was not able to get around to the 3 sides he wanted to hit, and I kept my beater bar in the direction of action. One of the hiccups in this fight was that my TPU belt guard was struck and deflected into the pulley, causing a jam. Fortunately, I was able to use Caldera’s weapon to my advantage and fully remove the belt guard to keep on spinning. A few hits to Caldera’s backside, and Pinevictus would get the KO. This would serve to be very useful, as KO/TO wins were awarded an additional point over a Judge’s Decision victory. With a victory and the first match jitters out of the way, it was time to continue onwards.
Group Fight 2: Chainsaw Kitty
The second fight was against Kezia and Chainsaw Kitty. Way back when in 2023 (?), Pinevictus was destroyed by Kitty. But, I was no longer the same robot, and wanted to see what I could do.
This match was a quintessential beetleweight fight, and perfectly captured the massive hits and bounciness of 3lb robots. This is why I love the 3lb class, because there is nonstop action. Unfortunately, I was not on the winning side, and therefore I was not thrilled. I ended up losing the JD, and now the pressure was on for the third and final fight of the group stage. Kitty also poked a hole in my billet, but didn’t get anything critical. Nice.
Group Fight 3: Sting Operation
The third fight of the group stage was against Mark and Sting Operation. Due to the format of the competition, 2 out of the 4 robots from each group could advance to the bracket rounds. To advance, I either needed to win, or I needed to lose via JD and I needed Chainsaw Kitty to beat Caldera. In an effort to not overthink, I focused on winning.
This match was going fairly well from the beginning. I was able to get in a few hits, including on the weapon motor wires, disabling the saw part of the hammer saw. This meant I just had to survive, as the new NHRL judging criteria makes it very difficult for a robot to win without a way to damage the opponent. Unfortunately, disaster then struck for me, with one of my rear wheels falling off. This was incredibly annoying, and my guess is that the Loctite applied to the hub was not given ample time to cure. Fortunately, I was able to keep moving and get in a few more hits. Pinevictus scraped by with a JD win. Even so, Kitty was able to take down Caldera, and I would have stayed second in the group had I lost the JD. Time to put that in the past and move onwards to the bracket.
Quarterfinal: Crab Rangoon
Into the quarterfinal, it was Eli and Crab Rangoon. A 6lb dual horizontal fully walker, this was quite the robot. Having taken out Popper X and Anubis earlier in the day, it had proven to be quite the beater bar beater. Luckily (?) for myself, I have a lot of experience fighting above my weight. In fact, 5 out of my 7 fights at the World Championship last year were against 4.5lb robots. While a 6lb opponent was uncharted territory, I was fairly confident in my ability to dictate the fight and get in some good hits. The pressure was on, as the winner of this fight would get a qualification for champs. Which I wanted.
The name of the game to fight these massive horizontal thingys is to drive as slowly as possible to minimize the amount of bite they are able to get. A vert only needs a fraction of an inch of bite to pop the opponent into the air, while horizontals like Crab are looking to dig into your robot as much as possible. Because Crabs don’t walk that quickly, it is up to me to define how much engagement he is allowed to have.
I follow my own advice for the first hit, taking a very cautious approach. After the first impact, my primal instincts took over and I sped full speed into him. Again a moment where my judgment was clouded by the potential for huge roofshots. Luckily all that happened to me was getting flipped over, and I carefully self righted to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally make crab food out of myself. Back to being careful, I nibbled his legs and he was splayed out on the floor. Pretty graphic scenes. I debated going in for one more giant hit, but in the interest of qualifying on the line, I let the count out happen and took the win. The goal of the day was accomplished, and now it was eyes on the prize.
Semifinal: Turbofiend
The semifinal match was against Evil Julian and Turbofiend. I haven’t been to NHRL in a while to see Evil Julian develop in person, but he was all in for Pro Tour. I have had good luck in the past against Mako, and was eager to see how I would do against Turbofiend.
The match begins, with a few engagements going both ways. Turbo loses a drive side, and I am able to start controlling him. Unfortunately, due to the nature of my forks sucking and his TPU geometry, I was not able to get the huge head on hits I usually am. Then to my dismay, my weapon goes down. This hadn’t happened in quite some time, and I was surprised because there didn’t seem to be any single event that caused it. I did the same thing that I did against Caldera, and was able to free the weapon by driving into his. At this point, he was only able to crabwalk, and I was at least not in immediate danger. With a freed weapon, I was able to spin back up and keep the attack going. With about 45 seconds remaining, my weapon motor let out a huge gush of smoke, and I knew there would be no chance of that coming back. At basically the same time, Turbofiend had its motor overheat, and now it was a pushing match to the end. I was upside down and had no idea what I was doing, so I drove into the wall a few times.
I didn’t feel great coming out of it, as it wasn’t the decisive KO that I usually am looking for. Leaving your fate to someone else to decide sucks, and I have often been on the wrong side of close JD’s in the past. I am prepared to treat each JD as a coin flip, but was stuck in suspense waiting for the result. I began prepping for Power On in case I did win, and eventually I found out that I did. Onto the final.
Final: Power On
The grand final would be against fellow beater bar Power On and Max from Team Spectra. This was going to be a rematch from earlier in the year, where I had graphically KOed Power On. Max wanted his revenge, and there was also Team Spectra propaganda and lobbying going on. I had to stand strong to fight for my independence.
I walked out in front of the whole NYC crowd, and definitely looked horribly awkward. But that’s beside the point, I just want to fight robots and people want to watch. Loaded into the box, and we were ready to go.
This was a pretty quick fight, with a good first hit leaving Power On in a gyro spin. The second hit was a well-placed strike that left Power On disabled. Turns out the main power wires were all struck, and an XT30 connector laid elsewere in the area. The beater bar also was snapped down the middle. A swift victory, and I was the winner.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, next came the part where I had to talk in front of the whole crowd. I said something about how I wanted to win the championship again in 2026, and then received my pointy lightning bolt. I made my way off the stage, and was then able to watch my friend and fellow Leatherback Liam compete for the 12lb title. He was able to win against Ugee, and we aura farmed the whole venue.
It was an action packed day, and I was glad I could pull it off. Girlfriend buff is a real thing apparently. Looking forwards, October NHRL is in 3 weeks (less at the time of writing this), and there is a Skywalker to make a name for. I want a dumpster!
