Introduction
Coming off of a big Pro Tour win in New York City, I was feeling good. Adding another piece of NHRL hardware to the collection was great, but I still lacked one of the most coveted trophies in robot combat, a Golden Dumpster, only won at an Open NHRL event.
Earlier in the year, I had reserved spots for both the 3lb Pinevictus and the 12lb Skywalker. At the time, this was the only event left to qualify either robot, but Pinevictus was able to sneak into Pro Tour with a wildcard. Perks of being a champ I suppose. The goals of Pro Tour had been to qualify for the 2026 championship, and it was definitely successful on that front. Knowing that I would have a chance to defend my 3lb title was nice, but I wanted bigger and better things. The goals of this competition were simple, ranked in no apparent order.
- Qualify Skywalker for December World Championships by placing top 4
- Win Pinevictus’s first Golden Dumpster
- Win two Golden Dumpsters at the same time
Step 1: Preparing for the event
Readers of the blog might remember the Hive Hysteria event earlier in the summer where Skywalker debuted. I learned some good lessons, and was able to execute on a redesign that minimized the number of parts that needed to get updated. Unfortunately, because I was burnt out, lazy, and love to procrastinate, this did not get completed until time was running out. The LTC order was sent out 3.5 weeks prior to the competition, and I received the new parts on Wednesday before the competition. The upgrades to Skywalker can be summed up in a few bullets.
- Beefed up front armor mounting. Some earlier design oversight and rushing led to pocketing geometry that created an unfortunate stress concentration right at the mounting location. Weight was pulled to remove all of the pockets from this region.
- Integrated gearbox faceplate into the drive rail. This allowed the gearboxes and motors to be pushed outwards, allowing the power switch to be repackaged into the cavity between motors.
- Stepped weapon shaft. To get weight back for the rest of the changes, I stepped down the weapon shaft in the center. While this decreases the bending stiffness of the shaft, the previous design had thin walls that fractured on large impacts. This allowed me to redistribute weight to thicken up the shaft at the bearings. A material change from 52100 steel to S7 tool steel should also help mitigate the destructive failures.
Because the frame rails are the primary structure of the robot, the build could not be completed until the parts arrived. In the meantime, I wired up and tested all of the motors in their respective locations so that once the parts arrived it would be quick to turn around a completed robot. I spent a long time playing around with alternate packaging layouts to see if I could come up with a better layout than I had in CAD. Unfortunately, this effort was only fully finished for a single copy before the event. Skywalker 2 was mostly in working order, but never received the full treatment to be able to trust it in battle. Thus, Skywalker 1 would be the primary robot for the day (foreshadowing).
Fans of the blog may also remember Pinevictus. The washed champion of NHRL. Going into this event, I knew that I had a couple working copies coming out of Pro Tour. The goal was to win a dumpster alongside Skywalker, and hopefully the fun having robot would do just what it was meant to. We’ll see how that goes…
After a long Thursday night, the robots were packed and ready to drive up to Norwalk on Friday. Some nice family photos were taken. After Ratchet it seems I have become fairly 1 dimensional with my robot builds…
I was grateful to be able to drive up with THE Brandon Bennett Young, one of my closest pals in the game. We had great musing of Leatherbacks sweep of NHRL, as we were meeting many of the other Leatherfriends at the competition. Those in tune with their history may know of the numerous Leatherbacks sweep attempts that had occurred before. This time would be different… right?
Friday Check In
The check in on Friday went smoothly. I was able to test Skywalker and Pinevictus, and felt good about both going into the competition. Liam had brought me some giant AKU!! forks for Skywalker that would be a good test of how to make the beater bar even more fun against the growing legion of wide verts. Skywalker felt amazing to drive around in the arena, and I was incredible excited for the day to come.
Pinevictus Fight 1: Bergentrükung
Fight 1 of the day is always nerve racking, no matter what. The pre-fight jitters stay undefeated. Bergentrükung was a first time NHRL competitor, a “Peter-bar” kit. I remember a time when Pinevictus looked awfully like that… and the announcement of the kitbot forced the retirement of drisk Pinevictus. Any spinning weapon is a force to be reckoned with, and a few big exchanges later and I was able to disable the opponent. Pinevictus starts 1-0.
Skywalker Fight 1: Yautja
Fight 1 is always the most nerve racking as I already said. This time I had two first fights! Yautja was a giant vertical spinner with the ability to annihilate the guts of Skywalker with a single well placed hit. Thus, I needed to make sure he could never hit me where I didn’t want it.
With the power of the long forks, Skywalker wins the first engagement, sending Yautja flying. Corey calls for an unstick, and I get in another hit. We see the battery wires hanging out, and decide to leave it there. Skywalker avenges its fallen brother A12XWANG, which Corey had wrecked many years earlier. 1-0 with both robots is a great feeling.
Pinevictus Fight 2: Painwin
The next 3lb match would be against the father son duo of Painwin. This would be the youngest opponent I had ever matched up against to date. A pretty dicey start, and Pinevictus is on the ropes. I can’t win any head to head engagements due to the forky hands of Painwin, and I start to worry. After about a minute, I get away from him to reassess the strategy and clear my head. I try to be more tactical with my manuevering, and am able to land some big hits and get a drive side. One of the great powers of Pinevictus is that it is really able to take a beating before losing serious functionality. Controlling the fight to the end means that I walk away with a second win. A dicey one, but always good to have a great fight.
Skywalker Fight 2: Xenomorph
Funny that the next Skywalker was able a big vert fight, in fact the same big vert that inspired Yautja. This would also be another match to avenge another fallen robot in Ratchet. The other advantage is that I was hoping I could just do the same thing as I had done in the previous match. Well, that pretty much happened. I was able to control the whole fight and easily get under Xenomorph. While not spectacular roofshots, it was a beautiful demonstration of calculated engagements and not trying to go for too much (as I sometimes do). While hard to suppress that itch, it was worth it to move forward with minimal damage.
If you were paying attention to the stream, you may have noticed some smoke coming from the robot following that match. This was worrying, to say the least. Turns out the screws mounting the weapon motor had stripped out, and the motor had been friction welding the pulley into the frame rail. Not ideal, to say the least. The smoke had come from the belt interacting with the very hot pulley. With not much a solution during the event, I knew I would have to make do, and made a note of something to fix for next time.
Pinevictus Fight 3: Digitizer
What a busy day up to this point. Both robots were 2-0 and in the bracket, but far away from the finish line. The next match for Pinevictus would be against Draton and Digitizer. The robot had been prepped and ready, and I was prepared for battle. An exceptionally close back and forth fight had me on the ropes. My historic lack of attentiveness to ground game came to bite me here. I was getting pretty well controlled, and seemingly not much I could do about it. Then, Digitizer started having serious mobility issues. Then came my biggest mistake, allowing him time to bait out the unstick. Instead of just smacking the easy shot on his wheels, I sat back and waited patiently. As it goes, he came back to life and we resumed the back and forth. I was doing much better in the second half of the fight, but in the final moments my weapon belt was sniped clean out. Ugh. I would go on to lose the JD, and Pinevictus would be eliminated. A harsh reminder that I did not rule the world (yet).
Skywalker Fight 3: Robocat
Fresh off of a loss, I was ready to bounce back. The next 12lb match would be again Ben and Robocat. With the power of my long forks, I felt pretty good about this match. Robocat had been having some issues earlier in the day, but I was focused on making sure Skywalker wouldn’t let me down. The match went pretty well. I was cautious in lining up the first hit as to avoid any unwanted engagements, and struck when the time was right. The first hit broke his overhardened weapon belt guard and took out the belt too. As I was still getting over the Pinevictus loss (still not over it even today), I wanted to show the power of Skywalker. I sent Robocat into the roof a few times before the tap out ensued.
Skywalker Fight 4: Minun and Plusle
The top 8 primetime fight would be against Minun and Plusle. There was quite a scramble after the Robocat fight to prepare. Unfortunately, Skywalker 2 had not been fully tested and was not trusted. It was deemed that Skywalker 1 would have a better chance, and all of the preparations were made to the best of my ability. As the clock was ticking down a painful realization was made with the robot fully assembled. The weapon motor pulley had a slight amount of slip on the shaft. The D shaped pulley had started rounding out against Robocat, and there was not time to resolve the issue. I had to resolve to tightening the clamping hub of the pulley as much as I could to try and get some amount of better torque transfer. A twitch test showed the weapon was capable of spinning up, but I knew in a bad situation it would not be ideal. Sadly I was buttoning up the robot and getting called to weigh in, so there was nothing I could do.
Minun and Plusle were able to take advantage of my lethargic weapon situation, and I lost the first few engagements. Once I was upside down, I knew I was in trouble. The motor had the torque to start from a dead stop, but without torque being transferred into the pulley I was not able to move. I also ended up sucking in a tread which left Skywalker to be counted out. The tread I don’t care about, but losing to myself was the worst feeling ever. Especially given the stakes of that match. Skywalker gets eliminated and I am sent packing.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, none of the goals mentioned earlier were accomplished. No Golden Dumpsters to my name, and Skywalker is still not in the running to compete for a Brett in December.
In comes the crash out. For the past year, I had been riding the highs of the ultimate fun having robot Pinevictus. Since debuting version 8 in November 2025, I had accumulated a 30-6 record with 4 event wins, 2 of those being the largest NHRL events since. The design and build of Skywalker had been to get back to the big box, but I didn’t have the same fire as I did before. After two brutal losses, it was time to lock in again, as I clearly wasn’t trying hard enough.
It always sucks to lose, but as my old tennis coach used to say, “you either win or you learn.” As painful as it is to learn, that is what makes us better and it is a natural part of the process. I think that one day I will become a philosopher (if I am not already).
I also was reminded of the difficulty running two robots at once. I was not prepared to do so, and my delusions of glory ended up being my downfall. The goal still stands to win two Bretts in 2026…
Next up is the November Pro Tour event, back in Norwalk. The final chance to qualify, and what better time to show the true potential of Skywalker. The redesign of the critical components was completed, and parts were ordered to assemble 3 robot copies. Thanks for reading!
