S3E2 - Mass Destruction Returns: Resurgence 5 Preview with Team Omega

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Havoc Rundown
Episode: S3E2 - Mass Destruction Returns: Resurgence 5 Preview with Team Omega
Release Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Hunter Bro Studios (Justin Hunter and crew)
Guests: Team Omega (Brandon, Lucas, Fred, Spocky)

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Episode Overview

This episode celebrates the much-anticipated revival of Mass Destruction ("MassD"), one of the Northeast’s most historic and beloved combat robotics tournaments. Broadcasting just days before the January 31st event at the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA, the hosts sit down with Team Omega—the innovators engineering both mayhem and community in New England’s robot combat scene. The panel delves into MassD’s ethos, unique arena features (notably, its iconic spring-loaded pit), the event’s role as an incubator for new builders, and a preview of the wild and whimsical robots set to fight. Insights into organizing grassroots events, the joy and pitfalls of volunteer-driven competition, and the future of local events converge with lighthearted games and memorable community stories.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Return of Mass Destruction

• Historic Venue Correction: Originally slated as the Museum of Science in Boston, it’s clarified that the real location is the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham, MA.
  • [03:57] Ashley: “It’s not the Museum of Science. The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham.”
• Event Context:
  • Mass Destruction is a cornerstone event for regional combat robotics, bringing legacy and newcomers together in a builder-run, innovation-driven competition.

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2. Quick Recap of Recent Robot Combat Tournaments [02:20–03:51]

• The hosts tally up winners from other recent events around the US and abroad, recognizing the breadth of the grassroots combat robotics scene.
• Notable robots and results highlighted to show the diverse and global reach of the sport.

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3. Game Corner: Robot Name Showdown [05:00–10:47]

• Team Omega faces off against the Havoc Rundown crew in a fast-paced, clue-based game naming bots attending MassD.
• Sample memorable moment:
  • [07:23] Justin (after a correct answer): “It is Midas. Yes, it is.”
  • Team Omega posts an emphatic win—demonstrating their encyclopedic knowledge of the event roster.

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4. "Five in Focus": Signature Segment – Team & Event Deep Dive [11:40–44:01]

a. Favorite Parts of Hosting Mass Destruction

• Brandon:
  • Loves “pure chaos” at the end of the day, when the best fights coalesce and builders and staff are in full, fun flow.
    • [13:06] “When it’s the last round… Fred and I are ripping back and forth… it’s pure chaos. That’s probably my favorite time.”
• Fred:
  • Relishes participating in events without having to build or compete—organizing lets him always “win”—no matter the outcome.
    • [13:15] “I don’t have to worry about the stress about winning or losing because, no matter what happens, I always win.”
• Spocky:
  • Most inspired watching brand-new builders, families, and young competitors experience their first-ever bouts at MassD.
  • [14:01] “We’ve had a couple of builders, especially younger builders and family teams, have their first event at Mass Destruction… so amazing to see people coming into the sport.”

b. Why Resurrect Mass Destruction Instead of Starting Fresh?

• Fred:
  • With a decade-long legacy, MassD’s IP and vibe have deep roots. The team can now run events independently, to their vision and for the benefit of the community.
  • [15:41] “It was just a lot more straightforward to just keep that vibe running, especially when… running the entire event was a lot of stress… bring back the dream.”

c. The Unique Pit: Mechanism and Meta [18:09 and 57:03]

• The spring-powered “lifting pit” is a signature MassD innovation, engaging both drivers and audiences:
  • Not instant elimination for falling in, but a dramatic reset for both bots—making control and tactics dynamic, not punitive.
  • [19:15] Fred: “What I love about it—it’s like you get the point of being put into a pit, but it doesn’t end the whole match. It’s the coolest thing in the world.”
• The pit is loud and physically impactful, requiring creative engineering (pedals and springs, not just pneumatics) to sync with live event needs.

d. Event Philosophy: Growth, Not Scale Creep

• MassD avoids chasing size for its own sake; priorities are builder experience, approachability, and “fun first” above all.
  • [24:28] Brandon’s goal: “Everyone gets in at a reasonable time. We get out so you can have dinner with your buddies afterwards… make memories.”
• Operates at a pace that welcomes both rookies and veterans, avoids burnout, and allows spontaneous events thanks to museum partnership.

e. Flexible Operations

• All infrastructure (arena, schedule, roles) is owned, managed, and stored by the team—no dependency on outside entities or rigid rulesets.
• [17:32] “No one’s telling us what rules or weightclasses to run… we can absolutely wing it.”

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5. Behind the Scenes: Roles & Surprising Joys in Event Organizing [37:02–44:01]

• Each team member organically falls into consistent roles (streaming, brackets/running order, paperwork czar, setup muscle, etc.).
• Lucas/Spocky: Finds joy in fixing and helping distress bots/pit repairs during live events—highlighting MassD’s nurturing, collaborative environment.
• Unexpected pleasures—pronouncing silly robot names, soldering marathon sessions, and the unpredictable teamwork of running a grassroots event.
  • [41:01] Lucas: “It’s fun. One of the nice things about Mass D is—it’s chill enough that if someone really needs to fully rebuild the robot, room will be made in the schedule to try to accommodate that.”

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6. Mass Destruction Event Specifics and What’s New in 2026 [44:30–60:28]

• Weight Classes: Focus on Beetleweight and Plastic Ants.
  • Ants (especially plastic class) are emphasized for their approachability/ease for new builders.
  • [54:46] Brandon: “Plastic ant class is really awesome because… it is the easiest and cheapest way to get a new builder into the sport.”
• Number of Bots & Format:
  • Guarantee of three fights per entrant, with additional playoff matches for higher ranking bots; aim for maximum builder satisfaction and value.
  • Registration count and number of classes designed to maximize quality over quantity.
• Field of Bots, What’s Exciting:
  • Hosts and guests highlight returning favorites and up-and-comers (e.g., Power of Friendship, Lightly Toasted, Jackalope, Anubis, new designs with wild wheels and creative materials).
  • Emphasize welcoming atmosphere for both hardened competitors and total newcomers.

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7. Mailbag & Listener Q&A Highlights [61:33–84:57]

What Draws You to Combat Robotics?

• Brandon: “The thrill of competition. Whether you win or lose, it gives you that massive dopamine rush. It’s as close to being in the NFL as I’ll ever get.” [63:46]
• Fred: “Every new robot is a new expression, a new design language. I love seeing how other people approach the same problem.” [65:14]
• Lucas: “I really like solving the problem, seeing how other people solve it.” [65:26]

Most Impactful Developments in the Sport

• Ubiquity of 3D printing (especially TPU), combat-robot-specific parts, and plug-and-play gear and electronics have radically reduced build barriers and fostered design creativity.
• Brandon: “Now you don’t even need to do any of that… the development of these new parts… is pretty incredible.” [68:05]

History and Evolution of Mass Destruction

• Founded by Rob Masek in 2015 at Artisans Asylum, inspired in part by the ABC BattleBots reboot.
• Early focus on maximizing fights per event, fun-first vibes, and an all-volunteer team culture.
• Survived multiple venue moves, heavy COVID disruptions, and even supplied the original Norwalk arena.
• “Returned to the roots” in recent years—builder-oriented, locally run, and thriving.

Fan Question: Dream Team Merch?

• Themed Pit Vipers (sunglasses with bot-styled lenses), vintage motorsport-inspired pit shirts, and playful swag.
• [84:13] Fred: “Especially if there was a pizza reflection or like an alien reflection in the lens.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the MassD Pit:
  • “You have a goal… instead of just, ‘I’m gonna pin, I’m gonna hold’, it’s, ‘I’m trying to get my opponent in this hole’. And it’s very cool to watch.” — Justin, [19:48]
• On New Builder Inclusion:
  • “It’s really all in beetle weights and plastic ants.” — Fred, [53:18]
• On Community Growth:
  • “We guarantee three fights… we don’t want people to just get one fight and go home.” — Brandon, [53:19]
• On Unexpected Joys:
  • “I love soldering.” — Fred, [41:39] (after teammates admit soldering is commonly hated!)
• On Why They Keep Coming Back:
  • “Designing robots is a really nice creative exercise… every new robot gets to be a new expression.” — Fred, [65:14]
• On History:
  • “It was just a lot more straightforward to just keep that vibe running, especially when… running the entire event was a lot of stress… bring back the dream.” — Fred, [15:41]

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Must-Listen Timestamps

• [03:57]— Venue correction; local flavor and museum quirks.
• [05:00–10:47] — Game Corner: rapid-fire MassD bot names.
• [13:06] — Brandon’s favorite chaotic moment as event organizer.
• [19:15] — The MassD pit: design, drama, and community feedback.
• [24:28] — Why MassD values “quality” events over scale.
• [37:02] — Team Omega’s event day roles and teamwork philosophy.
• [63:46] — Team Omega on what combat robotics offers that no other sport does.
• [68:05] — Reflections on evolutions in gear, parts, and accessibility.
• [74:37] — Origin story of Mass Destruction (Rob Masek, Artisans Asylum, Norwalk lineage).

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Episode Tone and Style

• Casual, humorous, and inclusive, with a healthy dose of community in-joking and technical nerd-outs.
• Generous with storytelling, encouragement for newcomers, and behind-the-scenes details.
• Highly collaborative, reflecting the grassroots, builder-powered spirit at the heart of combat robotics.

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Takeaways for Newcomers & Fans

• Mass Destruction is a model for builder-centric events: it’s flexible, community-run, innovation-friendly, and focused on accessibility for rookies while supporting high-level competition.
• Team Omega and their peers see event organizing as a passion project, equal parts sweat and play—a critical ingredient sustaining combat robotics’ growth.
• Unique features like the lifting pit and an evolving tool/parts ecosystem keep local events fresh and fun.
• Anyone can start building—and MassD’s plastic antweight class is the recommended on-ramp.

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Where to Watch & How to Get Involved

• Mass Destruction 2026 Stream:
  • YouTube: Omega Robotics Team (Live link in episode description).
• Havoc Rundown Website:
  • HavocRundown.com: News, podcasts, event listings, bot registry, fantasy leagues, and community games.
• Fantasy Leagues & More:
  • Open leagues with custom drafts for combat robotics fans on the website.

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"Whether you're fighting, spectating, or cheering from home, this is one event you absolutely don't want to miss!" — Justin Hunter [86:14]

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Closing:

A warm, chaotic, knowledge-rich celebration for combat robotics lovers, this episode is both an invaluable preview of Mass Destruction’s 2026 return and a love letter to the ingenuity and community that keeps the bots fighting.

Transcript

[A]

Sam. Foreign.

[B]

Welcome back to the HAVOC Rundown. I'm your host, Justin Hunter. And tonight we are gearing up for the first major event on our 2026 Combat Robotics Calendar. Mass destruction. Happening January 31st. Hosted inside the iconic Museum of Science in Boston, this event marks the revival of one of Northeast most beloved and historic robot combat tournaments. Bringing top tier builders back into the spotlight where it all began. And to help us break it all down, we're joined by the crew that brought it back to life. Team Omega. The minds behind the chaos. You might know them from their time on BattleBots, from the robots like Starshell and Ripperoni, or from their appearances across the NHRA and events nationwide. But they're also the ones keeping the New England scene thriving with innovation, community and world class competition. Please welcome the minds behind masks, D, Brandon Lucas. Fred and Spocky. I'm saying that right? Yes, right. You like Spocky. Okay, cool. Thank you guys so much for being on and talking to us.

[A]

Yeah, thanks for having us.

[B]

So of course, I'm not alone tonight. Joining me as always, is the full HAVOC Rundown crew. Please welcome the game master, Ryan Hunter. Hello there, the community connection, Ashley Beckman.

[A]

Hi.

[B]

Our wonderful CHAOS conduit, Thomas Carroll.

[C]

You can learn about watches at the museum.

[B]

And our webmaster, Tony Baker.

[D]

I'm still flipping through spreadsheets.

[B]

And as I said before, I am your host, Justin. So before we get into anything else, we're just going to take a quick, quick dip into the other Combat Robotics competitions that happened over the past weekend. We are recording on the 20th. So these are the competitions that happened between last week and this week. So first up at Robot Renegades in Florida, Destroyer took home the Wind and Ants. Sunday Scaries came out on top in Beetles and Hammerhead crushed the Plastic class. We then move over to G Scrolls Mech Mayhem in New Jersey. Flamingo was crowned in Ants. Twitch took home the Wind and Fairies and Trampoline and plastic Ants. We're going to move out to Utah. The Bots Bot spot delivered four champions. Vision for Ants, Fragment X and Beetles, Splinter and Fairies and Nacho and Plastic. Next up, Winter wars from Mirka. MRCA saw Pipsqueak take the win in Ants Pipeline Punch, which is one we know very well. Take it in Beetles and Fifi. Fifi took it home in Plastics. Second to last is CMARCC in Massachusetts gave us two standout winners. Paper Jam and Ants. And a legal Dorito. Wonderful name in Plastics. And finally down in Brazil, Morento took the Antway Crown at Robocor So it's been a pretty wild weekend full of chaos and 2026 is just getting started.

[E]

So we actually can igal Dorito real quick.

[F]

Yeah, go ahead, community.

[G]

I didn't catch this in the notes. It's not the Museum of Science. The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation in Waltham.

[B]

I don't know why that got messed up in my notes.

[G]

You said it and I was like, oh, I didn't catch that.

[B]

This is why I said not beforehand. Ashley, it's okay.

[C]

We have the correct name of the museum anymore.

[F]

Wonderful planetarium. But you can't learn about watches there. You can see giant lightning and vandagraph generators, but there's no watches.

[C]

Yeah, go to the museum with the watches. It's better than the Museum of Science.

[B]

Yeah. I'm not sure where I pulled that info from, but yeah, thank you, Ashley for the correction on that. Yeah.

[E]

Well,

[B]

so let us move over. Ryan's back with a brand new game corner and we have absolutely no idea what he's planned. We just told him to try and do something with some mass debots. So let's see what he's gonna do over in Ryan's game corner.

[E]

Okay. Ryan's game corner. We are going to do exactly that. We are going to get everybody familiar with some robots that are gonna be at Mass D on the 31st. Actually, really cool. Illegal Dorito will be at Mass D and plants. So that'll be fun. All right, so for the game, we're doing a quick draw bot naming round to get everyone familiar with these robot names. This is how it's going to work. I've written clues based around bots that are attending the event. This is the only ones that are going to be are ones that are on the event list right now. And actually in the event, each of

[G]

these clues at the event. Got it. Can I look at the list? Is that allowed?

[D]

It's on our website.

[E]

I'm fine with that. You can look at the list if you want. Each of these clues has to do with a bot's name. They're all pretty simple. Don't overthink them. They should be really very quick. I'm going to score this as Team Omega against Team Havoc rundown. If someone buzzes in and gets it wrong, the other team will get a chance to steal.

[B]

Oh, no. Oh, good. The house can't get points this game.

[A]

Yeah.

[H]

All right.

[E]

Well, if both sides get wrong, maybe the house gets a point. Okay, Buzz.

[I]

Or just us thinking or do we raise hands? Or how do We.

[E]

You could buzz in with a buzz Me? Anything to designate that you are buzzing in. All right.

[F]

Screen.

[D]

Oh.

[C]

You're allowed to scream.

[A]

Yes.

[G]

Whatever you need.

[C]

No, Please. Please scream.

[B]

Ryan will love it.

[E]

All right, is everybody clear on the rules? I have six clues.

[B]

Yep.

[G]

Both beetles and plastic ants.

[E]

They are both beetles and plants. Yes.

[A]

All right.

[H]

I'm not looking.

[F]

We're just gonna go pants.

[H]

Plants is correct.

[E]

Plants is correct. Justin said plastics. I was like, what? Plastics. Okay, so the first clue. Everything this plastic ant hits turns to gold. Ashley. Yes.

[G]

This is so wrong. But the only thing that came to my mind was cheddar goblin.

[E]

No, it's not cheddar goblin.

[F]

Sweet.

[A]

Just sheep. Yeah. Oh, It's.

[D]

It's.

[A]

It's Midas.

[E]

It is Midas. Yes, it is.

[B]

Good job.

[E]

That is a point for team Omega.

[G]

I just wasn't looking at the list, so I have no idea.

[A]

I respect just completely winging it, but it may not be the play.

[B]

Ashley's trying to hold herself to higher standards than the rest.

[H]

Yeah.

[A]

Apparently.

[E]

My second clue. What is that bird that are the closest living relatives to the Tyrannosaurus rex? What was that one again?

[C]

Ding.

[B]

Ding.

[E]

Thomas.

[C]

It's a chicken.

[E]

It is chicken. Yes, it is.

[F]

Okay.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

Our friendship. Isn't it?

[A]

It's definitely the power of friendship.

[E]

Okay, next clue. Over easy. Fried frittata. Poaching omelets. Boiled. What's missing? It's scrambled eggs. It's scrambled eggs. All right. That's a Team Omega point. So far we have two to Omega and one to team Havoc. Okay, Next.

[B]

Buzz.

[F]

Yeah.

[E]

Yeah. Thomas. What is it?

[C]

Repeater.

[E]

Huh?

[C]

Repeater.

[E]

No.

[B]

Okay. That would have been crazy if he got it.

[A]

Yes.

[G]

I was thinking you were going to say jackalope or something.

[H]

All right.

[E]

This beetle is the complete opposite of a slow enemy.

[I]

Turbo fiend. Sorry.

[A]

Yoink.

[E]

What was it? What was that?

[I]

Sorry. Turbo. Turbo friend. Sorry.

[E]

It is Turbo friend. Yes. Turbo friend.

[D]

Sorry.

[E]

Yeah.

[D]

Buzz.

[B]

All right.

[H]

How dare you, Lucas.

[E]

Okay.

[I]

I was the one who suggested screaming too. I bet.

[E]

Okay, according to Isaac Asimov, this is. This is a.

[B]

Okay.

[E]

It is first law. Okay. One last clue. At first he was curious, but they stole his bananas and now the chimp is pissed.

[C]

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz.

[F]

Furious George.

[E]

It is Furious George. All right. And team omega wins with 5 to 1. Damn job.

[G]

I know Fred was gonna be good at this game.

[A]

Almost like we've been staring at the. At the reg list for the past month and a half.

[F]

Somebody has to say these names over and over again.

[A]

Yes.

[F]

And It's Brandon As.

[A]

Yeah, as long as it's not the. Who is the. There's a beetle. Yeah, the Isocapa. Whatever the heck. Do that on your own time. Oh, no, no, no.

[F]

I'm gonna sit in over and over again.

[E]

No.

[B]

What was, what was the one? Hello, Chapter.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, we got it after like five or six times. It took a while.

[F]

I saw Apocalypse Ariser.

[A]

That one's easy.

[E]

Yeah, well, there's Ple. Ple. I, I, I'm not even going to

[B]

say the whole thing.

[E]

There's Pleck is a terrible robot named too Flexor.

[C]

Hink a Dinka.

[A]

Some of these. Some of these guys are running dangerously close to getting renamed like Bob.

[B]

Well, I did see one of my favorite names up here that's on the wait list is Rickety Cricket. And that's only because I'm a always sunny, huge always sunny fan. So I hope they get off the wait list and we can fight Rickety Cricket. That would be fun.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Rickety Cricket would be awesome.

[B]

Okay. Very cool. Very good game. Right? We are going to move out of the game corner and we're gonna move to our signature segment. So I don't know if any of you guys ever listen to an episode, but our signature segment is each of us comes up with a question to ask our guests. This could be about your Comet Robotics experience, about your event, or anything like that. And then Thomas has a surprise question at the end that he never tells us what it's going to be because he never knows what it's going to be.

[C]

The other question.

[B]

So we are going to go into our five in focus. Ashley, I have your question up first.

[G]

Okay, we are jumping right in then. Because I always like to know people's favorite things. So I want to know what your favorite part of hosting mass destruction has been.

[B]

Don't.

[C]

Once you go, Brandon.

[A]

All right, so I would say my favorite part. And there's a lot, right? Because the people that we work with are really good. The builders have been really good to us in general. We've really had very few issues with, with people. It's been really good. But I think personally, my favorite bit is just if you could pinpoint a moment, it's when it's the last round of beetle weights or the last round of plastic ants, and everything is starting to kind of, like, formulate. You get some really good fights. It's before everything slows down and there's all kinds of stuff to do, and you have tons of stuff going on in the box and out of the box. Fred and I are ripping back and forth. We got the brackets going, we got the fights going. We've got stuff going on in front of us. I'm trying to hit the pit. When somebody falls in, it's pure chaos. I think that's probably my favorite time of the entire day.

[F]

I think my favorite part is getting to participate in combat robots without having to build a robot.

[B]

That is fair.

[F]

I don't have to worry about the stress about winning or losing because no matter what happens, I always win.

[B]

Coming from two people, myself and Ryan who are currently working on getting a robot up and running for mass destruction. I totally understand that

[H]

different kind of stress, but you know.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[H]

Varieties.

[A]

Typically the stress comes before. So once you're actually. Once you actually get to day of like the majority of the work that isn't fun is over and then it's just fun so. Because especially the arena. The arena build, like the put up is the most. The hardest like physical part of the whole thing. But once that's done, it's. It's all. It's all easier from there. Yeah.

[B]

Yep. Makes sense.

[H]

I'd say for me we've had a couple of builders, especially some younger builders and some family teams that have had their first event at mass destruction. After attending mass destruction as an audience member. And that's just been so amazing to see the like people coming into the sport and especially like bringing like their children and their like college students in and like getting to see the development there has been really nice.

[B]

Yeah.

[G]

I think Nora from under destruction started

[H]

at mass D. It's great to see.

[I]

I won that first one.

[D]

Right.

[G]

So yeah, dad was a nervous wreck the whole time. But yeah.

[B]

Yeah, this will be interesting. We meant to go last year. We never got a chance. So this is going to be our first nasty. And I mean everyone has always talked very highly of it, Including Ashley and Thomas who have both gone. So we're extremely excited to not just go and you know, talk to everyone that is involved there and talk to builders, but also actually have a robot which I don't think we've competed since this time last year. January is year before. Year before 2020.

[H]

Time flies.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

So it's been a while. It's been a long time.

[D]

First event for robot combat. That's not nhr. I've never been to a local event before. So this would be fun.

[B]

It's very, very exciting.

[A]

You picked a good event.

[I]

Yeah.

[B]

Tony, why don't you go next?

[D]

So since I'm researching like the history of robotic combatics lately. What made you decide to resurrect mass destruction instead of just starting a new.

[F]

We've been doing mass destruction for. I just checked. We've been involved in one way or another for, like, the last 10 years, or at least me. So it's just sort of the brand, the ip, the event that we have here in Boston. And it was just a lot more straightforward to just keep that vibe running, Especially when there was a little bit of a period where running the entire event was a lot of stress on us. And we tried to pass it off to other people. But when we wanted to pick it back up again, it was based off the same ideas that we were originally running the event. We want to make a cool, chill event that everybody enjoys having fun at and is approachable for a lot of these beginner builders. So that's really cool. The ethos and the dream that we wanted to bring back to the combat robot world.

[A]

Yeah. And part of the thing that's really cool that I like about the situation that we're in now as an event is we are kind of beholden to nobody. We can run events whenever we want. If somebody's like, hey, we want to do an event this weekend, we can make it happen. It's our arena. We built it ourselves. We designed it ourselves. We built it ourselves. We know exactly how it goes up and down. It's, I would say, pretty darn easy to go up and down. It's heavy. But as far as the actual assembly of it goes together pretty good. The financial aspect of the. Of the program is stable. Like, it's one of those things where it's just like, we've kind of really put the work in already, and we can really do whatever the heck we want if we want to. It's like nobody's telling us what rules to run. Nobody's telling us what weight classes to run. If we want to run one thing or another thing, we can. And I think that's kind of what's. One of the things that's cool about Mastie, specifically, is that it's just like, we just can absolutely wing it. And I think people have a fun time when you're having a fun time.

[F]

A lot of that goes back to, like, Rob Masik when he founded Masti so, so long ago. He had the original ethos of he wants to have a fun event that involves a significant level of winging it. But it's very approachable for everybody who shows up to it. And it really tries to Maximize the amount of fights and fun that people have while they're at the event. And that's something we really wanted to keep going.

[G]

I would like to say that you have done a fantastic job at that. I've only missed one event in the last, like three years and so hats off to your entire crew for sure.

[F]

Thank you.

[H]

Thank you.

[E]

Also everybody in the whole Combat Robotics space, especially up in the New England area and everything like that, highly. Everybody's excited for it. Everybody talks really highly of it, especially the pit design and everything like that. I think the pit is probably one of everybody's favorite things that's ever been designed into a box with the, with the lifting pit. It's amazing. I love. Yeah, I can't wait to see it.

[F]

That's all Brandon.

[H]

Yeah. We weren't sure what we're going to react to it and it's, it's good to hear that it's been popular.

[A]

Yeah, I'm always stoked to hear people that. Hear people like it because I, I think we, we went out on a bit of a limb doing something like that, but it was really popular. And I think just in general, it's really added to the experience. Fits the vibe of the event and even like just not just in the fact that Mass D is a fun first event and all that other stuff, but I think competitively it makes a lot of sense to. So it's really a win. Win on all fronts in my book. And I love to hear when people are, when people have feedback about it.

[E]

What I love about it is it's like you get the point of you've been put into a pit, but it doesn't end the whole match because usually pits, like when you get pitted in other arenas, that's the end of the match, it's done, everything's over. It's an instant win, which is cool in and of itself for control bots, but like being able to have the match continue, especially like when both bots go into the pit and then they all both come flying up, hitting each other at the same time. It's the coolest thing in the world. I love it.

[B]

And it's. I mean, we had a conversation before recording about making control bots interesting to watch. And I think it's a unique and a great idea to make that being able to control where you and your opponent are in the cage, a very interesting thing to watch and a very interesting thing to drive and actually experience because you have a goal instead of just like, hey, I'm gonna pin hey, I'm gonna hold. It's like, hey, I'm trying to get my opponent in this hole and it's very cool to watch me get my opponent in this hole. So, yeah, it's, it's. I can't wait to see it in person because I've never seen it in person. So it's loud. And drive around.

[E]

It's loud.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ryan's new design is very fast and unpredictable. And I'm going in. It's never even been built yet, so we've never driven it, so we don't know. Yeah, the thing's going to the pit quite a few times.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[E]

And it'll shoot up and it's good. It's all good. How does it run? What is it? What's the shooting mechanism?

[A]

So it's.

[G]

If Brandon's leg gets tired by the end.

[A]

Yeah, well, I added the, I added the pedals because initially I had buttons on the table and the pedals were such a. Better, better because I'm, I, I have my computer in front of me, I have the stream up, I have the brackets up and, and the fights. So I have way too much stuff on the desk in front of me anyways.

[F]

And have you ever seen one of those old timey like minecarts? That's how run. And Brandon would have to pump it up manually every time.

[A]

Back in my day, we manually pumped up the pit. But all it is, is essentially is a big central spring actuator and then it's reloaded with pneumatics. So the theory being is that no matter what your air pressure situation's at, or if you lose pressure or something, you still fire at full. At full rate. You're not beholden to regulator flow rates or you don't need a buffer tank or any of these other things that limit like pneumatic flippers. Typically the big thing is the flow rate. And you need these big expensive actuators that can actuate lightning fast with ludicrous flow rate. None of that. Just like $40 in Springs and it goes chunk really, really loud. It's got this big latch mechanism that fires it. So the latch.

[B]

Oh, that's awesome.

[E]

Rye.

[B]

Why don't you take the next one?

[E]

So mine is kind of along the lines of what we were just talking about. Where do you see Mass D and more local events in the world of combo robotics? And what do you want to achieve with Mass Ducas?

[A]

Do you wanna, do you wanna take this one?

[I]

Yeah. I don't want to speak for the rest of the team. But I feel like it's kind of already been achieved. Right. Like, we have, as Brandon just described, we have an event that we can kind of run when we want and run it in a way where we can have fun with the. The people in the area who want to come out and do it. Like, I guess it's got enough notoriety that, you know, Luke Quintal is maybe trying to come out with rickety cricket. Like, I don't know.

[E]

I.

[I]

Maybe I'm just optimistic that we've peaked or something like that. But I'd love to hear.

[A]

We're all. What do you guys think?

[F]

I think a long time ago, back in the distant past, we had dreams of running an event every three months. And that's what sort of started to influence the Norwalk schedule in the days before there was a Norwalk. And three months was way too brutal, both from running an event and participating in the event over and over again. So now that we're fully in charge and we've got a wonderful sponsor and partner with the Charles River Museum of Industry, who can let us run events basically whenever we want. Like, we really aren't beholden to a schedule or a tempo or a pace. We can do something that sort of just like, makes everybody happy. And it has a nice ecosystem where we're not going too fast, that we get a high churn and we're not going too slow, that people may lose interest and we'll get a lot of people cycling in and out every year, but still, we've got that really nice level where still it's an approachable event where we get brand new rookies, two Combat Robotics, every single event. And that's wonderful to see. That's really what we're here for.

[A]

If I can tell a story real quick, one of the things you talk about, goals and stuff with this event, one of the things. So I went to. I think I went to every Norwalk in 2021. And so I went there. I was competing till late, late, late at night. That was when. Before Norwalk had really fixed their time.

[D]

12 o' clock in the morning.

[A]

Yeah, it's significantly better now. It's great now, but the timing used to be really, really brutal. And we'd be there till super late at night and just tired. You get back to the hotel room, you just crater immediately. And then I went to Sword in Pennsylvania and we fought the whole event myself. It was myself, Joe Fabiani, and Nate Franklin in the finals. And so we got out of that. We packed up and Joe and myself and Don Derfler went to dinner at a Mech's restaurant and watched the sun go down. And we're like, wait, you can go to a robot event? You can eat dinner afterwards. Like, this is incredible. So one of the big things that just like an internal goal for me is everyone gets in at a reasonable time. We get out and you can have dinner with your buddies afterwards, and you can have a good time, and you're not there till super late. So it's like, that's one of the things is that it's like having it be bigger would be cooler, or having big would be cool. But we don't want to sacrifice the quality of the event for the people who are there because we're limited on time, we're limited on space, and there's just certain things we can't like. We unfortunately, we can't just like, operate 3,000 square feet of pit space, right? So we gotta do with what we have. So as far as goals, just in general is to every single event have everyone who goes there have a blast, have fun, and get out of there so that they can have a beer with their buddies after the event and make memories, you know. So that's kind of our. At least in my opinion, one of my big goals with the event.

[F]

And we've done a lot of really ambitious stuff with Mass Destruction in the past. We've taken the show on the road down to New York City. That's like, I think the first time that I got to work with Spocky and Brandon, like, really extensively. We've had two day events all over the place. We've done the whole Maker Faire circuit. We've tried a lot of really ambitious stuff. And what we really want to do is just settle into this nice cozy pace where we're comfortable running this event. At Infinim, people are happy to show up. At Infinim, we're just at a really nice leveling out point that's just focused on making everybody as happy as we can.

[E]

Do you have a schedule for the year?

[F]

No,

[E]

I'm just asking.

[A]

Now we discussed. We kind of want to keep it on like a two event a year pace. That's kind of the tempo that we want to keep it on. And generally one in the early months of the year, and generally one late summer, early fall. The tough thing is though, is that the venue also does weddings. And early fall is a big wedding time for in New England. So we get kind of. We get kind of elbowed out by you Know the actual paying customers.

[G]

So they get married there too.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Other. Other. Lucas. Lucas Ewing got. Got married there.

[B]

So you were talking about going other places and you were talking about how heavy the cage is. Like, what's the travel like, how easy is it to take that cage apart and actually move it?

[H]

It comes into. So it collapses into a bunch of flat panels, which is how we store it. Another great thing about the museum is they have an expansive museum basement where they actually let us store a lot of our stuff. So it makes it really easy to set up. And the pieces are flat, but they are heavy. We have yet to have to trailer it anywhere, but I think we could

[B]

totally figure it out.

[F]

The U Haul or two, we've done the inverse. That's how we set the clutch of the truck on fire. Was.

[A]

Yeah, that was fun.

[H]

Yeah.

[A]

The. We've really kind of figured out a strategy between panel carts and lifting straps and enough hands. It's really not too bad. The big thing is just getting enough people. If we can. If we can always poke some of our team members to get enough people out. It's really not too bad. And yeah, it would be as much as just getting a. Getting a trailer and stuffing the. What is it, four walls, four legs, two roof pieces, two floor pieces, a handful of other ancillary stuff like the kick plates and stuff, and it's all in there. So. And the doors, too, because the doors come separate. It is similar in design to the early Norwalk arenas because it's based off of Charles's initial Mass D arena design that got sold to an HRL after the 2018. Or is it 2019 New York Maker Faire? So it's a weird. It's a little branch in Norwalk MassD history.

[B]

Very cool.

[E]

Now, how did you set up. How did you get the museum on board with it? Was it. How was that. How was it like selling the museum an event like MassD?

[F]

We had a couple of friends of friends. One of them was a volunteer there, Rob Reeve, and the other Rob Masek, who set up mass destruction to begin with. Like, he was talking to Bob, who's the head of the Charles River Museum. So, like, we had two different inroads. And it was pretty easy to just walk in and say, hey, do you guys want to have a giant event where you get a bunch of nerds in to come look at all of your watches and also robot fighting? So that's been a very straightforward thing for us. And the museum has been super on board with having us Every year. It's just been a really great partner to have.

[B]

Yeah, well, I'm sure it seems like they're your kind of crowd. Like it seems like a very collaborative partnership. So do you.

[E]

Is there a lot of crowd of people that come to the museum and now suddenly there's robot fighting?

[H]

It's a pretty small museum, so they usually, I guess a local museum, they don't get a huge amount of like day to day, just random visitors. The event itself is a big draw. Like we spike ticket sales pretty aggressively on the days we hold our event, which is great for them, it's great for us. So it is a really good, like symbiotic partnership.

[E]

That's really cool. That's awesome.

[B]

So Thomas never has a question ready beforehand. He always likes.

[C]

What do you mean? I always have a question ready.

[B]

Okay. He always has a question. He doesn't like to tell us beforehand. So I always like to sandwich him in between the second to last and the last question. So Thomas, what is your question?

[C]

So it's. It's an either or. Or you can answer both. Favorite part of the museum, what should everyone see when they're there? As well as favorite restaurant slash food on Moody Street.

[G]

That's a lot of food on Moody Street.

[F]

There is.

[A]

Yeah, we gotta, we gotta pull up that place. The place that we went to. A couple places we went to last time were good. A couple places that we went to the time before were mixed. We had one that was good and one that was not so good.

[F]

I'm a big fan of Gestazo. Like that's one of my all time Boston favorites. And they've bounced around a lot of different sides of Moody street since I've moved up to Boston.

[H]

Yeah, they're pretty good.

[A]

As far as the stuff in the, in the museum. I learned about something that I had seen but didn't know what it was on one of their social media posts in the last like week that I thought was wicked cool. Which was because all these, these mill buildings had consistently running shafts throughout the facility from the water power. And they'd use belts to transmit power to their individual machines. And it was like essentially centralized kinetic energy. And so all these belts they were making on site and they had this, they have this whole machine that's this gigantic chunk of steel that all it. And it looks like it probably weighs 80 pounds. All it does, the only thing it does is it takes a leather belt and then a little. It almost looks like a claw. It's just like, it's like A C with claws on both sides. And you situate the two together and it squashes the teeth of the claw into the belt. You do that on one side, you do that on the other side. And now they both have this. This little kind of bracket hanging out of it. You overlap the two brackets and you run a pin down the center. And now you have a belt. And it's just funny because it's like, yep, this is. There's exactly one thing that this machine is for, and it's for that. I just thought it was kind of. Because it's kind of fun.

[C]

I still have one belt that actually uses those.

[E]

Yep, you would.

[B]

Tom.

[C]

I'm very excited you don't have a historic machine belt.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It is definitely. It is on. The amount of. The amount of like the amount of doohickeys at that museum is ludicrous. Great word, if you're interested.

[C]

Thingamabob.

[A]

Yeah, there's some thingamabobs. It's just stuff that's like single use machines for making something that you never would have known existed.

[F]

It's just a cool museum because there were so many old mills, like back from the Waltham Watch company times, and just a lot of other mill stuff around Waltham at the time, where they've now taken all of those machines, shoved them into one tiny little museum, and then taken the buildings that those museums used to be in and just turned them into office parks or apartments. So now you get just so much focused history of all the coolest machine tools from over centuries just focused in one tiny little local museum.

[E]

I. I do love looking at the industrial pass of New England, if I may branch off slightly. The industrial New England is one of those places where if you look around it right now, it doesn't look like there's a lot of like industrial industry stuff there doesn't look like a lot of factories or anything like that. But back in the day, like we were cotton, we were all sorts of stuff that was being tobacco done here. Tobacco. A lot of stuff was done made in New England. I mean like the history of Cancer, Massachusetts have like so many patents and so many different things that were invented. And it's one of those things of like, you could travel to old New England towns and everything like that. Even like where we grew up, like there's. There's a big waterfall that was clearly made. Like it's not a natural waterfall. It was made specifically to run a mill. And like, unless you knew that history of it, it kind of like is Hidden. But like once you see that, you could see the old like areas where the, the wheel was stuck and everything like that. It's really cool.

[B]

Well, we have. I don't. It's not a well known museum in Waterbury, Connecticut, but the Timex Museum, I've been there a couple of times when we were kids. I have not been in a very long time. But speaking of the clocks that Thomas was talking about, that's what that entire museum is, is just clocks and watches and stuff, so.

[E]

And they talk about like the Timex Girls and everything like that too.

[B]

Yeah, they have a whole glow in the well, again, this was years and years and years ago, but they had a whole glow in the dark room where the lights were off and all the watch faces that go in the dark were all there and.

[A]

Yeah.

[F]

Did you ever try to bring a Geiger counter into that room?

[D]

The amazing chemicals and things that's. That we used to deal with.

[E]

Yeah, the, the short form version for anyone listening that doesn't know who the Timex Girls were or anything like that. Basically back when they were first discovering using radioactive isotopes to paint the clock faces so they would glow, they didn't realize about radiation sickness, so they would wet their brushes with their mouths and they all got radiation sickness because they were literally ingesting radioactive material all day long. So that was like a whole. That was like a whole thing that they didn't realize until later. And I think if I remember right, that was like one of the biggest. Once they figured out that that was what was going on, that was one of the biggest, like studies in radiation, radiation sickness and everything like that.

[F]

But yeah, super delicious.

[E]

Yes.

[B]

So just a note for anyone that does want to go to that museum. The building is still there, but it closed in 2015 and never reopened his door. So.

[H]

Yeah, magic.

[B]

Yeah, it's just one of those memories. So. Okay, very cool. Well, that was a good question, Thomas. Thank you.

[C]

Radiation.

[B]

So my question, just to close out the five in focus section. What? Well, first of all, do each of you have a specific task or a specific role that you fill on event day or before event day? Or do you just guys kind of have across like get everything done and you know what I'm saying? Like, do you have assigned roles? Do you have like assigned tasks? Or is it just like everyone pitching a hand to do everything?

[A]

We've really kind of fallen into consistent roles now, which is good because it means that everyone kind of knows what the job is. For me, the actual event day itself. Get there Start cranking on the stream, make sure that the stream is working. So that's my job to make sure that that's running all the AV throughout the house. Make sure that that's working. And then I'm helping Fred with fight generation. I'm recording the outcomes of fights with Fred. But probably the biggest thing and the people think people hear me do is reading off the current fight and upcoming fights. Basically just running general kind of air traffic control with respect to the the flow of the event. And that is enough to keep me at 1:40 bpm the entire day.

[B]

It does. That sounds like a lot to all have going on all the time, so. Makes sense.

[H]

Yeah. I mean for me, last couple of events I've sort of fallen into the paperwork czar role as well. So I handle like our insurance and some of our moodle use someone's got to do. So I'm happy to do it. Day of I tend to be running around a bunch dealing with registration, dealing with pit wrangling, doing door work as well, running the actual fights. Just whatever needs to happen. I'll go and yell at people if I need to yell at them.

[E]

So you're who I need to be hiding from on. Is that what you're telling me?

[H]

Just tell me what you need and we'll make it happen. Don't tell me what you need. I'm sad about it.

[D]

He's just going to tell you numerous times. I'm just putting on my top plate.

[B]

Yes.

[H]

And I'll be hovering while you do it.

[G]

That's real.

[H]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Taste of my own medicine. That's good. That'll be good.

[B]

Well, we got, we got a little bit of that. What was the ants event in Harfur? Battle Maker battle. A little better.

[G]

I had to tell you be pulled to be ready all day long.

[B]

Yeah, it was great.

[C]

I love yelling at Ryan and Justin.

[B]

Fred and Lucas.

[F]

Lucas, go ahead.

[I]

I'm just kind of just mortar, just filling in cracks wherever is necessary. Mostly I'm just muscle for help to set up the cage at the beginning and take it down at the end. And then during day up I get to just kind of hang out and help out wherever.

[B]

Jack of all trades. I like it.

[F]

He's the glue who keeps us together. And I have the best job of all. I just get to sit there and talk about robot fights. It's great.

[I]

How many times have you rehearsed the name so far?

[F]

Are we nine? Enjoy it.

[A]

Count ten or nine? We're doing it live.

[B]

Yeah, that's. That's at least my. When we do it, it's not like on any kind of stream. It's just all the builders up in the pits that get to hear it. So my actual question is, what's something about running an event that you didn't expect to love but now you can't imagine giving up? That's why I wanted to know, like, if each of you have, like, an assigned role, like, what's. What's something when you first started doing this that you didn't expect to love, but now part of, like, event day or before event day, you just. You just love doing to get the event running. Ashley hates me.

[F]

Put up his names if I can't pronounce him.

[A]

All right.

[D]

That's Justin's favorite thing too.

[I]

Yes. I really like. Actually, one of the glue things I'll help do is like, these guys will send me out to be like, hey, this person. The robot's not working right now. Would you mind taking a look, helping them figure that out? Sometimes it's like a controller. It's not programmed, or they've tried to solder to a 4 in 1 ESC too many times, and the pads have come off. So something has to be kind of half together. And I don't know, it's fun. And one of the nice things about Passive D is, like, it's chill enough that if someone really needs to fully rebuild the robot schedule or room will be made in the schedule to try to accommodate that.

[B]

That's awesome. So do you like soldering?

[F]

I love soldering.

[B]

See, that's. That's the thing. So Ryan played a Family Feud style game, and soldering came up as one of the tasks that people. That builders hate to do, one of the top tasks they hate to do. And I was like, I don't understand that. When I solder, it's like a Zen thing. Like, I get into doing soldering. I love to solder, and I don't. I don't get the people that hate doing it. I just don't understand it.

[F]

They got to get the adafruit. Learn to solder Soldering kit like that. That is the key. Go through, follow the instructions, and just make a beautiful thing happen. This isn't a rush. This isn't something you need to stress about.

[A]

I know it's.

[E]

I know it's also.

[H]

Is wires and soldering. Wires sucks like soldering and wires bad.

[F]

Yeah. Electrical engineer. She doesn't believe.

[A]

Four years in school.

[B]

Soldering.

[D]

Yes. Wires suck. The components were simple.

[A]

I know it's bad. Radio but you have to enjoy soldering when you're doing stuff very small. So yeah, for the listeners, it's essentially just a very small pocket with an absolute boatload of. It's a 4 in 1. It's a 4 in 1 and an Rx and a beck all stacked into like a little tiny spot. So it all has to be the correct wire length and sit there for three hours and solder the whole harness.

[E]

I'm running a four in one just for drive. And then I have a weapon esc as well off to the side because I did four blitz lights as every single wheel. Got a box?

[B]

No, no, I. I got it. It'll be fine. We're going to work on soldering it and getting it all this weekend. But one of my first jobs when I started in my IT career 20 plus years ago was at a mom and pop shop and they fixed game consoles. And one of the things that they fixed was the Xbox360 red light. And they had to take the caps off and solder new caps back onto it. And the guy that did all the consoles literally had me sit there for hours and just like take the caps off, solder, new caps on, take the caps off, solder, new caps. So like I just like soldered for a couple of hours and I just got into the rhythm of doing it and that's where I first fell in love with soldering.

[F]

So you didn't do the hair dryer trick or the wet towel one?

[B]

No, this, this was charging. I think we charged at that point point like $80 to fix the red light on the Xboxes. So yeah, this was like a full like proper fix for it.

[J]

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[B]

Hey Everyone, you're already listening, so you know the fights don't end when the episode does. But the Havoc rundown now lives over at Havocrunddown.com again. That's Havocrundown.com that's where we're posting Combat Robotics news, hosting every episode of the show and running the largest Combat Robotics bot registry that's ever been put together. Stats, history, teams and results all built to grow alongside the sport. We're also curating fight videos, rolling out community games and dropping merch for anyone who wants to rep the chaos. And the 2026 fantasy league is live right now. You can create your own fantasy league for a full season or spin one up for a single day event. Draft robots track performance across events and compete in a way that actually fits how Combat Robotics is run. This year, our focus is the sport as a whole. If robot robots are fighting, it belongs in the conversation. All leagues, all formats, all rule sets. From local events to competitions around the world. We have got you covered. Thank you for listening everyone. Let's get you back to the episode and back to the chaos right now. Okay, very cool. So that was our five in Focus. Before we get to the listener Mailbag, I wanted to focus on mass destruction itself. On the bots that are going. We've talked about the, the venue a little bit. The two. You have two way classes, correct? The, the Beatles and the ants. And we talked about the pit already. That was one of the things I wanted to focus on. So in your, in your. Like, because you guys are used to running this event and that you've. You've been staring, like you said, staring at the registry. I want to hear from each member of the team, the bots that you're excited to see on the 31st and, and why, like what are some of the bots that you guys are excited to have at your event and get to see fight and, and all that kind of stuff.

[G]

Quick, everybody go look at the list again.

[A]

Yeah, stare at the.

[B]

Stare at Cefstrong.

[F]

I'm always happy to see the power of friendship.

[H]

Yes.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Good. Yeah, that's a good answer. Kokoto is a very close friend of the show. We love Kokoto.

[I]

So I was on the Beatles side. There's a robot there called Lightly Toasting. That's showing up. Lightly Toasted. That's showing you up.

[A]

Yeah.

[I]

And that's at the last Glenn Boxel event when he had Beatles up there. That was the one that got split down the middle by Jackalope and just immediately caught on fire. And they're coming back with. With new theming. And the reason they caught on fire is their carbon fiber parts didn't come in, so they just made everything out of pla. And that does not stop a beetle weight motor.

[B]

No. At that point, you might as well just make the entire bot out of duct tape.

[I]

Yeah, probably would have been better. Probably got sucked into the weapon and then this just stirred or unzippered. But yeah, I'm excited to see them come back. They weren't discouraged, so I think.

[A]

Great.

[I]

And they got a sense of humor.

[B]

Well, it sounds you guys put on an event that is very welcoming to newcomers and is very open to the concept of. I'm not going to be pushed to. To go into concepts that I don't know alone. And that's some of the bigger, like, NHL. Like, sometimes it's very intimidating for a new builder NHL because it's very like, hey, we've got a schedule. We're going, we're going, we're going. And you're sitting there going, I don't know what I'm doing. And yeah, it could be very intimidating. So it sounds like you guys have a very friendly, very open environment that breeds the kind of place that new builders come out of, knowing more about what they're doing and more excited for the sport.

[E]

To be fair, there's also a lot of really good robots coming to a lot of really good beetles.

[B]

I didn't say there was no good robots coming.

[E]

Oh, I know, I know. But at the same time, you have, like, the new people and then you have counter punch. You have Prince Jackalope. Jackalope.

[B]

It's always in a good bet when Gwen is there.

[E]

Oh, yeah. And then, like, you have, like, one side of the field is like, oh, okay, those are. That's a cool new bot and everything. And the other side of the field is like, no, I would not like to fight Prince. Thank you very much. No, thank you, Anubis. No, I don't want to fight Anubis, thank you.

[B]

Yeah, you know that's going to be our first fight, right?

[E]

Oh, yeah. Anubis Thresher versus Anubis. Remember, I'm going to crawl up his back and that's about it. I'm going to stay there. So would you like.

[B]

Because I don't think we've talked about it previously on any other episode. And since it's coming to Masdi, would you like to explain what Thresher is?

[E]

I mean, I talked about a little at the beginning of last episode. Basically, Thresher is a four wheel drive vert that is the opposite of the Meta because It is gigantic 4 inch foam tires and it's. The foam tire is the same foam as Bobby. I literally asked him like, what foam do you use and where can I order it? And I ordered the same foam and every single wheel has its own Blitz light. So there's no belts or anything like that because I hate belts. And there's an ant weapon on it and an ant weapon on it because, you know, saving. Saving weight for the four blitz lights is how I go. But the whole thing is two AR 500 plates with a sandwich of UHMW in the middle. So like it has like barely a TPU on it. It should never die. I am hoping it just doesn't die. It just gets flopped around everywhere and the foam goes everywhere and that's about it. I apologize for the foam beforehand.

[A]

The Absolute 2015 Motorama Speed Witch.

[E]

Exactly.

[A]

The blessed design language.

[B]

The best way that I can describe it for anyone that wants to visualize it is, you know those. Those little remote control cars that they sell where the wheels are huge and it hits a wall and it just flips upside down and just keeps on going and it hits the other wall and it flips. That's. That's what Thresher is. Yeah, it's one of those with a vertical spinner on the front.

[G]

Can't wait to watch it get launched in the air.

[E]

Oh boy.

[B]

So it's going to be fun. You guys have a pretty awesome field. We have the list for anyone interested, not only on the registration sites that you guys use, but we also if you want to go to Havoc Rundown and go to your event, we have the full registration list as well as each bot links over to its records page. So that's very cool to be able to look at. But like Ryan said, there's a lot of returning awesome bosses we've seen before. There's a lot of newbies, so it should be a really cool field. Is there a reason that you guys do the two weight classes and Because I know there's some events that just do two and then they try and do like more. Is it because you're trying to get less? Because you were talking about the fact that you want to go in and get out and not have too much time. What is the thought about the two weight classes versus just focusing on beetles or expanding to like other like plastic ants versus ants or.

[F]

You know, we've tried a lot of different weight classes. We did 12 pound Sportsman's for a while or Dragon Con style, 12 pound. I don't know, king of a hill, if you want to call it like that. We've also done regular ant weights. We even did 250 gram sumos back in the day for autonomous classes. But through trying a lot of different stuff, we have found for our goals of the most fun and the most approachable, it's really all in beetle weights and plastic ants.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. And the thing is too is that you're kind of, you're really primarily limited by total robot count because if you're like us. And so it's like one of our starting things is we want to guarantee people the three fights to start off with and then the playoff fights after that. So you know you're gonna show up. If you're ready, you get three fights. And then if you're in Beetles, if you're top 2/3 or so, you get 4 at the least. So starting from there, you're kind of stuck on your total robot count. And you don't want it with too many too small classes, like too few robots in each class. If we're sticking at 42 robots, which is where we're at, you're kind of limited to wanting to do two classes. And beetle weights with this situation is kind of a foregone conclusion that we're gonna run that. And then the plastic ant class is really awesome because in my opinion it is the easiest and cheapest way to get a new builder into the sport. And it's just the, it's. Especially with the ubiquity of three of 3D printers these days and how good of a printer you can get for really not that much money in the historical price ranges of printers. It is pretty ludicrous what you can do with a couple hundred dollar A1 mini these days. So the, the that aspect of it really makes Plastic Ant a kind of must have for me personally.

[B]

Yeah. When we did Maker Space, Maker Battle, it was just, it was a kit. Why I'm blanking on the team name.

[G]

Bunny Malice.

[B]

Malice, yes, Team Malice. We bought Team Malice. So it was the designs, it was a couple of the designs, the actual 3D designs, and then it was the box with the parts that came. And then you just printed out the parts using their 3D design and then put the parts where was supposed to be. And there you go, there was your ram. So it was a pretty easy, you know, as long as you had a 3D printer and you know how to make it work, you can get the parts printed pretty fast. I think I was able to do like each of them, multiple different versions of each part within like a week for two different bots. And it just printed very fast. And then we assembled it with the parts and brought it and was able to drive it. So yeah, it's. You're. You're right. The ant class, the smaller class is a very reasonable as far as money is concerned and very open thing for new builders to get into. So very cool.

[F]

Also predated the ubiquity of 3D printers with the plastic can't wait class. Like we really. The original dream was we wanted people to be able to hot glue cutting board together and then have a robot. We've had winners who their weapon was a cd, like just plastic CD that they cut little grooves into. So we've seen a lot of innovation when it comes to materials with that. So you're not necessarily locked in. 3D printer. The ubiquity of 3D printers has just made it even more approachable for most people though.

[B]

Our first bot ever was made out of. Well, it was uhmw, but it was. No, it wasn't really 3D printed. I think the, the blocks for the weapon was 3D printed, but that was. I had literally gotten a 3D printer and didn't know how to make it work. And all I can make was little circles. And that was part of the weapon and the rest of it we did in the garage with our father cutting stuff out of UHMW and carbon fiber. So and then we got there and it was getting carbon fiber, completely overweight. We had to Swiss cheese the entire thing to get it within weight. I remember it was Jim Haney and we just kept on going back to him and going, is it okay now? Is it okay now? Is it okay?

[E]

Speed holes. We just kept speed holing. The UHMW caught your first event.

[H]

You're not drilling holes in the robot at the.

[E]

Oh, hell yeah.

[F]

All you have to do is like when we were building the first huge. Like either I was in Connecticut or at the miners parking lot here of just speed holding everything. The UHMW blocks. It was great fun.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. There was so much air going in that for first robot. It was insane. So definitely understand it. The last thing I want to ask about and we talked about it a little bit is the pit. You talked about like the, the thoughts around it and how it's controlled and stuff like that. What about the meta around the pit? You've had it a couple of years now. Are there robots that build around it? Are there robots that understand how it works and have things that they do to try and utilize it to their advantage? Like, you know, you know what I'm saying? Like people understand that the pit is there. Do they build things specifically with that in mind?

[F]

From what I've noticed just from commentating, I don't think I've seen people build for the pit. I've seen people drive for the Pit. Like generally they'll take a robot that's competitive at other places. And the more successful people at mass destruction are people who are aware that there is a pit and it's not the end of the world if you go into it, but it is something that you need to avoid in order to win a fight.

[I]

I'll add one thing to like kind of on a question about meta, I'd say more than just the pit, Brendan's immense dislike of forks has played more into the design philosophy of this thing and has a bigger role in like how, I want to say competitors build, but how they do small modifications to their robot to, to work in this arena?

[A]

Okay, yeah, I don't think anyone builds any. I don't think anyone builds any like hit specific configurations. But it just means that like you said earlier, there's a goal. When you're a control robot or a spinner with a damaged weapon, you have something that you can do rather than just w key randomly around the box and hope you make it to three. Three minutes.

[B]

Yeah, it makes. I mean, the first thing I could think of is just like, like a Smee just trying to like utilize being able to go over the hole instead of in it kind of thing.

[A]

But yeah, if we could ever convince Joe to come back to the United States and come to a mass destruction, I think Smee would be ludicrous because it was ludicrous at sword with their pushout. And well then that was with. It was when we had Starchild and Smee there and neither of us could fit in the pushout. And they were not stoked about that and tried to change the rules so that you had to fit in the pushout in every robot orientation. But yeah, no, it would be very funny, I think, to see a Smee style robot have control of somebody and then just printer swipe over the pit and just deposit their opponent as they drive over and then drive back.

[B]

Oh, I love it. That's very cool. That's what I was wondering. Has anyone like tried to build to that, that specification?

[A]

So no, but I would, I would love to see it. And we give. We give design awards. So if anyone's listening and they want to build a silly robot for mass destruction, we have a silly robot award.

[B]

Kokoto is currently listening to this episode and has taken his design notebook out dispersally writing it. Okay, very cool. So that is all I had. Anybody have anything else before we move on to the listener mailbag? Very cool.

[D]

Thomas's first.

[B]

Could we get to that? Can we get to that first? I was going to introduce that. Give me a second. Okay, so you sent in questions. Now it's time to open the inbox. This is the listener mailbag. You've reached the voicemail of the HAVOC rundown. Please leave your message after the tone. So the first one we're going to go to is. We have joked about for quite a while that we have the digital way to give us the mailbag on our discord. But if you want to send us mail, we'll give you a place to send an actual mail. And we have. This is from Nick, right? We have an actual piece of mail from Nick to address to any of our guests. So Thomas is literally going to open the mail for the first time and read this out for our first guests that get to answer whatever.

[C]

Hand delivered. This is hand delivered by our own postal worker.

[E]

What's it labeled as? Who is it supposed to be given to?

[F]

Are all the letters cut out? It's got my name taker. And just like paste it on there,

[C]

it looks like our mailbag.

[E]

Okay.

[G]

Come to the right place.

[F]

Hello.

[C]

Insert guest name here. So glad that the HAVOC rundown finally has you on. On again. Big fan of all you've done and accomplished. What I'd like to know is what draws you to Combat Robotics and what do you feel it offers that other sports do not? Nick. Crafty cat. Crossed out robotics. Combat. P.S. justice for Kratos.

[G]

Yes.

[D]

Was it handwritten, Thomas?

[C]

Oh, yeah, this is all handwritten.

[B]

Oh, that's amazing.

[C]

Thank you. There's a picture after the podcast goes up.

[G]

I think you weren't supposed to insert name here, but it's okay.

[C]

No, no. It says insert guest name here.

[B]

Yeah, but I think you were.

[A]

Read the letter.

[C]

Yeah, that's what I did. I read the letter.

[A]

Checks out.

[C]

Oh, yeah. So, yeah. What draws you to Combat Robotics?

[A]

Who wants to start?

[F]

Ew. You want to start?

[A]

Okay, sure. Oh, all right. Okay. Overruled. I don't know. So for me, the big thing with me, or, I mean, there's a bunch of stuff, right? I really like engineering. I like making Stuff I really like competition. I like being able to get. I was never any good at hockey. I was never like never any good at football. The thing that, but one thing I could, I can do is design a combat robot. So it really gives that like thrill of competition. And whether you win or you lose, it gives you, it just gives you that like that massive dopamine rush. And that's really what I love about it. And being able to get out there and compete in something that is not, it's, it's as close to, it's as close to being in the NFL as I'm ever going to get. So that's what I really like about it is being able to get out there and have that competition, have fun with my friends doing something that I think is really, really cool. So I would say that's probably the biggest thing for me.

[C]

Good. Who's next?

[H]

For me it's like my day to day job is electrical engineering, computer engineering, firmware writing, sort of like more on the electrical computer side of the engineering spectrum. And CR gives me a really good outlet to work on some of the mechanical things that I don't get to do at my job as much. So I get to like design weapon systems, design frames and like do some cad and that's really, that's really fun to get a little bit of that diversity.

[C]

Nice, Nice.

[B]

Fred Luger.

[C]

Nick really knows how do you predict that he's going to have robot builders on this?

[F]

No, but designing robots definitely a really nice creative exercise for me. A lot of other, I don't know, hobbies, sports or whatever have rules. Like if you're making drones, it has to use a such and such size propeller with a such and such size motor. But with combat robots you could put just about any motor that you want. Some people are crazy enough to even put gasoline motors in their robots and just make any size system or any kind of design language that you really want. And every new robot gets to be a new expression, a new design language, a new sort of realm of exploration. And that's what I really enjoy about it. And then I really enjoy seeing how other people approach that exact same project or problem. Like what design language they have, what shortcuts they do, what systems they develop. And I love seeing that.

[I]

I honestly Fred says kind of exactly what I like about it. I'm just not quite as competent of a mechanical engineer. So I don't quite see all the details that he does. But I don't know, I really like solving the problem, seeing how other People solve it.

[B]

So yeah, the new robots, all the new ideas. Yep, very cool. Our next question is from Alex from Eclipse. He says what have been some of your favorite developments in the sport you have seen during your time competing, hosting and building? This is for whoever wants to answer.

[F]

The double edged sword of 3D printing TPU spam has been very nice to see. There are right ways to do it and wrong ways to do it but everybody wants to do it. So that's been a very interesting thing to see. I'm also biased. I was working at a day job with David Jen for years so just sort of seeing him and the WPI design language evolve around that same time and then it sort of turned into what most competitive Beetle weights are using these days. So I still like seeing a lot of people take that approach.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Yeah, for me the TPU one's a big one. The other thing is just, I mean just develop and something that's kind of interesting I would say at the very least is the development of the combat robot specific component market. And the, the combat robot industrial complex is very, very interesting because it means that you have options that are not. Because one of my, I'd say probably my second Beetle weight or third beetle weight. I did a quad brushless drive, much like your Blitz Pro Object. Yeah, Quad brushless drive, all 1806 quantum swaps off the hardened 1000 RPM Beetle motor bot kits. Motors that were popular many, many years ago and I'm sure people are still running to today because they're, they were bulletproof. But the. It was. There's a lot of pain and suffering about learning exactly how these gearboxes are put together and exactly what the that these two motors may look the same, but this one has a 17 millimeter bolt circle and this one's a 19 millimeter bolt circle. If you get them wrong, you're hosed. And so it's like all these little things, it's like oh yes, this one is, this one's a metric gear, this is module 0.5, this one's a Imperial gear, it's DP, whatever the heck. They look similar but they're not the same. And so it's like your opinion's wrong. It's the whole thing. So it's like learning about all that. There's a lot that went into it and the robot was terrible, but there was a lot to go in there and now you don't even need, you don't need to do any of that.

[E]

Right.

[A]

You can skip that step entirely. Which is pretty cool. So the development of these new parts, I mean the stuff that, the stuff that you can buy nowadays to just out of like the drone side of things is ludicrous. Like even, even, just even 20, late 2024. I was running with Mulsanne, my 3 pounder. I was running Vex, the 6amp Vesc or Vex brushed ESCs that you crack open and solder two of the wires together. Like Jameson put on his website in like 2008 and now I'm running a quad four in one that's as big as two of those combined and it has probably 10x the power density, the power density like capability. It's ludicrous. And it's like the cost is just insignificant. It's crazy. So the, I would say the availability of parts and what you can now do because of that is I think pretty incredible and definitely one of the biggest developments since I started.

[E]

Yeah, Seth, Seth and Peter are really spoiling all of us.

[B]

Well, I, I remember when we were first building our first bot. We went into a hobby shop and we're like, we need these motors and they're like, for what? What kind of plane are you building? Like, no, we're building a combat robot. You're building a what? Well, I think you don't have to,

[E]

you don't have to go that far back to even go. Like, if you're going to do a hub motor, you'd have to figure it out yourself kind of thing. Like hub motors nowadays, like you could just buy a hub motor from Seth and it works. It works right out of the box. It is a completely like, solid object that completely works and it mounts correctly and everything like that. But like, not that long ago if you were going to do a hub motor was like, you're doing a hub motor, you need to figure out how exactly it works and you need to be able to like design it correctly and everything like that. And people will be, oh my God, you're doing a hub motor. And now it's like, oh yeah, it's got a hub motor and okay, well that works.

[B]

Reaper's original design is a hub motor that Corey helped me build. Help me design. So but on the TPO point, with

[D]

drones, like drones, technology, things makes things so light. And that's a big thing in combat robots, making things light. So it's like that's another big thing that's helping out too on the TPO point.

[B]

I would love to see the sales figure for the last couple of years for all the major manufacturers of TPU and just. Did they ever think TPU would be the plastic that would go up? Like, be the one that would be used the most around this kind of thing? I don't know. It's interesting.

[A]

It's what I use for anything when I'm doing. I just built a go kart and just for anything that needs to be tough. And I can't just spam. I just can't just throw pla at. I just use TPU for everything. And it's just so convenient too, because you're like, you don't have to. You don't have to be. If you're dealing with fits and stuff or you, like, want to be able to like jam a handle in and be able to drag it around or something. You just, like, get it close and it'll flex and it's fine. It's pretty. It's pretty crazy stuff. Or like an intake duct on a car. Like have a gigantic puddle of TPU. Enjoy.

[F]

I heard some motorcycle from 2014 that I printed out of TPU on a MakerBot 2 somehow agony.

[B]

So Alex from Pandemonium kind of talked about this earlier. I don't know if you have any other points for it, but what is the recent history of the pit and what should we expect from it from this time around? So is there any changes to the pit for this competition?

[A]

Nothing new. The only thing, or at least on the competitors end, the only thing is I have a couple of tricks to try and keep it. It's kind of a pain.

[D]

It.

[A]

It sits. It sits on the ground, right? So it doesn't mount to the bottom of the. It doesn't mount to the bottom of the floor. The reason I did it that way was I didn't want. When it fired. Excuse me. It's obviously got a bunch of inertia with this like 8 pound or 10 pound carriage, plus the weight of the robot coming upwards. And what I didn't want to have happen was it essentially hit its limit and then all that inertia is arrested immediately and the whole thing. Floor goes bang. And it's like scary or looks not good. I didn't want it to look dangerous, right. I just wanted to look like the robots fly out the. So it sits on the ground and it's got feet. But the issue is, is that it hops when you fire it. It hops like an inch or an inch and a half in the air when it fires. So I have. I had these little struts to make it not hop when it fires. And they worked okay last event, but I have some ideas to. To iterate on that and, and make them not. Make it not walk around. So we don't need to keep adjusting it all the time. So nothing on the builder side. We're probably gonna run another. We ran the HDPE top last time, which worked pretty well. So I think we're gonna run another HDPE cover. We ran a curve cover the first time on the top of it, and it got inhaled into a bunch of stuff. People weren't stoked about that. So we're not doing that.

[F]

Why do you have all that leftover curve lying around the basement, Brandon?

[A]

Pain and suffering. It is. It was the alternate wheelchoice wheel choice material for big heavyweight starchilds in 2022. And so we have an absolute boatload of it. And by we, I mean friends.

[F]

Maki, you're welcome.

[H]

It's also great because it's just like 8 by 8 foot panels with a giant like 7 foot circle cut out of it. So you've got like, like nothing to work with. It's great.

[A]

Yeah. So if you want to, if you want to, if you want a four foot by four foot section that is entirely a crescent, then where we. Where we got all the material you needed.

[B]

So Ben from the wall says, for those who don't fully know what is the history of the mass destruction events. So we touched on it a little bit. But does anybody want to take that of like the full beginning to now of, you know, a brief summary of mass destruction for anyone that doesn't know.

[F]

So Rob Masek, who's been a cornerstone of the combat robotics community going Back to like 2002, he's hosted all number of events across New England. And in 2015, after like the reboot of the.

[A]

Was it Discovery Channel, it was ABC at that point.

[F]

Yeah, abc. After the reboot of the abc, he thought it'd be pretty cool to start robot fighting again in the Boston area. So he got together with some of his friends at Artisans Asylum, which is a very cool makerspace. Formerly in Somerville, they're now in Brighton. And he's like, hey, let's start fighting robots again. All I have is a dream, and I'm sure all of you people can make that happen for me. It actually was like under that inspiration that the first event came together. He had a lot of really cool ideas around making a giant trapezoidal arena that could have a bigger floor space than your regular arena. It was all welded in house at Arneson. There was a Lot of huge volunteer effort on it. And mostly his key ideas of trying to maximize the number of fights that people had is a little jaded from the old Comedy Central days where you would show up, have one fight, then go home. So that's where he really introduced me and a lot of other people to the modified Swiss format, where you can have three to four to five fights, a single event, and you end up being happy, but also, just, like, generally trying to have fun with the event rather than just inherently being competitive. So after a couple of years of that, Rob actually ended up moving out to the west coast to do Megabots, more giant robot fighting, because it's a small world. And I picked up the mantle from him to help just keep the event going. We bounced around a lot of different places, whether it was keeping the event going, going at Artisans, or going to a bunch of maker fairs. We had some wild venues for some of our events, and none of them are coming. Oh, I think my favorite was South Station.

[H]

Oh, yeah, we were just outside next to the train station. Downtown.

[F]

Downtown Boston. Yeah, that was a fun one. And just tried to keep that going. Ended up thinking, hey, this arena is kind of big, heavy and clumsy. Worked together with Charles Guan of Overhaul to get a new one made. Started, Put everything together, and, you know, it went for a while until we decided this event is a lot of effort. Maybe we should just go on. Pause your hiatus. Actually sold Charles's arena to Norwalk. That was their first arena, which was an interesting little tidbit that we get to put in there. And then a couple years ago.

[H]

Well, then Covid happened.

[F]

Then Covid happened. Yeah, but a couple years ago, we're just sitting around talking, doing Omega stuff, and we're like, hey, what if we had amateur robot fighting events back in Boston? What if we brought it back?

[H]

Yeah, I'd say after the last season shot, I think we were all very interested in sort of returning to the roots of the hobbyist scene instead of the TV scene. So sort of brought it back from there, and that's where we are now.

[B]

Very cool. I love it. Okay, so, Matt Lantry, I apologize that Thomas already asked your question, but his question was, what's your favorite exhibit or portion of the museum that Masti takes place in, which we've already talked about? So, Matt, if you want, you can punch Thomas the next time you see him, because he's still alive. Solely your question and take a picture

[D]

and post it on our Discord, please.

[F]

My favorite opinion is there is this four bar linkage that has a stylus on it. And there is a 2x scale watch face that they have. And the notion of it is that thing is ganged up to 10 Dremel tools that are all on the four bar mechanism. And you put 10 blanks, just brass blanks in the machine. And then you take the stylus and then you go and you trace out with the stylus the shape that you want. Normally it's like a positive steel mold, and in this case it was like a noble metal or like somebody's face. And just by tracing out all of those specific lines, that movement is carried over to the 10 Dremel tools that are sitting there simultaneously cutting out 10 of the exact same shape at the same time. I think that's my favorite machine at the museum.

[I]

And it's also like 150 years old too. Right?

[B]

Like, it's.

[C]

It's like, yeah, I've seen this thing you're talking about. I don't remember seeing the 10 dremels attached to it. However, I am all for making this happen.

[B]

Very cool. Linden says. Hey, all, where'd the robots go?

[F]

We get.

[B]

You've been busy running this spectacular messy events, but we missed the likes of Lil Rip and Star Child at nhrl. We would love to see the dramatic return of the most chaotic teams.

[F]

Everybody was too busy getting married.

[A]

Yeah. Imagine.

[H]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. No, it's been. It's been busy. Life's been busy. None of the Norwalk dates last year just worked out for me personally and just trying to get everyone to go. It's always more fun when you get more people going, so I like to kind of go when there's. Where there's friends going. And the days just really didn't work out for anybody last year, so I'm personally planning on. On getting more back into it last year. I also got into other projects last year. I engine swapped a car and built a go kart and did all kinds of other ridiculous stuff, so swapped the back end out of my truck for a different one. So did a lot of other projects and I'm personally ready to get back into it. I have. I obviously can't. Can't hear it, but I have my. My new Beetle weight in front of me. So I'm planning on going to at least one Norwalk and Moto this year with that.

[B]

So I was just.

[G]

Is it going as I know that event you guys usually do?

[A]

Yeah, it's going to be pretty quiet at Moto this year. I think it might just be me.

[F]

The.

[A]

The as far as Omega people. And maybe Amanda might come too. We'll see. But I guess the dates just didn't really kind of work out for everybody this year. But yeah, it's a new. It's a new version of Mulsanne that's redesigned from the ground up to have me stop being an old man running three brushed motors in a Beetle in the advanced future space year of 2026. So I'm really hoping that it takes the whole thing up a notch and can be. It's already pretty darn competitive. I think I'm pretty proud of the way that it's fought so far, but I really want to take it up a notch so it will sign.

[E]

That's a damn good bot. I really have enjoyed watching you fight it in the past. It is a damn good bot. I really do like it.

[A]

Yeah. Did that bring Starchild back at some point? Now that I have a hub hub motor ecosystem that I like, that was the one thing that stopped me from building another three pound Star Child for years was I had no solution for the weapon. The way that 3 pound starchild worked was it kept the weapon belt on and it won by knockout or it lost the weapon belt and it lost by JD that's just how Star Child fought for like two or three years. So until I had a solution for that, I didn't really want to build another one. Now that I do, I can't. And it can run all the same stuff that Mulsanne does. It's. I'll just take all the different parts and repurpose it into a different object and bang. So that's kind of what's been. That's kind of what's going on on my end. I'm. I'm ready to get back into it. I'm excited. We'll build a new 12 pounder for Moto. It'll be a blast. So what about you guys?

[H]

Weren't you thinking about something the other day?

[F]

I was thinking about something in the shower, but it's an idea that we as a team, widely lambasted. So we'll see how dark my thoughts go. I noticed you said little Rip. That's not my robot. That's Anna's robot. You didn't say any of my robots. That's why I'm not competing, because you don't remember any of my robots.

[G]

There's Macathon Red.

[E]

Oh, there you go.

[B]

You could blame Linden. That wasn't my fault. I didn't write that question.

[A]

Korea must come back.

[G]

So he was guessing it's fine.

[B]

Oh yeah, that's true.

[G]

But I'm a big marathon fan, Fred.

[D]

Just.

[H]

Well, thank you,

[B]

Lucas. Or Spocky. Any. Any bot plans or.

[H]

Nothing I'm currently working on again. It's just been a lot of like other stuff going on them with the event.

[F]

We'll see.

[B]

Okay, very cool.

[A]

We got like. We got like five weddings this year. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, no, I. I totally get it.

[E]

Like three.

[D]

So what's going to be the ring bearer at the wedding?

[H]

Not because.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it is.

[B]

We actually.

[F]

That was a wedding that we went to last year's. I'm not kidding.

[B]

Hey, that's. That's a cool idea. I like that. Our last question comes from Megan, our freestyle guru, our freestyle queen at NHL up at the desk. Megan says you guys kill it when it comes to team theming. I still have some of your Ripperoni stickers. My question is, if cost and practicality weren't a thing, what outrageous team merch would you want to make for your robots?

[H]

Oh, themed pit vipers.

[A]

That would be a great one.

[H]

I don't take care of themed vipers recently, but I think we could have our own.

[A]

Yeah, that would be so good.

[F]

Especially if there was like a pizza reflection or like an alien reflection in the lens.

[A]

One thing I want is like Steve McQueen 67 Lema Pit style, like pit shirts with all, all the old fashioned like theming and all that. Because like Mulsanne's all Marmo themed. So doing like really old 60s racing stuff would be so, so cool. So being able to get the opportunity to do that would be sick. Who knows? Maybe if we ever do that, but shall not be named again, we'll do something like that.

[F]

Planning for the British tobacco sponsorship checks to find like start catching.

[B]

Very cool. Okay, well, that was the last question we had, so that's going to wrap up this episode of the HAVOC rundown. A huge thanks to team Omega, Brandon Lucas, Fred and Spocky for joining us and giving us the inside scoop on the return of mass destruction this year. Thanks to you guys for coming on. It was an awesome conversation. So glad to have you.

[F]

Thanks for having us. This is a lot of fun.

[A]

Yeah, it was a blast. Thanks for having us. For sure. Check out the stream. Check out the event in person.

[G]

We're all going to be there.

[A]

Heck yeah.

[B]

Yep, we're all going to be there.

[E]

You want to plug? Do you want to plug where the stream is?

[A]

Sure. So if you just look up Omega robotics theme on YouTube where it's in the live section of our YouTube channel. I just put the, I just put the pre thing up today so you can get, you know, you can follow that and get the notification when it goes live if you can't make it in person. But we typically update all our stuff on the Facebook page and yeah, that's in all the links and stuff for the brackets are in all the descriptions for the videos and such. So if you're confused as to what's going on during the day, you can check out the brackets and see where we are in the course of the day.

[B]

Okay. They're minor.

[D]

A post on the front page of Advocate Rundown as well to follow those links.

[A]

Great.

[B]

Well, it, it'll also be in the description for this episode as well. So I, I'll put the. Your YouTube page and everything there as well. So we will be watching closely and be there. On January 31st is about to take over the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation. I apologize for getting that wrong in the intro. And whether you're fighting, spectating or cheering from home, this is one of the event that you absolutely don't want to miss. If you want to dive deeper into the world of combat robotics, follow the show or join our community, including our fantasy league, head over to our official site, havocrundown.com where you can get all of that and more. Thanks again for listening and as always, we'll see you in the pit. Say goodbye to our listeners.

[C]

Juno.

[E]

Say goodbye. Say goodbye, Juno.

[A]

Okay. Wow. Sam. Sa.