S3E5 - Corey Nason Goes Global

Summary

The Havoc Rundown – S3E5: "Corey Nason Goes Global"

Date: March 19, 2026
Host: Justin (Hunter Bro Studios)
Guest: Corey Nason (Comet Robotics)
Other Panelists: Ryan Hunter (“Game Master”), Tony Baker (“Webmaster”), Thomas Carroll (“Chaos Conduit”)

Episode Overview

This episode of The Havoc Rundown follows U.S. builder Corey Nason’s journey from the National Havoc Robot League (NHRL) to representing the United States at the Robot Rampage World Cup in New Zealand. The team discusses international travel for robot combat, event formats, the engineering challenges of global events, and how combat robotics communities differ across the globe. Featuring panel games, builder insights, and listener Q&A, this episode is a vibrant look at the evolving worldwide community of combat robotics.

---

Key Discussion Points & Highlights

1. “Which Is Heavier?” Game Corner [03:07–21:43]

• The crew plays a new round of “Which is Heavier?”, challenging each other's knowledge on robotic and random real-life objects.
• Banter and in-jokes set a relaxed, playful tone.

Notable Quote:

"The answer is Wall E is much heavier than R2D2... Wally is 700 pounds, to the point where he was a safety concern to be around people..."
—Ryan Hunter, [13:41]

2. Corey’s Trip to Robot Rampage World Cup, New Zealand [22:05–54:40]

How the Invite Happened

• Corey was personally invited by Connor (Black Rose) and the Endgame team (Jack Barker) to join Team USA. He describes the surreal nature of the invitation and rapid preparation needed for international competition.
• Corey emphasizes the expense and logistical hurdles, especially for U.S. builders, but credits Robot Rampage’s organizers and sponsors for covering almost all his costs.
• Corey’s workplace, as a nurse, enthusiastically gave him leave to pursue the opportunity.

Notable Quote:

"I spent maybe $60 American dollars… As soon as they heard I had the ability to go to New Zealand, they said, there’s nothing that we could say that would stop him from going."
—Corey Nason, [26:10]

Event Format & Team Selection

• The World Cup uses a format inspired by Pokémon: teams of 5 robots with required diversity of robot archetypes (verts, horizontals, control bots, multi-bots).
• Travel logistics: Packing to meet strict airline weight limits, inventive suitcase hacks (reinforcing light duffel bags with duct tape), and getting questioned by airport security about “vape pens” that were actually drive motors.

Memorable Anecdote:

"The woman [at security] says, how many vape pens are you bringing home, sir? If you only knew…"
—Corey Nason, [33:46]

Tournament Performance – Team USA vs. Australia

• Corey details rapid-fire victories against largely rookie Australian bots, emphasizing learning curves and the value of deep battle-testing.
• Discussed the importance of being able to perform all repairs within an 8-minute live repair window, influencing his robot’s entire design philosophy.
• Praised the camaraderie of the Australian and New Zealand builders as a highlight of the trip.

Notable Quote:

"I don’t believe in unnecessary damage... I know the feeling of taking unnecessary damage. So I backed up to the door and just waiting. He gets counted out. Super nice guy as well."
—Corey Nason, [47:21]

Event Format Insight:

"Between each matches, you have the ability to stay in and do repairs for up to eight minutes... It gives the audience a chance to see what it takes to fix a robot."
—Corey Nason, [45:39]

3. Behind the Global Combat Robotics Scene [64:09–66:01]

• Corey reflects on how different countries approach robot engineering: stronger presence of welded frames in Australasia, more use of TPU/UHMW plastics in the U.S., and Brazilian mastery of machined parts.
• Notes cultural differences in food, hospitality, and even terminology ("umpy" for UHMW).

---

The Five in Focus: Core Q&A [54:40–69:20]

Each host asks Corey a standout question exploring his international adventure and builder philosophy.

Q1: Would you compete in Brazil? [55:19]

• Absolutely. Corey cites Brazilian events as world-class and would love to showcase his style (“synthesis”) in front of passionate local builders.

Q2: What keeps you improving? [57:49]

• It's about small goals and feeling the “race car with a chainsaw” thrill in the cage. Emphasizes community, iterative learning, and enjoyment of driving and building.

Q3: Biggest Culture Shock or Standout Moment [64:09]

• Most memorable: Experiencing global robot-building culture and the different materials/methods builders use. Also raved about New Zealand’s food and coffee culture.

---

Listener Mailbag Highlights [72:39–87:20]

On balancing professional life and robotics:

“I’m a nurse… I was drawn to BattleBots back in 1999 and it’s a nice separation of controlled structure versus the absolute chaos of combat robotics.”
—Corey Nason, [73:39]

On global bot design lessons:

"Innator, it needs to be an American bot or Hayden needs to bring it over here. We need more hammer saws, treads, and turrets."
—Corey Nason, [75:14]

Advice to new builders stepping up to heavy classes:

"Design it in a smaller weight class that doesn’t hurt your wallet when you know it’s going to get destroyed… Get a design you like and want to bring up to the larger classes."
—Corey Nason, [76:09]

Choosing which bot to bring:

"What’s the most fun robot? That’s always number one… I’m dialing it back to focusing on making one robot as good as it can for one event."
—Corey Nason, [77:07]

Best competitive memory:

"My absolute favorite was Synthesis versus Booty Brigade... After winning… I had nothing left, I just dropped to the floor and it was the highlight of my career."
—Corey Nason, [80:44]

---

Other Notable Moments

Contest Announcement [70:28]

• Corey donates a battle-scarred piece of "Synthesis 30" armor from Robot Rampage for a listener contest, to be won via a keyword scavenger hunt and referral system.

Coffee in New Zealand [68:32]

• On New Zealand’s café scene:

  “The very frequently ordered one is called a flat white… You don’t have to add a lot of toppings onto your hamburger, just everything just has a different taste.”
  —Corey Nason

---

Memorable Quotes (with Speaker & Timestamp)

• "Steel is amazing. If NHRL ever decides to do steel floors, I will not fight them. The amount of traction you get on steel is absolutely amazing."
  —Corey Nason, [41:33]

• "We’re the nerds, all of us. We are the superstars… We are the elites, quote, unquote. It’s just fun. And if you’re not having fun, why do it?"
  —Corey Nason, [63:31]

• "I want to see the power of a 60 pounder, but the feel, the power of a 30 pounder, it just doesn’t really translate into a three pounder. When someone hits the ceiling, it just isn’t the same."
  —Corey Nason, [83:03]

---

Timestamps: Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |----------------------------------------|-------------| | “Which is Heavier?” Game Corner | 03:07–21:43 | | International Travel & Robot Rampage | 22:05–54:40 | | U.S. vs Australia at Robot Rampage | 38:56–54:26 | | The Five in Focus (Corey Q&A) | 54:40–69:20 | | Contest Announcement | 70:28–72:11 | | Listener Mailbag / Panda Corner | 72:39–87:20 | | Closing Thoughts | 87:20–End |

---

Tone & Atmosphere

The episode is warm, humorous, and celebrates the quirks of both robot building and the global community. Corey’s humility, excitement, and openness make for a captivating narrative. The hosts’ camaraderie and technical curiosity create an inviting and geeky vibe—perfect for veterans and newcomers alike.

---

Takeaways for New Listeners

• Combat robotics is a global phenomenon, and events like Robot Rampage showcase both the diversity and unity of the builder community.
• Success in combat robotics comes from incremental improvements, openness to new ideas, and, above all, passion and community spirit.
• Traveling internationally for robot events comes with unexpected hurdles—but also, unforgettable moments and new friendships.

For a window into the heart of modern combat robotics—and the global scale it’s reaching—this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

[Corey Nason]

Sam. Foreign,

[Justin]

Welcome back to the HAVOC Rundown. I'm your host, Justin, and tonight we're catching up with a returning guest who has been busy taking Comet Robotics Global. Our guest today is Corey Nason, a builder many of you already know from the NHRL scene and from his previous appearance here on the show. Corey recently made the long trip across the globe to compete in the Robot Rampage World cup in New Zealand, an international tournament bringing together builders from multiple countries to battle out on one stage. Events like this are always fascinating because they give us a glimpse into how the sport is evolving across the world. Different builders, different metas, and sometimes completely different approaches to robot design. Tonight we're going to catch up with Corey about the experience of traveling international for robot combat, what the Robot Rampage event looked like, and what it's like representing the US On a world stage. Corey, welcome back to the HAVOC Rundown. How are you?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah,

[Ryan Hunter]

I'm great.

[Corey Nason]

Thank you for having me.

[Justin]

You are, I believe, our second returning guest. We had Jimmy on twice, so I think you're the only one other than Jimmy who's been on on the podcast twice. So welcome back.

[Ryan Hunter]

The first returning builder.

[Justin]

Yes, yes, it is the first returning builder. And I think you were on one of our original episodes. I think you were in like episode three. I'm pretty sure if I look back at that. Joining me tonight is the full crew, minus Ashley, who was a little bit tired from NHRL and kicking butt at NHL with Zach. So joining me tonight is the game master, Ryan Hunter. Well, hello there, the chaos conduit, Thomas Carroll.

[Ryan Hunter]

Why are robot events so long?

[Justin]

And our wonderful webmaster, Tony Baker,

[Tony Baker]

Builder of the only BattleBots fantasy league.

[Justin]

Yes, we'll get into that in a minute. But before we get into the BattleBots fantasy league, the Robot Rampage World cup and all the other things that we have, we're going to stop by Ryan's game corner, which I don't think existed the last time you were on Cory, so this might be, I believe, the first time you're going to play one Orion's games.

[Thomas Carroll]

Run while you still can.

[Ryan Hunter]

So. So we tonight are going to play another round of which is heavier. So we.

[Justin]

Which now exist on our webpage.

[Ryan Hunter]

It does exist on our web page. I haven't done it for a little while and if I remember right, yeah,

[Tony Baker]

Corey was integral in the first time we did this. Oh, because.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, yes, Corey. Corey contributed to the first time we

[Justin]

did it was like part of what

[Ryan Hunter]

made it the way it worked.

[Tony Baker]

So. Yep.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so this is going to Go the standard way. We are going to have everybody put in a guess, and there isn't even four of you tonight. So it is going to go the standard way. If more of you get it wrong than right, the house gets a point. If more of you get it right than wrong, you all. You, all those people get a point. Everybody that gets it right gets a point.

[Thomas Carroll]

We all lose.

[Ryan Hunter]

Well, you all lose anyway. You know, that's just how it is. All right, so everybody understand? Everybody got the game? I'm going to be showing you. I have images for the YouTube and I am going to be showing them what these objects are, but I will explain, of course, for the audio listeners. All right, the objective is, which is

[Thomas Carroll]

heavier, pound of lead or a ton of bricks?

[Ryan Hunter]

The first. The first objects are a RDY Mini 45022 V2 hub motor from JustCuz Robotics. And the other object is the JustCuz brushless all metal speedy servo. This is not the servo that comes standard in a SSP kit. This is the upgrade servo, which is

[Thomas Carroll]

heavier, which is lighter.

[Ryan Hunter]

I don't know, Thomas, that's up to you to decide.

[Justin]

We're telling you which one's heavier, right?

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah. You're telling me which one is heavier.

[Thomas Carroll]

Well, I know that's the name of the game.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah.

[Thomas Carroll]

This one is really easy. Audio listeners, you can't see this, but Ryan, silly Ryan, he put an image on screen for us, and right on the servo, it says 42 kg. That is a 42 kilogram servo versus a little tiny mud motor. So I'm going with the servo.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay, you're going with a. With a servo.

[Thomas Carroll]

Okay, 42 kilogram servo.

[Ryan Hunter]

That's fine.

[Justin]

That's what Thomas. I didn't know if you saw, but I literally leaned into the screen and I was like, is that the weight? Is that the weight right there?

[Ryan Hunter]

I thought that was how much it. See, that's my dub. That's my dumb. I thought that was like, it's lifted. How much it lifted power.

[Thomas Carroll]

No, no, no, no.

[Corey Nason]

Oh, God.

[Justin]

I think I'm gonna go with Thomas.

[Ryan Hunter]

I don't have this one. The weight of the mini is not up there either. And I will tell you, this is very close.

[Tony Baker]

Yeah, I'm gonna go with the hub motor.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Tony goes with the hub motor. Thomas goes with the servo.

[Justin]

I'm gonna go with the servo, too. I'm gonna believe in Thomas.

[Corey Nason]

Okay, I'll go with the servo, too.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so everybody but Tony Goes with the servo. And you are both correct. You are all correct. The servo is 77 grams versus the ant weight hub motor is 72.5 grams.

[Justin]

That is pretty close. Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

I didn't realize it was that close.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yep.

[Tony Baker]

This is why I don't ever play the which is heavier game on our website.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so the next two objects. I went to McMaster car and I went and I found a couple things. So the next two objects are a high capacity air powered framing nailer item number 36275865 versus the 42 inch U shaped claw nail polling bar which is item number 5992. A5.

[Justin]

I don't know if we need the item numbers, Ryan, but that's fine.

[Ryan Hunter]

You don't need to know. It's item number 3627-5865.

[Thomas Carroll]

No, there are.

[Tony Baker]

I think Ryan's listened to his U.S. postal Service automated response thing way too many times.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, you mean where I called out this morning and it sounded like item number 5992.

[Justin]

Okay, who's going first? Who wants to guess first?

[Thomas Carroll]

I'm not going first on this one.

[Tony Baker]

I'm gonna go with the.

[Ryan Hunter]

This, this is a. For the description for the audio people. This is a big ass pry bar versus a framing nailer with a big round magazine.

[Tony Baker]

Right?

[Justin]

Okay. That was about to be my question. This is an empty nail it, right?

[Ryan Hunter]

It is an empty nailer, yes.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Thomas Carroll]

Okay. What about the pry bar? Is that empty too?

[Ryan Hunter]

The pry bar is full, yes.

[Thomas Carroll]

Oh, okay. It's a full pry bar.

[Ryan Hunter]

It's a fully loaded pry bar.

[Thomas Carroll]

I think that makes the decision easy.

[Justin]

I think I'm going to go with the nailer. Put me down for the nailer.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Justin is going with the nailer.

[Justin]

Those things. But I'm trying to remember how it feels empty. But that's fine. I'm going to go with the nailer.

[Thomas Carroll]

I know my answer does not have the.

[Ryan Hunter]

It has only regular air in it. Not pressure pressurized at the moment.

[Thomas Carroll]

Does way more.

[Corey Nason]

I'll go with the pry bar. I feel like it's all steel.

[Thomas Carroll]

Wait, you know, you, you guys laugh, but air does way more. Especially when you pressurize a lot.

[Ryan Hunter]

Corey, you're going with the pry bar?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Tony Baker]

I'm gonna go with the nailer.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Tony's going with the nailer. Okay. Thomas, you're. You're the deciding factor.

[Thomas Carroll]

Well, the nailer, that thing, even though it's really heavy duty, it's designed to be carried on like a roof all Day. So one, you want it to be lightweight so that way it doesn't tire you out.

[Ryan Hunter]

This is a framing nailer, not a roofing nailer.

[Justin]

Not a roofing nailer.

[Thomas Carroll]

You're still framing a house.

[Justin]

It's different. No, it's different than the other.

[Ryan Hunter]

I would not carry this on a roof. This is not a roofing nailer.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, but like roofs, frames, they're both high up in the air. You got to frame the attic. But the. You want it to be lightweight, as light as you can.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Thomas Carroll]

The pry bar, that thing is meant for like, you know, hitting zombies and stuff. That you need to have some energy behind it. Clearly it weighs more.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay, so you're going with the pry bar.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so this is even. So house cannot get any points this. This round. The winner is item number 5992A5. The pry bar is £9 versus the item number 36275, A65, which is 8.5 pounds.

[Justin]

So again, very close. It's not that far off.

[Ryan Hunter]

But you have to picture carrying an eight and a half pound nailer and then fill it with nails. It's sucks.

[Justin]

All right.

[Thomas Carroll]

That's what I'm saying.

[Ryan Hunter]

The next. The next two objects are the real life scale model R2D2 versus the real life scale model Wall E. And this is the official wall E. There are different versions of it. So I'm being very specific here. This is the official wall E from Disney that Disney has used.

[Corey Nason]

So is the R2D2 the one that was put on set? That's the real question.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yes, this is the set. Real R2D2.

[Corey Nason]

So it's actually hollow inside because I believe someone actually sat inside to move the head around.

[Ryan Hunter]

No, no, no. Not the old R2D2. The new. The new set R2D2.

[Justin]

This.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah, yeah. It's not. That one was like fiberglass and stuff. This is the real one that actually worked.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, yeah. I actually have a life size remote control, Wally.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, you do?

[Justin]

That's awesome.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah. Do you have the actual. Like this. This one? This one is like the one. So I'm being very specific about that.

[Corey Nason]

I'm gonna. Let's travel.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah.

[Thomas Carroll]

But real quick, does Corey have a 5, 7, 6, 4 6?

[Corey Nason]

So I'm gonna go for is right there.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, wow, nice.

[Corey Nason]

He's about 3ft tall. So he's not full size.

[Justin]

That's cool.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, Justin, what are you going with?

[Justin]

Just judging. I'm going by their size because I

[Ryan Hunter]

believe wall E, they're approximately pretty Much the same size. Wall E might be a little squatter and wider.

[Justin]

Yeah, one's wide. You know. I'm going to go with the classic. I'm going to go with the R2D2.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Justin]

Working just well, I guess the Wally. Yeah. I'm going to go with RTV2. I'm going to go with the classic R2D2 on this one.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Justin goes or R2D2.

[Tony Baker]

I'm going to go with the Wally. He's very.

[Corey Nason]

Okay.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Tony is going Wally.

[Corey Nason]

I'll go with R2D2 because when talking to some builders who actually built the Wally, the head has to be really light on the waza servo actuation can't work properly. And same with the arms. So I'm gonna go with R2D2.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Tony Baker]

I'm gonna change my mind to go with the builder.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Corey Nason]

I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

[Tony Baker]

Nah, it's okay. Okay.

[Ryan Hunter]

Corey is Cory's R2D2. Tony is Tony, you said you're R2D2 or. Or.

[Tony Baker]

Yeah, I'm gonna go with the builder. Okay. R2D2.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Tony Baker]

I believe in Corey.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. We are uneven right now.

[Thomas Carroll]

Thomas, we're going with Wally.

[Ryan Hunter]

Thomas is going with wall E. Think

[Thomas Carroll]

of it like this. R2D2. It's just three wheels and a piece of sonotube and a motor that goes wall E. Look at those treads. You think that's light? All those metal wheels.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Tony Baker]

It's.

[Thomas Carroll]

If you lift the. If you. Okay, let's say you put it on its face and you put your finger right in the middle of its like stomach and you balance it. It's just gonna go right in the right. All the treads. There's so much weight down there. R2D2. It's like a. It's like a kid's toy, even the real one.

[Ryan Hunter]

So the answer is wall E is much heavier than R2D2 is. Oh really? R2D2 is approximately 200 pounds. That's like the full metal. Wally is 700 pounds to the point where he was a safety concern to be around people and they had to cart him on, in and off stage with a trolley.

[Justin]

Wow.

[Ryan Hunter]

That's how heavy he is.

[Justin]

The more you learn.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah, that's full metal. Tr. Full metal like treads and everything like that.

[Thomas Carroll]

I did not think it was going to be that.

[Ryan Hunter]

Next round. A 1990 Mazda Miata MX5. Beautiful pop up headlights version.

[Thomas Carroll]

Might know this or this one should be.

[Ryan Hunter]

This one's a 1965 Shelby Cobra 427 SC.

[Tony Baker]

I'm going with the Cobra.

[Ryan Hunter]

This is the best Miata. This is the coolest Miata to own, in my opinion.

[Tony Baker]

There is no such thing.

[Ryan Hunter]

I could have an opinion about my favorite Miata. Pop up headlights are cool. All right, can I get guesses or questions?

[Justin]

I'm not going first this time. Someone else can go first this time.

[Corey Nason]

Well, Tony went first. He said.

[Tony Baker]

I said the Cobra.

[Corey Nason]

Okay.

[Ryan Hunter]

Tony is saying the Cobra.

[Thomas Carroll]

I think the Cobra's pretty heavy, but.

[Justin]

Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Thomas.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, you'll know. The Miata is freaking tiny. I mean, look how it's got tiny little toy wheels. The. The Shelby, it's got big old big boy wheels. I mean, you could probably flip a Miata with three people. You try to. You'll get a hernia. All three of them if you try to flip the Shelby.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay, Thomas. Thomas is going the Miata.

[Thomas Carroll]

Mia's lighter.

[Tony Baker]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Yeah, I'm gonna go.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Corey Nason]

I feel like the body of the Cobra is probably fiberglass, but could be deceptive.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, fiberglass is still heavy, though.

[Justin]

It's older, though.

[Ryan Hunter]

It is older, but this is. This is the actual, like, Shelby Cobra.

[Corey Nason]

No, I'll go. I'll go Cobra.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay.

[Justin]

Yeah, I'm going to go Cobra, too. And my main thing is that it's got a semi roll cage. A semi roll cage in it. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going Cobra because it's got that extra steel in it.

[Ryan Hunter]

The Miata does have the roof. It's put away in that picture, but the Miata has a roof.

[Justin]

You mean the fabric roof that comes out and goes back in? Yeah, that. That counts a lot.

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so the answer here is, is that the V4 Miata is lighter than the Ford V8. Shelby Cobra 427. Yes. So the, the Cobra is about 2,400 pounds. It changes based off of, like, model, like in options. And then the Mazda miata is about 2,100 pounds curb weight.

[Tony Baker]

All right, that's one heavier than I thought for the Miata.

[Ryan Hunter]

One. One last one, last one. You ready?

[Justin]

Oh, God, Brian,

[Tony Baker]

that's the largest machine that's ever run on earth.

[Ryan Hunter]

These are both very, very large machines. Because he's showing us a very specific thing.

[Justin]

Yeah, Tony, if you look at the picture he's showing us. Not the rocket itself. He's showing us the rocket and the crawler.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yes, I'm going to be very specific. So the two objects. The two objects are at the German. The 1995 German Bagger 293 bucket loader, mining machine, the picture of which is like taken from an overpass. And the cars look like little toys going up to it. And it looks like it's about to eat a town. It is just a giant moving mining factory. And the other is the Artemis 2 on top of the crawler loader. So the weight is the entire thing. The entire moving weight. So it is both.

[Thomas Carroll]

The rocket.

[Ryan Hunter]

It is the crawler loader with the rocket. With the Artemis 2 rocket fully loaded. Yes. And the standing. I forgot what the standing thing is called that the rocket is attached to. But the entire thing.

[Justin]

Yeah, the launch. Yeah, the launch.

[Tony Baker]

And it's not. It's not fully loaded. When it's moving, they don't load it until it actually gets to the location.

[Ryan Hunter]

It doesn't have fuel in it? No, it does not have fuel in it.

[Thomas Carroll]

Okay.

[Ryan Hunter]

This is not with fuel. No.

[Corey Nason]

All right.

[Ryan Hunter]

The Bagger 293, if you are an audio listener, please look it up. It is the most obscene thing that has ever been made. And it is. It just makes sense that it was just a German object.

[Justin]

It looks like. If I had not seen pictures of this thing going back before I was a thing, I would tell you that it's something that someone made out of AI because it's very hard to look at the picture of it or the other pictures that you can see of it and go, yeah, that's a real thing that people built.

[Thomas Carroll]

I know. The answer to this is larger than 2. Not only that, the Artemis 2 is. It can fly. It's very lightweight.

[Ryan Hunter]

It is not lightweight.

[Thomas Carroll]

It's very lightweight. It's no weight that can fly so high.

[Corey Nason]

As part of the problem.

[Thomas Carroll]

It can fly to 40, 000ft. This thing can fly to, like space.

[Justin]

So it also not even any fuel in it.

[Thomas Carroll]

Whereas the bagger 293, that thing is currently mining. So.

[Justin]

So you're going for the Bagger 293, right?

[Tony Baker]

Yes.

[Corey Nason]

Is that what you're doing?

[Justin]

Okay. I'm agreeing with Thomas. So there's two votes for the bagger.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Are you sure? I'm not trying to pull one over on you guys?

[Tony Baker]

No, I'm gonna go with the Bagger. I'm going with the Bagger.

[Ryan Hunter]

Okay. Tony's going with the Bagger. Corey.

[Corey Nason]

I'm just trying to get a sense of scale because there was a car next to the Artemis and there's a car in the Bagger, but it's kind of farther away.

[Justin]

Yeah, they've taken that picture of the Bagger from like a mile away.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, I'm gonna go.

[Justin]

Artifact is massive.

[Corey Nason]

The bat. I'll go with the Bagger just because how big it is. I can't even understand the sense of scale. It.

[Ryan Hunter]

It looks like a bridge broke free of its moors and started driving around with a weapon on front of it.

[Justin]

It looks like something that they CGI'd for a Transformers movie.

[Corey Nason]

I was gonna say it's a Transformer, basically, at this point.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's been in the Transformers, one of the movies probably. I've already placed some answers, so I'm looking this up now.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah. So I think we all picked the Bagger.

[Ryan Hunter]

The answer is the fully loaded NASA crawler loader carrying the Artemis 2 mission rocket is 17.65 million lbs. And the bagger 293.

[Thomas Carroll]

Dammit.

[Ryan Hunter]

Is 31 million lbs. Okay. I know for a fact that is

[Tony Baker]

literally the Bagger is literally the largest creation ever made by man to dry, like move on Earth. Like it's literally insane.

[Thomas Carroll]

Now if you were to take the rocket and fill it with fuel, it

[Tony Baker]

would be still lighter.

[Ryan Hunter]

It would still be just a little bit lighter. It would be about like 20, 26

[Thomas Carroll]

million or a lot of fuel.

[Tony Baker]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's loading it with liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen. It's not really that.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, no, like a lot of fuel. We just keep fueling it.

[Ryan Hunter]

It takes. Does it take like days to fuel it? Completely sounds about right.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah. All right, so the winner this round with the most correct is. Thomas. Congratulations, Thomas. You know which is heavier?

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, I do.

[Justin]

No. 3 to 4 hours of fuel from empty to full.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, okay. All right.

[Justin]

730,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

[Ryan Hunter]

Still freaking nuts. All right, well that's the game corner. Let's go to the five in Focus and talk about some New Zealand.

[Justin]

Well, let's focus on the New Zealand first. Okay, so now that we've gotten through Ryan's game corner, we're gonna talk, we're gonna cover the highlights of Corey's big trip.

[Ryan Hunter]

That sounds like a book.

[Thomas Carroll]

That sounds like he took some drugs.

[Justin]

It does. I'm sorry. Okay, so Corey, recently and within the last month, you took an amazing trip to have this mind blowing experience to fight your robot on a stage bigger than you've ever fought before and against other countries that you may not have. So we kind of want to talk about that before we get into the more direct questions of. Of the Five in focus. So the first thing I want to cover, just before we get into anything, is how did the whole Robot Rampage New Zealand thing happen? Like, how did you get invited? How did that whole thing come about?

[Corey Nason]

It was very weird and very surreal. So prior to me even being invited, I had seen Jack post on the Discord asking if teams wanted to form and come fight at Robot Rampage. So I had known about the event for, I don't know, a few weeks prior to even being invited, and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. However, given my occupation as a nurse, it's kind of hard to really get the time off and the cost to get over to New Zealand is not a couple bucks. So I was definitely interested in the event, but it just kind of felt too far away and too out of reach. After working a relatively busy week, kind of unwinding on a Friday evening, I get a message from Connor of of Black Rose. Him and I, we've chatted a little bit here and there over the couple of years that I've known him. And he was like, hey, I know it's short notice. What are you doing? The 19th to the 22nd of February, we're trying to put together a United States team for the World cup for Robot Rampage. I, I that was the little preview message. I didn't actually open the message up initially because I was kind of confused because I said, is this real? Am I sleeping right now? Because it definitely wasn't something that I was expecting ever. So going from there, I opened it up, I said, oh, absolutely. For December finals of 2025, I had really done a major prepping state where I made three of my robots and I took minimal damage in December. And so I said, okay, well, I have the inventory, I have three robots ready to go. So it wasn't necessarily waiting on parts or anything. It was just minor refreshments to make sure the robot looked good and was tight. Over the course of a few days, Jack Barker of OES Robotics with Endgame reached out, says he was delighted to have me consider the chance of fighting over there, because I wanted the weekend to really sit down and even think if this was a viable option. I needed a passport. I needed to be able to get the time off from work. What was going to be covered from Robot Rampage? In asking all of those questions, I'm very thankful that the Robot Rampage crew and their sponsors covered my entire flight. They were able to accommodate me and at least Johnny, the Sam and Colin and the NHRL crew that went, they kind of did their own thing. But everything was covered, and I think all out of pocket. I spent maybe $60American dollars.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh, wow.

[Tony Baker]

Yeah.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Corey Nason]

So I wasn't sure how much I was gonna spend, but as soon as I got the invite, I had messaged my scheduler. I said, hey, I have this great opportunity to go to New Zealand to fight robots. She says, we're gonna make it work one way or the other. Come meet me on Monday.

[Justin]

That's awesome.

[Corey Nason]

So Monday came. I filled out the paperwork for the requested time off. I said, ash, my scheduler, do whatever you can. Sweet talk the bosses so I can get the time off. She went up about an hour and a half later. She was like, here you go. Your time is approved. And I guess as soon as they heard I was. I had the ability to go to New Zealand. They said, there's nothing that we could say that would stop him from going. So we're gonna say, absolutely. Just. And then one of the things that I was kind of panicking about when getting ready was I applied for a passport years ago, probably eight, 2018, or 2019 that I never actually utilized. And when I'm sitting down, okay, I need a passport. How good a passport? How long are passports good for? And I'm like, oh, they must be like a driver's license. No more than five years. It's probably expired. So I'm looking at the online. How quickly can I get a passport? Well, I mean, if I want to spend $1,000, I can have one tomorrow, and.

[Justin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Corey Nason]

And I was like, that. That's a lot of money, but if that's what it's going to cost, sure. I'm sitting down, having some breakfast with my fiance, and she was like, why don't you look at your passport? Because they're. They're good for, like, nine years. Nine or ten years?

[Justin]

Yeah, it's like ten years. Yeah. Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

So I looked. One of the first places I looked was, like, a little catch cubby that we have next to the refrigerator. Sure enough, it was right there. Got it in. Got it in 2019. So I said, all right. The last. Last part of the puzzle was good to go. Outside of that, it was just. Just very surreal. And then come to find out, Sam was. Sam and colin were gonna bring jump rope, and then Johnny was gonna be going. I was super excited because I knew everyone on the team. So that was kind of the start of a beautiful trip to New zealand.

[Justin]

And how. How did that team work? Like, how is it set up? Because it's kind of a different Setup as far as the combat is concerned than we're used to in like an NHRL or something system. Right. Do you want to explain how that combat worked for anyone that hasn't watched the streams?

[Corey Nason]

Are you talking about the format of the event or.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

Yes. So everyone I'd imagine that's listening to this podcast has played some form a Pokemon one way or the other. So the, the idea is you have five robots. You have at least. Well, not at least. You have four different archetypes. So you can't have all vertical spinners, all horizontals, all control bots. You have to have a little bit of everything. So the nice part was finding vertical spinners is like finding a dollar in your back.

[Justin]

Throw a rock and you'll hit. Yeah, exactly.

[Corey Nason]

Johnny. Johnny. Having the horizontal and then jump rope, which is the by far the most unique robot that exists. Control bot. Previously to this version of Team usa, Craig DNB was offering up Ripple Saw. That'll be a fun story when we get to it. So that was two verts. Another option is a multi bot. So it doesn't matter if it's two verts, two horizontals or a combination of anything. I said, okay, well, I have my 12 pounder. Let's make some magic happen. And sure enough, Sam was able to find one half of Stop hitting yourself. We verified it was allowed, so 30 pounds altogether. Because they don't allow extra weight bonuses.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yep.

[Corey Nason]

And then so two verts, horizontal control bot and a multi made up the team. I would have preferred if we had like all dedicated, like not kind of thrown together. Like the multi was kind of just to fill a spot. But we tried to reach out to the Colossal Avian guys because they kick my butt every time I fight them. I said, that would be an awesome entry. Things didn't work out, so we kind of went with what we had. The problem going forward was I had a maximum amount of £100 of checked luggage. I like to bring as much as I physically can. So two copies of synthesis is £60 plus two versions of the 12 pounder 24. So £84 now of just robot. I'm just robots. But the problem was when I sat down to actually start to figure out the weight, I never actually figured, okay, the weight has to include the luggage. So I'm like, oh, well, I have, I have some suitcases. No, they're like £12 each, so I can't do that. So I found the lightest duffel bags I could possibly find on Amazon. They weighed about 2 pounds each. And then People were saying, okay, they rip at the seams. So what I did was I took gorilla duct tape, and I went on every outside seam to make sure they wouldn't rip apart. I only needed to get the stuff to and from. I didn't care what the bag looked like. So I made sure everything was packed in. And even then, like, it was a struggle.

[Ryan Hunter]

So you show up to the airport with two duffel bags full of electronics and triple batteries, and just wait.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

Hot. So that was.

[Justin]

Where's my not bomb?

[Ryan Hunter]

These are not bombs.

[Corey Nason]

So that was. That was the checked luggage. That was the checked luggage. We could have a backpack or a suitcase and then, like, a laptop bag. I got to the point where I was afraid that stuff was gonna get broken, so I stuck all my drive motors, everything in my laptop bag. I think all said and done, my laptop bag probably weighed 30 or 40 pounds.

[Justin]

Wow.

[Corey Nason]

And then. So this is like one in the morning before we're leaving. We don't. Johnny and I, we don't have a flight till 7pm the next day. Him and I are, like, trying to figure out, okay, what can we do? How little of clothing can I physically bring? I think I brought, like, two shirts, a pair of pants, a couple things of underwear just to rationalize how much extra stuff I could physically bring. Because it was tough, but, yeah, no.

[Ryan Hunter]

And then you can wear the duffel bags. Don't worry about it.

[Thomas Carroll]

It's close.

[Corey Nason]

And then the. So they told you that the. Your carry on had away a certain amount. So I'm freaking out. And Johnny was like, no, they don't weigh it. It's okay.

[Thomas Carroll]

Prior to that, like, it's really heavy.

[Corey Nason]

In addition to ordering the lightest duffel bags, I ordered the lightest backpack. So it weighed, I don't know, three quarters of a pound. It came here the next day. It's funny, one of the times we. When we were coming back, they pulled my laptop bag. I'm like, what's going on?

[Tony Baker]

Oh, no.

[Corey Nason]

The woman says, how many vape pens are you bringing home, sir?

[Tony Baker]

If you only knew.

[Ryan Hunter]

These are my combat.

[Corey Nason]

Because the drive motors are cylindrical and long, so through the X ray, they looked like vape pens.

[Justin]

And

[Corey Nason]

I had collectively probably almost 20 or 25 drive motors in my laptop bag. So she's like, wow, he's got a lot of vape pens going on in there.

[Ryan Hunter]

But this dude does not want to

[Tony Baker]

run out of vape.

[Corey Nason]

The weirdest part was they didn't even stop us for, like, the lipos or anything. We did exactly as you're supposed to. You tape the ends and then you have them in a lipo designated bag, which I was told they didn't care. I mean, Johnny ran out of room, so he stuck a set of forks in his backpack and his backpack got pulled. But they didn't even question about the forks. I'm like, that's kind of crazy. But hey, I'm not going to question

[Ryan Hunter]

what kind of weapons are these. I'm just.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, but getting there. So Another issue was £400 worth of stuff. Yeah, just get it out of here. Okay, so I have a hundred, just about 100 pounds of stuff. Duffel bags. They have wheels, but they're not rigid. So the duffel bags are sagging half the time. So I'm really basically just muscling it. I have about my backpack probably about £50 and the laptop bag was about a £40. So. But £190 worth of stuff I'm bringing as I'm driving there. We're in gate one. Oh, gate one is shut down. You need to go to gate eight. So they don't have an escalator or anything leading from the parking garage to the little tram that goes from each gate. So I have to walk like a quarter of a mile to physically get to the tram. So needless to say, as soon as I got on the tram, I nearly collapsed because £200 is. Oh, you look at it, it's not bad. But when you're actually carrying it that long, your back tends to really say, I hate you right now. Yep. And then being new, so I had to fly out of New York as well too, because there's only like five or six airports that go directly to New Zealand, Texas, California, jfk, and then there's a couple in the northern parts of the United States. So I'm standing on the escalator trying to get to like where I need to be. The people are just shoving by me, trying to get past me, like, hey, I'm going a different place than, you know, we're going the same place and you see how much stuff I'm holding. Why don't you wait the 30 seconds till we get up to the top?

[Thomas Carroll]

Ah, can't do that.

[Justin]

I, I can only imagine the, the packers on the plane putting your bags underneath the airplane.

[Thomas Carroll]

What is this, robots or something? Yeah, no way.

[Ryan Hunter]

Although I think like JFK might be getting used to it at this point because every, every first Saturday of the month they just have like maybe like 20 or 30 like people going out with robots just like, oh, yeah, don't look at that bag.

[Tony Baker]

It's fine.

[Ryan Hunter]

Don't

[Tony Baker]

ignore the wires and batteries.

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, all the freaking robot builders are here again.

[Corey Nason]

And mind you, I've never. So I've taken a road trip to the Midwest, to St. Louis. Outside of maybe flying to Texas, I've never left internationally. So this was my first ever flight. And I never realized how expensive things are in the airport. Like, we got food and I think I got like a salad and a lemonade because I was like, I'm gonna eat a little better because we're gonna be on a flight for a long time. And it was like almost $50.

[Justin]

Yeah, it was insane. It's anywhere that's like that when you're in a stadium or anything. It's, it's the mentality of you can't go anywhere else and you can't like, you're stuck with whatever you're buying. So we can charge you whatever the hell we want to charge you. You, you got to pay for it. Like, what else are you going to do? So, yeah, that's, yeah, it's really bad. I've been on a couple international flights and just flights in general and trying to get food. Thankfully my last job before this one when I was flying for them, everything was charged. So I would just like go to restaurants and whatever. But yeah, no, it's expensive. So let's talk about before we get into the 5 focus where we, we asked a couple of these other questions. I just want to performance because for the first round, I think it was the first round, right? It was the semifinal. You against Australia. You kind of, kind of did a thing there, like for anyone that's not watching. You want to talk about how that was?

[Corey Nason]

Sure. Well, I must say, first and foremost, the Australians are probably some of the nicest people you will ever meet. We, we didn't meet a single, like rude person the entire time. Everyone was so friendly. But I think out of everyone we hung out with, all of the Australians, the most, very nice, very friendly. Even a couple of them kind of messaged me prior to even leaving. They were doing their homework is what they had said. But they're really cool people. It's very tough because I know what they were going through that event three years ago. So Synthesis has been fighting for, I don't know, roughly three years of a lot of downs and sum ups. So I know what doesn't work. And this four out of five of their robots were all brand new, very competent builders, but they hadn't experienced the gremlin stage just yet. So. Okay, so it was not apples to apples. I didn't underestimate any of them. But judging just by the, the results, it kind of showed that a lot of their robots hadn't gone through, through the, the battle testing just yet. Because a lot of the issues that they just, they were having going into the matches was stupid little things that you would have, you would have been able to kind of test out as you progressed in, in the design and the iteration or one of the robots is Phil, who drove heo High Earth Orbit. He didn't know how big or small 30 pounder was. And so when you physically put it next to my robot, I mean, granted my robot's enormous, it was probably, it was, it's the size of probably like a prometta. So it's really small. It's no bigger than like a 9 by 9 or 9 by 10. It's probably. It would be like the next iteration of a psycho stepping up. So going into every match, I took it at face value. Okay. The very first person was a melty. I don't like melties. They're very unpredictable. One thing to note with this event is you're not allowed to change your configurations. Whatever you re you lock in at the beginning has to stay going full. Okay. So the way Nick maybe had said was you can remove things, you just can't add them. So hypothetical, if you had a damage.

[Justin]

So no waddles. No, no waddles.

[Corey Nason]

Exactly.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

The one thing was kind of go, if I did a real rule lawyering, I could technically put a wedge on and then I would just remove it and then I can't put it back on, but okay, I'm not gonna play that game. Kind of designed for roughly what works for most. So I seen the spin up. It was really fast spin up. Very, very nervous. It was going into the matches, Johnny and I, we sat down and figured, okay, what bots do we want to fight that we feel confident against? What bots are we kind of 50, 50 where they can go either way or what bots are our bad matchups. The Melti was at the very top of my bad matchups list because given I don't have a wedge or anything like that, it's going to be very easy for him to catch the inside of my upright and lay out the whole front end. So I knew if I let him get up to speed, then I knew he was gonna get me. So I said, okay, I have to box Rush. There's no Question about it. The nice part is steel is amazing. If NHRL ever decides to do steel floors, I will not fight them. The amount of extra track, the amount of traction that you get on steel is absolutely amazing. Like, I didn't run any magnets, and I felt as though the amount of acceleration I could push into into the robot was far more than I could do on wood because the tires generally will spin. So I lunge out, start to head towards him. He spins and hits the wall, and then I start to line up a shot. He gets going a little bit, but luckily I was able to hit him, and I hit him up. He hit the wall, and he flipped upside down. Re watching the match, he actually spins backwards when he's upside down, which is very weird. So he's actually flapping you rather than smacking you with the impactors. So I hit him a couple extra times, and one of the last times that I hit him was. I don't know, I'm guesstimating it probably 6 or 8 millimeters of some type of steel, and it bent it up and deflected it probably, I don't know, good two inches to where. When he was upside down, he was high, centered, and could not move. That match was about. There's a common theme. The match was probably about 15 seconds at most. I think the announcers. His speech that he said was longer than the match. So the builder, Owen, has built smaller melty brains in the past and is very successful. What he had said was, when he spins up, he usually moves forward a little bit. So when he spins up, he doesn't hit the wall. For whatever reason. I think he was expecting a box rush. Tried to spin up fast. Going into the next fight, my buddy Phil, he had heo high earth orbit. When we were talking for a couple days prior to leading up, he was saying, I'm gonna box rush you, Cory. I'm gonna box rush you. So one of the nice parts is, over the years of tuning, synthesis, I can get the disc up to full speed really quick, probably under about a second and a half. So I was expecting my disc to get up to speed before he could get over to me. Well, sure enough, he didn't box her. She kind of moseyed on out again. The gremlins. This was probably one of the second or third times he's ever really spun up the robot. Well, the screws that mount the motor to the chassis vibrated loose, and so the. The disc couldn't really get spun up because it was binding against the pulley. So we charge face on. He's a lot smaller. So when I, I kind of glance off his top and I kind of like do this little aerial kind of like semi backflip. And then I, I regain my balance and he's stressing to try to get the disc up to speed. And I, I smack him a couple times and I tear through the front end of his. His plastic armor. And then his disc stops. And then I hit him one more time. And he stuck upside down. He was saying how he was gonna use the chaos of the disc to pop back over. Well, it's not spinning. He can't be chaotic. So he's stuck upside down about 15 seconds as well. I pull over now, between each matches, you have the ability to stay in and do repairs for up to eight minutes. And you're doing them in front of the audience on camera. So it kind of gives the audience a chance to see what does it take to fix a robot? What to look on the inside. Like on the inside. So it's really cool. Mostly what happened.

[Ryan Hunter]

I really love it. I really like the. Because one of the things that's really hard to communicate to people who don't like build is 100% how much it takes to repair a robot, how much it takes to replace, how long it takes to replace things, how long it takes to even put a freaking top plate on.

[Tony Baker]

But yeah, I was making the comment when I was watching it, NHL is watching this and going, they don't need 30 minutes for a 30 pounder. They can do it in 10.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah, but that just means that when Corey's there, we could just, we could just. Cory, what are you doing? You got eight minutes, Corey.

[Tony Baker]

What the hell?

[Ryan Hunter]

Do it in front of us, Cory.

[Corey Nason]

So knowing that this format ahead of time, one of the things that I made sure was when I looked at my robot, what if something breaks? Am I able to physically fix it in eight minutes? And I got to the point where I said, yes, every single thing that breaks on that robot, I can change out and swap within eight minutes. And there was a lot of design features that would interlock. So that way I didn't need 10 screws to hold the top plate on. It was able to be held on by half the amount. So mostly what was happening was the forks, they would catch an edge and then they would kind of roll or bend underneath. So we would take a pair of pliers, bend them back, good to go. They're not the type that I need to really perform. So the next robot, the gentleman that was the delight of the entire event. His name is Bola, he's from Australia, and you could have seen his robot go up in flames. Not even fighting, just testing it. And he'd have the biggest smile on his face because he was just happy to be there. He had an undercutter called Froggish. He put it in and he had been having this weird issue where the weapon motor wouldn't sometimes bind to the transmitter. He had two receivers, one for drive, one for weapon. So I said, bola, pull the robot out, go take a look at it and swap in someone. I don't want you to go in crippled because it's not going to be a good fight. So he was cool with it. So we put in Tempest, four wheel drive, vertical spinner, same thing. Very competent builder. First time ever building it. It was a big box with a disc on the top. He didn't play ground game at all. So there's a lot of exposed areas. When we started, he. He caught me off guard because he box rushed me and I'm not used to having people really box rush me. So by the time we collided in the center, my disc wasn't up to speed. So when we hit it kind of like chucked me back and you just see me kind of like pirouetting all around the arena. The problem is he. He comes from the culture of Lynx. And that one little bump peeled open the top and then the link flew out of the robot. So he was dead in the water right on the spot. And as soon as I landed, I gave him one good hit for measure, and then I could physically see where the link had landed and I backed up. I don't believe in unnecessary damage. I'm not going to go and hit someone if, if they're not moving, I know they're dead. If your weapon spins up, then I'm going to hit you. But I know the feeling of taking unnecessary damage. So I backed up to the door and just waiting. He gets counted out. Super nice guy as well, too, Newton. And basically Bola fixes his robot. So this time the belts were starting to show a little bit of being tired and stretchy. One of them hopped out of the track, out of the groove, in the. In the pulley. So I fixed it. We swapped out a set of what we thought were new belts. Bola went in this time. I was very aggressive. I kind of went all gung ho because undercutter, I want to try to catch him because any horizontal can catch the bottom of the frame and that can be Done. So we collide. I hit him. I think I broke his weapon and one side of drive and then he's kind of limping around on the other side and my robot's not really driving straight. I don't know what's going on. And then I go for one more shot. I hit him in the front and I, I went through the steel and I actually grabbed the gearbox and broke it off of the drive motor. So now he was dead and trying to get to the door. My robot wouldn't drive straight. I don't know what was going on. It would have been something simple. Swap out the ESC. However, at this point I was 40 with all very quick knockouts and if we were going into the following day, I didn't want the rest of the team to have no experience. So Johnny went in. He fought the coolest robot of the whole event. It's called Innator. It is a four wheel drive. It has treads. It has a hammer saw with a turret so it can actually angle the hammer saw to wherever it wants to hit within the front. But I think Hayden says he want, he wants to do 360 at some point. That would be cool. Johnny had his cutting blade on. So after a couple hits he cut through the actual frame and enough shock was able to basically dislodge the drive motors and Hayden got counted out. So that was kind of the. The United States versus Australia. Nothing but the greatest guys. Unfortunately a lot of gremlins made it so that their robots weren't able to perform up to what they should be.

[Justin]

Okay. Yeah, I watched it. It was really awesome. It's really cool. Hearing you say it from like the builder side and what it was like actually going through all of those fights. I am not surprised that the Australian guys were the people there. That does not surprise me at all. Even the New Zealand like they're just known for being nice people. So.

[JustCuz Robotics Announcer]

Just cause Robotics brings you the latest and greatest in beetle weight drive motor technology. The Blitz Lite mini sized for mighty drive at under 45 grams, these are the lightest and smallest 6 millimeter shaft drive motors on the market. Our blitz light light gear motor includes a fully custom 20mm all steel gearbox mated to a customized 1604 brushless motor in either 2850 or 3800kV options. The 29.1gearbox has a super durable chromoly steel 6mm output shaft and M3 threaded face mounting. The Blitz Lite can deliver the same peak torque as our awesome dartbox dragon brushed motors, but are 37% shorter and 25% lighter weight from Brushless Power make your bot a bit lighter with the Blitz Lite available [e-mail] that's just C U Z robotics.com.

[Justin]

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 Havocrundown.com again. That's Havocrund.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 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.

[Corey Nason]

Out.

[Justin]

So that was the New Zealand event. So before we get any further into that, because we do have five in Focus questions and mailbag questions about New Zealand and the stuff there as well. So before we go any further into that, let us swap over to the five in Focus. So we have any long time listeners will know that each of us has a question to ask and we're going to ask it and then Corey's going to answer it. And I kind of sorted up the order this time. So Tony, you are going first.

[Tony Baker]

I actually found it shocking that she'd never been out of the country with the beginning of the interviews. Now mine actually makes even more sense. Now that you've gone to New Zealand to compete, have you ever thought to going to Brazil to compete in their third?

[Corey Nason]

Absolutely. So I've been very timid to fight outside of the United States because I've always felt like my robot, they couldn't stack up because I mean, Brazil, the United Kingdom, all the countries outside that have robots, they're all amazing. And I was like, I don't know if my robot can hang. And kind of this past year leading into this year, I felt very confident that I'm finally Getting the. The robot dialed in. I've. The robot Robocore Experience, I know is Brazil's one of the. It's their largest event and I would absolutely love to go compete down there. And talking to the Brazilians, Felipe Duarte, I want to say he was either the captain or he was one of the. I don't know his exact title, but he was saying that evidently. Synthesis. Not to blow my ego up, but I guess synthesis is relatively big name down there because they don't have things like synthesis down there. They have a lot of smaller drums and so big, huge robot is not the norm. So I would absolutely love to go down there and kind of show you. Show them what a big diameter vert can do. They have steel floors, so I would love that.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Tony Baker]

And the Robocop Experience is a massive event. It's like multiple days. They have everything from sumo wrestling, the BA hockey and soccer and everything else. It's a huge, huge event.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah.

[Justin]

One day. Yeah, that's. That's really cool. Yeah. I believe it wasn't Philip. He's one of the warriors, isn't he? He is one of the ones we have that we had on.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, he's one of the warriors, but now he's part of Oak Robotics, OG Robotics. One of their robots that they're really known for is Buglele, which is a 60 pound, two wheel drive, larger diameter bar spinner, a vert spinner. But yeah, even the Brazilians, like, and the New Zealanders, they were all so friendly. Like, after the event, we all went out, had like the best lunch you could imagine and just broke bread with everyone.

[Justin]

That's awesome. I love it.

[Ryan Hunter]

That's awesome.

[Justin]

Ryan, why don't you go?

[Ryan Hunter]

All right, so you are first returning builder. So since the last time that we had you on the podcast, you have been able to fight in every weight class and have continued to become one of the best builders in the sport. What keeps you going and improving your robots?

[Corey Nason]

Well, I gotta stop you there. First off, this show is amazing. From what you started to what you are now is absolutely amazing. The growth is insane. You guys have done a phenomenal job and thank you very much for giving us nerds a platform to be able to talk about our toys.

[Justin]

Well, you're one of our favorite people.

[Ryan Hunter]

That's why as soon as you were going down to Brazil, I was like, we got Corian again.

[Tony Baker]

We got to get Cory on New Zealand.

[Ryan Hunter]

New Zealand, you know?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, I don't like that title of like the best builder or anything. Like that because, I mean, there are so many great builders. I'd say efficient. I'm an efficient builder because over the years you learn kind of what, what works and then what strategies of building your design allow you to get the design done a lot faster than focusing on a lot of the smaller details that kind of hold you up. What drives me to come back is setting the small goals. Like, for example, did something not work the last event? Let's fix it. Did it work the next event? That's amazing. Having the robot be able to cruise in the cage. It's just. It feels like you're driving a race car. And kind of like, Will Bales, he's a really fast driver. I. I love that style in driving. Like when I was in New Zealand, driving on the steel floors, the amount of traction, if at any moment I wanted to kick the back end out and start drifting, I was fully able. And just it, like I said, it felt like a race car with a chainsaw on the top of it.

[Justin]

Corey, you're about to start the NHL. Please get a steel floors foundation or not foundation. You know, what is it like the, the get.

[Ryan Hunter]

Get a.

[Justin]

What is it called? You have a bunch of people sign a petition, a petition signed by all the builders. Please give us steel floors.

[Corey Nason]

Like just, just us builders that have never driven our steel floors. Like, seeing jump rope. Like, jump rope is the fastest robot I have ever physically seen. I think it could stand toe to toe with Red Storm and Kevin Walchesky. It is just it drive. It has four of the zombies. So it's very, very zippy. And like just seeing it corral like hail fly across the arena. Like the arena wasn't big enough to contain jump rope. That's how vast it was. But I would say explore. I mean, I've designed almost. I've designed all different types of robots. I've designed horizontals, control bots. I've designed shufflers, vertical spinners. I think what brings me back in every single time is I love vertical spinners. When you physically hit something and you just see it flying through the air, it just gives you that. This is serious right now. This is amazing. Like when I fought Jubaloo in Brazil and New Zealand, I. I just had the right approach and the right angle and literally as soon as I hit him, he hit the ceiling and then just ricocheted off the wall. And it just took the. The power of the. What these 30 pounders have and just amplified it. But in general, it's like there's very few sports where you can be any shape that you want and be able to fight in combat. Like, I don't have to go to the gym to work out. I'm fine.

[Ryan Hunter]

You just have to carry, like, 200 pounds of robots around.

[Tony Baker]

Robotics and curling, that's.

[Justin]

That's the men's sport.

[Corey Nason]

Exactly.

[Justin]

Well, curling takes a certain amount of physical. Because I. I can go into curling because I've really gotten into curling. But curling takes a certain physical thing. If you watch, like, the people actually having to throw the stones to be able to get into that position and stuff. Like, it takes a lot of discipline and a lot of training to do that. But, yeah, I'm not gonna go into curling.

[Corey Nason]

And then another thing, too, is combat robotics. I don't know of any other sports that really. You do more passive learning than anything. Like, a lot of the visitors that came at Robot Rampage were, like, looking at the robots and asking questions, and it allowed us to nerd out on these robots, and it allowed us to say, if you were to design one, how would you design it? What direction would you take? Are any of these designs that something that you would like? Or is there a different direction that you would. You would approach it? And we had at all ages from, say, I don't know, 10 years old, all the way up to people in their 70s and 80s that were retired taking a Sunday drive. It's just. It's for everyone. This community is for everyone. And I think that's one of the most heartfelt things about it. It's kind of what keeps bringing me back anyways. And it's just the camaraderie. Like, with friends outside, I was helping the Australians get their robots ready. We go inside, smash each other's toys, and then. Okay, how can I help you fix your robot that I just destroyed? I don't know many other sports that actually have something like that. And that's what kind of keeps. It keeps me coming back. And, I mean, we're the nerds, all of us. We are the superstars. We are the quarterbacks that we watch from the stands. We are the. The. The elites, quote, unquote. I mean, it's just. It's just fun. And if you're not having fun, why do it?

[Justin]

Yep. Yeah, I love that.

[Thomas Carroll]

Also, if you want to hear the curling rant, just post something in the. In the mailbag channel.

[Justin]

Go to the Discord. I'll. I'll open a. Open a channel there.

[Corey Nason]

There.

[Justin]

We actually have one in Bridgeport. There's a curling center in Bridgeport, right where the beardsley Zoo is.

[Tony Baker]

We have one in Hartford, too, up in West Hartford.

[Justin]

Yeah. Very cool. So my question for you, Corey, is after traveling halfway around the world to compete in New Zealand, what was one moment from that trip, either in the arena or outside, that really stuck with you?

[Corey Nason]

What moment stuck with me? I thought the great. One of the greatest things was being able to experience the culture halfway around the world. Because a lot of things that we do over here in America, they don't do. They do a lot of different things, like seeing the method of construction, a lot of the Australians and the New Zealanders, a lot of other welded frames. Or the nice part is China's like, right there. So they can utilize a lot of the Chinese manufacturing to get aluminum machine parts done a lot easier than, say, Austin. It might take a little bit longer, but. And then the Brazilians heavy in their machining parts as well, too. And then you get the Americans that are exploring with TPUs and. And UHMWs or.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah.

[Justin]

All the plastics. Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

Like the Australians like to call it umpy.

[Justin]

Really?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, they call it umpy.

[Justin]

That's awesome.

[Corey Nason]

But it was. It's really cool just seeing the different cultures and everyone's kind of learning off of one another, like how, sir. How certain things that the New Zealanders are doing, I'm definitely going to put into my robots and how the, like, the Brazilians are doing it. I noticed a lot of the Australians were asking about the tangential drive, so I think that might be something that's spreading over there. Just how each corner of the world kind of does stuff a little differently, but now it's expanding, so now there's a lot more accessibility to different methods of creating things. And just one of the nicest things about the food and the coffee there. I'm a big eater and drinker. Everything tastes so different. Like, I feel like over here, there's a lot of preservatives in the. In the food and in the drinks. And like, you go get a cup of coffee, you have to add a lot of different flavors, sugars and creams. You walk in and you get a flat white espresso with some frothed milk. You don't have to add anything. You just drink it as is and it's. It's delicious every time. You don't have to add a lot of toppings onto your hamburger. Just everything just has a different taste and.

[Justin]

Yeah, well, it's. It's also America as far as the coffee is concerned. We import almost all of our coffee from like three countries within the coffee belt, where there's like, I think like, what is like almost 50. There's, there's a ton of countries that grow coffee berries within the coffee belt.

[Ryan Hunter]

What you really need to do is you need to become a really big coffee nerd and you need to become friends with a local roaster and you need to spend way too much money on coffee because you get addicted to coffee from a single roaster, like a single farm that is hand roasted by them and imported by them. And then you're like, oh, coffee is good. Coffee has notes. Starbucks is disgusting.

[Justin]

Well, Starbucks tastes burnt. But we can get into. Yeah, that's a different thing.

[Ryan Hunter]

I love, I love my coffee. I love my. We just got a brand new Brazil coffee and that is the. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Corey Nason]

We just got a French press recently and. Yeah, we make everything. We all the time. We use the French press.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yep. Do you.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Ryan Hunter]

Do you gotta. You gotta. You gotta grind everything that day and everything too. Oh, yeah. We can't go out of coffee.

[Corey Nason]

We're going long.

[Justin]

This is gonna be Julian's pizza rant all over again. Thomas, why don't you ask your secret question?

[Thomas Carroll]

Yeah, my secret question is a bit related not to coffee, but of all the food you got there, what was your favorite?

[Corey Nason]

I didn't eat anything exotic, honestly.

[Thomas Carroll]

No. No, but just like, what was your favorite?

[Corey Nason]

I don't, I don't actually know. I had a delicious hamburger one day. We ate a lot of robot rampage. I don't even remember the place's name. It was two minutes. The Robot Jack and all the robot rampage crew were so kind.

[Thomas Carroll]

They.

[Corey Nason]

Anytime we wanted food, they were just giving it to us. Giving it to us. So we ate a lot of flatbread pizzas, a lot of hot dogs, a lot of chicken nuggets.

[Justin]

Nice. So that's awesome. When you got caught, what was your favorite coffee? Like, what do they have like local coffee shops there?

[Corey Nason]

They do. The very frequently ordered one is called a flat white. You can get it here. It's espresso with froth.

[Justin]

Oh, yeah, yeah. You can get anywhere.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, they have everything there. I was kind of getting. So anytime like Connor of Team New Zealand would go to get a coffee, hey, Corey, we're going to get a coffee. So I kind of tag along. They're not very big. They don't have like a list of like 100 different flavors. It's kind of. You have like a mocha, vanilla, caramel, flat white cappuccino. Very simple, but all very tasty. Okay. Very cool.

[Justin]

And Finally, I have Ashley's question. She wanted to ask this because she gets asked this all the time and she wanted to be able to ask us that. She's not here in person. So when's the wedding and how's the planning going? Have you made any good progress?

[Corey Nason]

The wedding is October 16th of this year. We have the venue, we kind of have the photographer, dj, and we're going to trial a couple different food vendors to see which one we like the best and kind of go from there. But, yeah, it's coming along. It's roughly seven months away. So right around the corner. It'll be here before I know it.

[Tony Baker]

You don't have a big countdown in your house, like with the tick by second?

[Corey Nason]

I don't because I know my fiance. She would start panicking and freaking out and getting stressed out if she actually saw that.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's. That's not good for the mental health to have that just hanging there.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah.

[Justin]

So it sounds like you're pretty far along. That's pretty far along in the planning. That's not bad at all. So we are done with the five in Focus. We have a special little nugget for anyone listening that Tony is going to go over now and tell everyone how it works before we get into the listener mailbag. So take it away, Tony.

[Tony Baker]

All right, so Corey has been kind enough to give away a piece of synthesis 30 that competed at Robot Rampage. So what piece is it, Cory?

[Corey Nason]

It is the front end armor that fought against Toro Feather. Well, fought against all six matches, but it's scuffed up from Toro Feather. So you'll have a nice piece to really remember Team usa.

[Tony Baker]

And it's going to be signed by you, correct?

[Corey Nason]

Yes.

[Tony Baker]

Awesome. So we're going to do a little bit of a contest, and to win this, you actually have to earn the most points. So we know how you guys like a competition.

[Ryan Hunter]

So we're speaking to you.

[Tony Baker]

Charlie, there's three key words you're going to need to find for this. The first one, I'm going to give you to you right now. The first keyword is kiwi.

[Justin]

Okay.

[Tony Baker]

Based with Corey going to New Zealand, the first word is Kiwi. Second one, you're gonna have to go to our Facebook page and look for a post that Justin will post up there that'll have a clue in it. We would love for you to share that post out as well. And the third one, we're gonna have a little YouTube short on our YouTube page that will have the third word into it. You're gonna go take those three words, go back to our Facebook page. I have a news event up there. Put the three words in and you'll see a link that you need to click. Click on that link and it'll enter you in the contest. That'll give you one point. However, every single person that clicks on your referral link on that page that comes to our site and registers will get you another point. So the key is getting as many people in the combat robotics world that you can think of to sign up for our website and you will win the prize.

[Justin]

That's awesome. Very excited for that. We will have that stuff up within the next couple of days so everyone can start the hunt. So now that we've done that, we are going to move over to our last segment, which of course is us going and looking at that voicemail machine that we have and checking what's in the listener mailbag. You've reached the voicemail of the Havok rundown.

[Corey Nason]

Please leave your message after the tone.

[Justin]

Okay, Corey, So we have 11 up here and we have quite a few of them from the pandas because you told them to come and ask questions. So we kind of have like a panda corner at the end though we have some other pandas in between, I believe.

[Tony Baker]

Corey. I have one first. Julian, let's go through these quick rapid fire listener questions.

[Corey Nason]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[Justin]

Okay, so Brian from Team Crafty Cat Combat says you come up all the time in my people you may know on Facebook. Which I say to Brian, send a friend request. Why is he coming up in the people you may know Send a friend request. He says it's a picture of you holding a cake in what looks like a medical profession of some kind. Is that what you do on the outside? I always like hearing about how non engineer tech people make a leap from fan to builder. What was it that drew you to Comet Robotics scene? I think you talked about a little bit about what your professional was the first time we had you on. But why don't you just answer that about what you do in the day to day.

[Corey Nason]

So I'm a nurse. I've been a nurse for about 13 years now. As soon as everyone heard I was going to New Zealand, they all wanted to wish me the best of luck. I was drawn to BattleBots back in 1999 and it's kind of a nice separation of controlled structured nursing versus absolute chaos of combat robotics.

[Justin]

Okay, very cool.

[Ryan Hunter]

Damn, that was quick. That was good and cool.

[Tony Baker]

Nice.

[Corey Nason]

Ding, ding.

[Ryan Hunter]

That was excellent.

[Justin]

Our good friend Luke says Corey Tell us more about New Zealand. Did you check out Hobbiton, the deer falls?

[Tony Baker]

You call yourself a nerd?

[Justin]

I am not a Lord of the Rings nerd. And I will, I will say that proudly. I am not a Lord of the Rings nerd. That is not my part of the nerd tone. Hobbiton deer farms or have fun outside of the competition.

[Corey Nason]

On the last day, when we heard the flights were delayed for 24 hours, we explored the different beaches and got to see some of the non city aspects. But for the competition, we were around all the competitors and everyone wanted to make sure their robots were top shape. So unfortunately, outside of going to a little hobby shop to play with little RC crawlers, we did not explore. But I wanted to make sure synthesis was ready for the competition.

[Justin]

Makes sense. Dan says, hey, Corey, did you see any cool design decisions in the other countries bots that you'd like to see people try stateside?

[Corey Nason]

Absolutely. In Nader, it needs to be an American bot or Hayden needs to bring it over here. We need more hammer saws, treads and turrets.

[Justin]

Hammer saw. Okay. I mean, we do see that, that meta kind of in the three pound, how many different hammer saws did we see at this last event? In the three pounds there was like the Wall Usagi Sting Operation Coal. Yeah, it is in the three pounds at least. It is becoming a thing. It is becoming something that a lot of people are doing.

[Ryan Hunter]

All I want to do is fight my beetle against overhead saws and somehow all I get is undercutter.

[Justin]

So. Julian Papazian, the evil Julian, says, Corey, did it feel like you were upside down while you were in New Zealand? And also, what's one piece of advice you would give an aspiring builder who's trying to break into the bigger weight classes?

[Corey Nason]

It actually didn't feel upside down. And I was very disappointed to find out the water does not spin the opposite direction when you flush the toilet. It. It goes straight down. It doesn't spin. Someone that wants to go into the larger weight classes, I have a couple of people that constantly reach out, like, how's my 30 pound design? Design it in a smaller weight class. That doesn't hurt your wallet when you know it's going to get destroyed. Because the 30s that even the 12s are just so vicious you're going to put it in, it's probably going to get blown up. The very first match that it has. Try to really get a design that you like that you want to bring up to the larger classes in a smaller class and just Be prepared. I mean these robots are so vicious nowadays.

[Justin]

Yeah, that makes absolute sense. Tim from Chubby Unicorn says, Corey, you have bots in every weight class. Sometimes multiple active bots in a single class. How do you decide where to prioritize which bot and when?

[Corey Nason]

What's the most fun robot? That's always number one.

[Ryan Hunter]

What will.

[Corey Nason]

What will bring me the most joy and synthesis is currently it. Right now I, I'm focusing more on not spreading myself so thin to where trying to bring multiple robots to every single event. It's starting to really take a toll on me and I'm starting to not have as much fun. So I'm dialing it back to focusing on making one robot as good as it can for one event. So whatever robots the most fun is coming with me to the next event.

[Justin]

Okay, what, what are you feeling? When's the next event you're coming to and what are your thoughts right now? Or do you have one registered?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, April, I have, I have a my 30 synthesis and then the next one's gonna be June. I have a new beetle called Deimos. And then I have another one. I have another one, a 12 pounder. I'm very excited about this one. I'm not gonna give any spoilers for this one, but it's be gonna called Pyre Storm.

[Justin]

Pyre Storm. Okay, nice.

[Corey Nason]

P Y R E Storm.

[Justin]

Will you give spoilers about the three pound?

[Corey Nason]

Yeah. You know what Elytra is?

[Justin]

Yes.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

So I took the things I liked about Elytra and I made it bigger. It's actually bigger than my 12 pounder.

[Tony Baker]

Oh God.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah.

[Justin]

That's crazy.

[Corey Nason]

I want like Zach Knight had said, the three pounder is supposed to be the most fun. There's not big enough weapons in the three pound class. I think this is almost a nine inch disc and it's almost. I think it's about, it's about 18 or 19 inches wide and it's 8s and it's gonna go probably like 36 miles an hour into everything it hits.

[Ryan Hunter]

Oh my God.

[Justin]

Oh, you're a madman, Corey.

[Tony Baker]

Fit that in a 3 pounder.

[Ryan Hunter]

I'm pretty sure Kitty was just 4s the whole time this event and just didn't do the ada. So.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, yeah, I want, I wanted to either destroy things or go down in a blaze of glory.

[Justin]

Yeah. All right, we are going to start off the panda corner with Nick from Crafty Cat Combat's question. He says, Corey would love to hear about how you got got involved with the pandas and some of your favorite moments with the team outside of your bots.

[Corey Nason]

I'll pick two of them. I don't want to drag on. The very first match that I had with the pandas would have been against Ariel with Beetlejuice. It was a. It was the first version of synthesis to not go02. It was just a very fun match, and it showed the real power of being able to remove the receiver out of the robot. Right. Literally, right after that event, I messaged Kevin and Ariel. I'm like, hey, I want to join the pandas. You guys look like you're having a blast. How can I join? And then the other. The other two major matches that I have that. Wait, is it about pandas matches with

[Justin]

pandas matches with pandas matches while you were a panda. Just.

[Tony Baker]

Just your experience with the team outside of your box.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

Fighting emulsifier and knocking them out. Because literally we had almost every panda along the line. There was me, there was Arielle. She was driving a minibot. I had Mike Cross, I had Kevin, I had Ashley was hanging out with us. We had everyone downline and just pulling off the impossible was just amazing. So that was the best moment I shared with the team.

[Justin]

Yeah, that's. That's pretty insane. Okay, so to kick off the pandas, Alex says, hyper. You've had some crazy moments of success in combat robotics. Do you have a favorite?

[Corey Nason]

My absolute favorite was Synthesis versus Booty Brigade. There was no. There was no way I was supposed to win that match. And just after winning, beating and knocking them out, well, technically knocked them out, it didn't go to a knockout, but just everything in me was so sucked and focused into the match. As soon as it was over, I had nothing left. I just dropped to the floor and it was the highlight of my ever loving career.

[Justin]

I think that's still probably one of the most shorts, one of the most watched shorts that NHL has ever put up. It's just that the snapshot of that

[Ryan Hunter]

fight, it is still my favorite robot fight of all time. And I refer people to it when I'm showing people robots and you weren't upstairs for it. But also, all of us at the pit desk were screaming and were freaking out for you. Also at the same time, it was such a good fight. That is. That is like one of the highlights of any NHRL I have ever seen.

[Justin]

When we first started on the pit desk, we had this mentality of we should be neutral, we shouldn't cheer. Like, we shouldn't whatever. And just nowadays it's just like, even this last event, just watching, I was cheering for certain bots. I was yelling like, it's just like, yeah, I know I'm working the desk, but like I have no sway over these fights. There's nothing I can do that's going to sway these fights. So why shouldn't I, you know, cheer on the bots that I like? Yeah, exactly.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, like you said, you're. How you're reacting to a match won't influence how the match is judged. And so have fun.

[Justin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas Carroll]

Cheer for Frank.

[Justin]

Ariel, one of your team captains says, what was your favorite panda on panda fight.

[Corey Nason]

Whoa, Panda on panda fight. I know a big one for us is Beetlejuice versus idk. And that's, that's always a fun one. I honestly, I can't recall any like ones at nhr. Well, Beetlejuice and IDK has happened in a tournament, but that's kind of all I can really recall.

[Justin]

Okay, that's cool. Kevin, your other says Corey, if you can no longer fight 30s, which weight class would you choose to continue robot combat in?

[Corey Nason]

Are we talking about like any weight class or are we talking about like ones that exist still?

[Justin]

I, I would say any. Anyway, class I think is what if you couldn't fight synthesis 30 or there was something preventing you from fighting in the 30 pound, which weight class would you take up the torch and continue fighting in?

[Thomas Carroll]

I think Mantis.

[Corey Nason]

I would know. I'd love to fight 60 pounders. I want to see the power of a 60 pounder, but I mean I think the 30s and the 12s really took away from the joy it had in, in the three pounders. So I mean I'd love to get back into like doing three pounders, but man, the feel, the power that you get from a 30 pounder, it just doesn't, doesn't really translate into a three pounder. Like when you, someone hits, someone hits the ceiling. It just doesn't. It's not the same.

[Tony Baker]

You can make a 200 pound synthesis.

[Corey Nason]

It would be enormous.

[Justin]

Is 6 pound mostly Brazil? Is that like a mostly a Brazilian thing?

[Corey Nason]

Okay, yeah, but I mean, I mean

[Thomas Carroll]

if you make walker.

[Corey Nason]

That's true.

[Justin]

So our registry currently has what, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 different weight classes in it. So yeah, yeah, it's interesting seeing heavyweights

[Corey Nason]

could be cool, but I mean, I just can't justify spending all that money. I mean if I could somehow. So synthesis 30 pounder is a pretty cheap robot to build. If I could somehow translate that into a 250, oh, that'd be awesome. But I don't think that's realistic. And I mean, getting married this year, I can't, Sorry, I can't afford that because I'm building a 250. I don't think that plays well.

[Justin]

That's almost literally word for word the answer that Zach had for me.

[Tony Baker]

He goes, marriage then.

[Justin]

30. Yeah. So Jillian says, which Pandemonium bot do you think is going to win the next dumpster for the team?

[Corey Nason]

I, I'm not going to lie. I've been very, very, very impressed with a lot of the pandas. They've really grown up. Like, Cole is doing so well. Overlord blew me away. It did so, so well. And I'm so proud of them. It's very hard.

[Justin]

Cost him a thumb.

[Corey Nason]

Yeah, I mean, they, they want it what cost though.

[Ryan Hunter]

Yeah, yeah.

[Corey Nason]

Let's see. To make it quick, if I had to pick per classes, Battle Tots is definitely going to qualify or Dumpster someday, but I definitely see it soon. Cole is definitely going to dumpster. And I can see maybe Emperor will, but I don't know. We'll see. Synthesis 30 sent us a starting for April.

[Tony Baker]

There you go.

[Justin]

I can see that. Yeah.

[Thomas Carroll]

60.

[Corey Nason]

Yes.

[Justin]

Lynden has the last question. And for anyone, I don't know if last event influenced this question or not. For anyone that doesn't know, Lyndon injured himself while working on the robot and injured his thumb, which is, is just, you know, just what happened while he was working on the robot. There's a lot more to that story, but I'm not going to tell it. So he says, corey, if you had to lose an eye or an arm, which would it be? And how would you adapt your robot

[Corey Nason]

strategy to match in real life, non combat robotics? I'd probably do an eye because being a nurse, my hands are very vital. I mean, doing general tasks, you can get away with one eye, but doing general tasks with one arm is tough. But as far as combat, I would rather two eyes and one arm because I only really drive Synthesis 30 or any of them with one hand. I literally have my weapon on a switch. Turn it on, and then I just drive. So it never requires both hands and having both eyes for depth perception. To be able to perfectly aim your robot at your opponent is pretty vital.

[Thomas Carroll]

So not only that, but chubby unicorn. Chubby Unicode, DDR.

[Justin]

Yeah.

[Corey Nason]

So I mean, so in, in life, one eye is okay. In combat, one arm is okay.

[Justin]

Interesting answer. Okay, very cool. Well, that is all we got. So that's going to wrap up this episode of the HAVOC rundown. Huge thanks again to Corey for joining us and sharing this experience, competing at the Robot Rampage World cup in New Zealand. So it's exciting to see, you know, all around the world, builders and different backgrounds in different places. And we're always trying to take the sport to a global stage and bring those stories to, you know, the place that we can to share them. So thank you again, Corey for being on a second time. We love having you on. You're one of our favorite builders and favorite people.

[Ryan Hunter]

Sensei. Sensei. Corey.

[Justin]

Well, no, I, I mean my, my three pounder right now would not exist without you. Like I tell people all the time, like you were the one that helped me build the, the hub that it has currently and you know, just the general design of it. So, you know, we appreciate you.

[Corey Nason]

Thank you.

[Justin]

So cover about in a thumb war. Comfort Robotics is growing all over the world. Events like this just show how international the sport has become. If you want to follow the show, catch past episodes, stay up to date on upcoming events or get involved in the Havoc Rundown Fantasy League, head over to havocrundown.com that is our new website, havocrundown.com where you are also going to be able to do the competition that Tony mentioned earlier. Thanks for listening and always. We'll see you in the pit. Everyone's say goodbye to our listeners.

[Tony Baker]

Bye bro.

[Ryan Hunter]

Goodbye,

[Corey Nason]

Sa. Sam.