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A
Your intro song is like a minute long. We gotta trim that down to like a tight five and then just get in there.
B
Welcome back to the Havoc Rundown. I'm your host, Justin, and tonight we're getting ready for the next stop in the 2026 NHL season as we head into the April event. Joining us tonight is a builder who's been making a name for himself not just through performance in the arena, but through personality and presence outside of it as well. If you've been following nhrl, you're definitely seeing actual size. A three pound bot that combines clean engineering, smart control, and really refined approach to how these fights are won. It's the kind of robot that doesn't just rely on power, but on precision position. Precision position and consistency. But beyond the bot itself, our guest has also built a following in the community for his roast style videos, breaking down fights, bots and moments in combat robotics with mix of humor and insight. So we got much watched content for a lot of fans and builders alike. We're joined tonight by Max Morningstar. How are you, Max?
A
I'm doing great, thanks for having me.
B
We are very excited to have you on. You are a builder, driver and one of the more unique voices in the current combat robotics scene. So we're very excited to talk to you tonight. We're going to talk about his journey into the sport, the design philosophy behind his bots, his content creation, and what he's looking to accomplish heading into this next NHL event. So welcome to the show. But I am not alone. Joining me tonight is also the game master, Ryan Hunter.
C
Well, hello there.
B
We have the community connection, Ashley Beckman.
D
I'm so ready for this.
B
The chaos Master himself, Thomas Carroll.
E
You know, the Morningstar podcast has a good ring to it.
B
We're not doing the morning. You could do the Morningstar podcast. That's all you, Thomas.
C
Max Morningstar in the morning.
A
Oh, my God. Wake up, Wake up podcast. Posted it only at 5am before event.
E
It's only on for an hour.
C
I'm off. Let's go.
D
I'm in for that. I need something to do in the mornings.
B
And of course our webmaster, Tony Baker is here.
F
What else could I get involved in?
B
Okay, before we dive into the April event and everything Max has been working on, we always take our quick detour into that side of the podcast room that we reserved specifically for Ryan. So it is time for Ryan's Game corner.
C
Tonight we are playing a brand new game that came inspired by game idea Justin gave me. We are going to play Categorize it.
D
Great.
C
I have groupings of four robots that all have something in common. But I want from all of you is to tell me what is the category that you could put them all into. This is a buzz in game. So everyone come up with a unique buzz sound.
D
Damn it, where's my cowbell?
B
I'll take ding.
C
Okay, Max, I'll do the.
A
The extremely loud incorrect buzzer.
C
Okay.
D
I usually just scream, so good luck.
C
Okay. All right, so if. If everyone buzzes and all answers are wrong, then House gets a point.
E
Nothing.
G
Yes.
D
He's going to tell us we're all wrong just so he can get a point.
B
Well, I would hope that he has them written down, so.
C
Oh, they're all written down over here. So I actually have a. I actually have a master document that has literally every game since the first game that I have built all built onto it. It's just one big list right now. All right, so an example of. Of this. What I'm looking for would be the bots. Blue Cheese, Piece of Cake, Wasabi and Doom Croissant. Are all food names.
A
Food names. Right.
C
Yes. Got it. Okay, so does everybody understand the game?
A
Yeah, I guess so.
C
Okay.
D
Can't wait for you to win the list.
C
Your first round of robots are Repeater. Stop hitting yourself. Minen and Plusle. And Caulk.
D
Mining and Plusle.
E
Mining and plusle.
B
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
A
Rules where we have to wait for you to finish the question before we buzz.
D
Probably just yell at it.
C
I would like you to finish for the audio listeners. It worked. It works best if I finish reading them all, but I believe, Max, you did get the first actual buzzing. So what is it?
A
They're all. All multi bots.
C
They are all multiboss? Yes. Okay, our second round. Slam plan. Emulsifier. Promhida Pine Victis.
A
Oh, Thomas.
B
Thomas, was that noise.
C
Was that your noise?
E
Yeah.
C
Thomas. Thomas. What is it?
E
Falling off of a cliff. They are all vertical spinners.
A
Oh, that is wrong.
C
Thomas.
B
Sting.
C
I believe Ashley was the second Thomas.
E
Yeah, they are, Thomas.
A
Go ahead, Ashley.
D
They are all Golden Dumpster winners.
B
They are not.
C
I mean, technically, but not what I'm looking for.
E
They're all robots.
D
I wasn't sure.
A
Can I take this one?
D
Yes.
B
Yes, Max.
A
They're all Golden Brett winners.
C
They are all Golden Brett winners. Very good, Mags. Max is two points because I'm fine with it.
E
Yeah, as long as I think this
A
hasn't won a dumpster yet, though. It hasn't.
D
Oh, that's true. You're right.
C
Okay?
E
We're all on the same team here.
D
That's true. It's everybody against Ryan, so it doesn't matter.
C
The next round is Clyde Waddles, Power of Friendship, and Comet.
E
Ashley.
B
I think for Ashley, Please.
C
I think
B
Ashley could do it. It's fine.
C
Okay, Ashley.
D
They're all WPI Bots.
C
They all WPI Bots.
E
Too easy.
C
Watch.
E
The next one's like. They all use M 3.5 screws.
D
He's gonna do that one day.
C
The next one, Shaman Dragon Princess, Titanium White, and Pliohazard. Ashley.
D
They're all flamethrower.
C
They are all flamethrowers. Okay, yeah, maybe I should. Maybe we'll see if we could get harder now. All right.
D
Wait. I was right. I wasn't convinced.
C
Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. You're right. You're completely right. I thought Pliohazard was going to throw you, but yeah. Was in one fight as a firebot. Oh. Okay. The next round is Monkfish, Droopy, Huge, and Bobby. That last one was supposed to be Bobby.
D
Oh, no wonder.
C
Monkfish, Droopy, Huge and Bobby.
F
Ding.
C
Yes.
D
They all have eyes.
C
I knew that you were gonna be good at this game. Okay. Yes. Wait, really? Yes. Yes.
D
Oh, my.
C
They are all robots with eyes. Okay, obviously you guys are really good at this game. Next time we're gonna make it. Have to make it harder. No. All right.
E
They already share the same amount of voltage in their lipos.
C
Magnitude, Pepe, Sylvia, Penguin. Yahoo.
A
Yahoo.
E
That wasn't me dinging. It was just saying yahoo.
D
Colorado.
C
Yeah, they all come from Colorado. I hate making this heart. Okay, well, see, there's a game.
D
She's too manager for Magnitude. If you don't think I know those.
C
I am very well aware. All right, so that was a good, quick game. And you were right.
B
I was finished. That game we still had to. The game that Ryan built that off of was a game that I saw on a short. And basically what it was, was two people were facing each other, and they each had a category of charact. And they each had to say a video game character. And then the other person would say yes or no, whether that character fit into the category they had. And they had to figure out the category the other person had based on the characters that they said yes or no to.
D
Interesting.
A
Okay, that would be fun to do with robots to try and, you know, narrow it down. You know, you're throwing out robots, and so, you know, it's like, okay, I've got monkfish and let's say, Bobby. At this point, I'm still not certain if it's eyes or not until I throw, like, a huge into the middle.
C
Right. I. I just. I thought that would be too hard, but obviously I gotta make that game a little harder next time I use it.
B
Ryan has PTSD for making games too hard and us all getting angry at him for the game being too hard, so he's kind of swung in the opposite direction. He's gotta.
E
He's gonna bring the pendulum back.
C
I swing back and forth every once in a while. That's just how it goes. All right, well, everybody get out of the game corner. Let's go. Let's go to the next. The next part of our interview.
B
Okay, very cool. Well, before we stop off and learn a little bit more about Max, we're going to check in with the current state of NHRL and what is coming for April. I will note that I will not personally be at April, but Ryan will be, and I believe, Ashley, you're not going to be either.
D
Nope.
B
So I guess it's just Thomas.
E
Yeah, I'll be there.
B
Thomas And Max, you're going. You're bringing actual size, right?
A
I sure am.
C
Okay, very cool.
B
So let us. Let us talk about the current state of the fantasy league, and Ryan and Ashley are both members of that, so we can talk about the bots that we are looking forward to coming to NHRL and what we're thinking about as far as, like, winners and who's going to do well and stuff like that. So, Ryan, would you like to take it away and talk about what your current thoughts are of what your roster is going to look like, hopefully.
C
See, I think the very interesting thing is there's not a ton of bots that, like, jump out as, like, number one bots. I mean, I, of course, want, like, Project Liftoff, Anubis, Jackalope, I would love. Jackalope is coming. I. I'm not sure. I think I'm gonna go with, like, Usagi probably as one of my Beatles, too. I. The. It's got. Oh, and Penguins coming from Colorado. The game in the. In the 12s. Battletots is coming back, and I am looking forward to seeing Battletoz again. As far as I know it, they have been working on them very hard, and we have Caldera 12 coming again, too. So twelves are going to be great.
D
No J. Kaufman reference in the 12s there with Maximizer, Mr. Brian Hunter.
B
We're missing our Maximizer mentions every episode.
C
I don't have to maximize. Well, I was looking forward to Battletots.
D
We said that there's a lot of robots that have dog references in them in April. There's like five.
C
Yeah, there's five dog references.
D
Well, I definitely counted at least four. And then I just, you know, added an extra for good measure just in
C
case there's Hot Dog coming. That's fun. And then Dog Dog and then Jump Dog.
D
And then I think there's another one in the threes that I found.
E
Hot Dog.
B
That's crazy. I do like. I do like there's a couple of names up here. I do like. I do like Limewire. That is an awesome. I don't know if that's a bot that's there before.
D
We just aimed ourselves.
A
Yes, it's a throwback. That's a throwback for sure.
B
Mine and Apostle is first round fighting Luna, which is my daughter's name. So that. That is an interesting one there.
D
That is the brand new Beetle from Connor from WPI Beetle.
C
It's under the 12-12-12.
D
Sorry, my bad.
B
Yeah. Oh, okay. That's awesome. Well, that makes you feel really good about it, Connor.
D
I'm excited to see that.
B
I will also mention that we have Aries coming back for. For this one. Corey synthesis 30 that we just talked to about to him last episode. He will be here and Kaza Ain, which we saw. How well I always keep on forgetting his name. How well he was.
C
Josh.
B
Yeah, Josh. How well Josh was able to do with just one of them versus two. So that is.
D
I'd also like to talk about the robot named sri.
E
Is it driven by sri?
A
Yes, it sure is.
D
Yeah, it absolutely is. You know, and I have on good word from SRI that pepperoni is another good robo jacket to look out for this event.
A
So.
B
Okay.
D
Tree all the way. I'm. I'm here for it. I'm Team Sri, definitely.
B
I. I always love new 30s that I've never heard of before because you never know what they're going to turn out to be. Max, I did also want to get your thoughts on. So your first run fight is Twisted Sister. How do you feel about that?
A
I'm pretty excited for it. So this is one of the robots of the Colorado contingent that's coming to this event of which there's a series of robots that have not competed in a couple of years. Twisted Sister is one of them. So definitely looking forward to the matchup. I mean, horizontal's traditionally not the ideal enemy of a big wheel robot, but you know, you're Fighting. We're here to fight the best. And that's exactly what this kind of round one is going to be, is fighting a veteran robot, veteran competitor. So I think it should be a good start to the day.
B
Do you have a special? Because Ryan learned that lesson about big wheels, especially big foam wheels against horizontals the first time he fought his new bot. Do you have any special planning against horizontals? Anything you do differently? Because horizontals are, I mean that is the Achilles heel for any big wheel bot.
A
I would honestly say that these days hammer saws are a little more threatening. But my configuration against Beetles, or I should say my configuration against horizontals is a little bit specialized from what other big wheels do I have a half stanced configuration. So I tilt one side of my chassis and it ends up cocking the other wheel and my weapon slightly. The logic behind that was I saw an interview that Glenn did after losing with Caldera into Sir Slicey back when Sir Slicey made its dumpster run last year. And one of the things that Glenn mentioned was because Sir Slicey's weapons were at an angle, he was really not able to get that like devastating upright splitting shot with Caldera that you're really going for as a horizontal spinner. So I tried this out at MIT's event back in December where I put my spinner at an angle and I did it immediately after losing a fight to flash freeze, which was of course is a very hard hitting WPI horizontal. And I was able to beat Jameson go with silent X. And then I was also able to beat another hub motor horizontal gastly of which Twisted Sister, assuming it hasn't had any major changes, is also a hub motor horizontal spinner. So, you know, in my experience it has worked well. The cant is very slim. It's not a lot, but I'm assuming, I'm hoping that just by offsetting it enough that you're not able to get that clean 90 degree shot is enough to hopefully give me the edge in those weapon to weapon hits with horizontals.
B
That's really interesting. Have you heard of anyone else doing this or is this something that's kind of a Max Morningstar special To date
A
it's a Max Morningstar special. Though of course it descends from the slam plan school of take things out of plane to make it harder for horizontals to hit them. So as with every other big Wheel, you know, all the DNA runs back to the huge team.
B
Right, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Do you have any dream matchups here or any Beetles or any of the weight classes that you're looking forward to seeing.
A
Oh my goodness. I mean, so Sir Slicey is honestly, I think Sir Slicey and Kamino is within my starter group there, Group B. They're a fascinating matchup because both of them have had major impacts on how I build big wheels. Sir Slicey I have not fought directly, but I did fight Sir Spinny with jot back in January 2024, and Evan Bimgee just knocked me around the box for a solid three minutes. And then Kamino I fought also with jot back in, I want to say June 24 actually might have been November 24, but either way, the fight lasted, I'm going to say generously, about 30 seconds. And so in both of those cases, the failure point was the wheels. For the fight with Sir Slicey, I was running UHMW wheels with cleats on them. Sir Slicey stripped the cleats completely off the wheels. For the fight with Kamino, I had two sheets of UHMW that I sandwiched around the cleats, hoping that that would like give the cleats more protection. And it just completely ripped them apart. So that is what led me to the TPU wheels I now use to protect my cleats. So, you know, the design underpinnings of actual size came from losses to these robots. So I'd love to run it back with them and hopefully prove that I've made improvements since then.
B
Very cool. That's how any great innovation happens is from failure, as any great inventor will tell you. So that's awesome that you were able to learn from that. How does your TPU like, how is that configured? The TPU wheels like, is it uhmw and the TPU is like wrapped around it kind of to protect the bottom and give you traction?
A
No, it's pure, pure tpu. And then I have spring steel cleats that I bolt into those wheels and it's a single print that I do. And I've got a particular print file that I like hand aligned where all of the layer lines were going to be for maximum strength. Yeah. And it's. It took me a couple of tries, but this is the wheel that I've been running since November of 2024. No, November of 2025. And they're fantastically durable. They do take damage. I would defy you to find me a big wheel that won't take some damage, but they hold up really well. They keep the cleats protected, which is the main reason why I go with the tpu. So for me, at a certain point, I'm sure I'll redesign them. But right now, I'm not losing fights because of the wheels, so I have other things on.
B
Okay. Makes sense. Thomas, what are you looking forward to? Is there any bots that are. I know you're not in the Fantasy League, but anything you're looking forward to coming in April?
E
Anything? I'm looking forward to coming in April?
B
I don't know. You can always tell. Thomas needs time to think when he repeats the question.
D
Always.
E
The most important thing that I want to see is I want to see a Big Wheel get split in half.
B
Wow.
E
I don't know how many. I don't know how many Big Wheels are going to be at this event, but there is one.
A
Wow.
E
There's one that I know that's gonna be there.
A
I already did it for you once, Thomas. You really want me to run it back? We all seen the footage, all right? We've all seen the fight with Turbofiend, actually.
E
I want to see Turbofiend get split in half.
C
There you go.
A
I would love to make that happen. I was really trying to architect the bracket for the March event so that me and Julian would see each other, but it just didn't come to pass this time around.
E
So what I could do is I could, like, take a little saw and start to, like, pre score all the
A
parts on their bot.
D
It's great.
E
So we just get one good hit, and it just falls apart.
A
You know, it's just. You just got to Velcro them together, and then once they get into the arena, you're good to go.
E
Julian isn't listening to this. Otherwise, he'll be absolutely will listen.
B
Oh, he will. Thomas is just doing the cage side, and Julian finishes the match, and Thomas just hunched over his bot. Julian's like, what are you doing to my room? I'm just cleaning it up. It's okay.
E
Don't worry. Nothing is happening.
B
Ashley, you. You will not be there in April, but you will be. You are part of the Fantasy League, and I know there's quite a couple bots that you hold close to your heart. Who are you thinking? Maybe Fantasy league or. I'm.
D
Honestly, I'm. I am. I. If this comes out before. Before the draft, mark my words, I'm going to blow a fit if someone takes Captain Chaos from me.
B
Okay. Why?
C
Who's.
B
Why? Captain Chaos.
D
Captain Chaos is Nora from our friends at Duckpot driving a vert. Okay, that is the version of sad Octopus. That is Nora's because Cam drove the lifter. So now it's Nora's turn to drive the spinner. So.
B
Okay.
A
I'm all day long.
D
Team Nora.
B
Yeah, no, that. I mean, that. That makes a lot of sense. Nora is such a great driver when it comes to under destruction.
C
Literally.
D
So excited.
E
Yeah, the mom said it's my turn to drive the octopus.
D
Yes, exactly.
B
Is it literally sad octopus or is it a version that they built for her to drive as sad Octopus?
D
It's definitely a different. It's probably just a different colored sad octopus. He did post a photo. I believe in our discord, but yes, I'm very excited and I can't wait.
E
What if it's just happy octopus?
D
Maybe that would be okay.
B
How happy do you think Nora would be if she's the one to dumpster with sad?
E
That would be very funny.
D
I would not want to ride in a car on the way home.
F
No.
B
I would not want to be dad on the way home.
D
No.
C
Do we still not know what sad octopus is a reference for? Do we? I still haven't figured that out.
D
Even with
B
Cam has never told us. We don't know. No. He is always. He's. He just keeps on hinting that it's something that we should know, but we don't.
D
We don't.
E
Nobody knows.
A
Yeah.
E
Only Cam knows. It's a figment of his imagination.
B
Yeah. Yeah. So on top of that, on top of the normal bots that are coming, we also have quite a few XPs this time. I did not notice that. We have about double the amount of XPs that we had in March.
D
I love the names of the XP bots, like Bing Box.
B
Oh, I know. Yeah. The. The XP box are. Are so great. And I just wanted to talk about the XP for a minute because anyone that's listening, we've talked about XP in the past. If you don't know what the XP is and you compete, that's kind of weird because they've talked about it a lot. But the XP is for any brand new builders, brand new drivers to go into a tournament by themselves. And it's so that you don't bring this bot that you spent a whole bunch of money and a whole bunch of time on and you're brand new and then they put you in the cage with Silent Spring. It's to stop that from happening.
E
I mean, that's pretty fun.
C
Multiple times.
B
Yes, it has. It's been an interesting experience sitting at the desk with the xps coming up and seeing some of these brand new Faces having the excitement of, hey, we're doing this, and not having that dread of like, oh, I'm going against, you know, Voxel. That's not a personal thing that I'm pulling out of my own history or anything.
D
Ow.
B
But, yeah, so it's very cool watching them come up. It's very cool seeing these robots and seeing them have the time because Honestly, like, the XPs don't have the same time constraints, so we're able to give them a little bit of leeway for new builders. And it's just really cool. So anyone that is, that's what I'm
D
gonna do when I ever build a robot. Guys.
B
Anyone that's listening has never built and has always turned around and said, hey, I really want to do that. NHRL has the XP system and it's a lot more lenient, it's a lot more relaxed, and it's a really good way to get your feet wet without being destroyed. So, yeah, so, yeah, there's my way
A
through a year's worth. The other way around with, with a deep cut. Yeah, with. With, you know, competition after competition going 02 or like 1 and 2 with a forfeit win. I would have loved to have done the XP bracket back in the day, so I'm really glad that they have it as a, as an opportunity for new builders now.
B
Well, you were just talking about the learning through innovation and learning through failure, and XP kind of lets you do that without, you know, too hard of a failure or too predictable. I don't want to say that because I don't want to. Because I don't want to disparage any of the XPs because some of these bots are awesome. But like, like we said, you, you're brand new builder, you don't know what you're doing. You've never behind the sticks and you go up against James and go, that's kind of like why. So, you know. But yeah, it's really cool. But we have stuff like Bing bong. You're saying the boomstick Red sun, which I believe is a reference to the show, maybe, I don't know, Burning Money, which I think is coming back because I think that was one that we already had. Revelation Fish Hook. Just Mark.
C
I'm going to just enjoy yelling Bing bong.
B
Into the.
C
Very enjoyable.
B
It's so great. I love when bots have people names. It's very cool. It's like when you're, when your dog is just named like, I don't know, like Jim Frank.
E
This, this is a Trend that needs to come back. The original robot that fought depth charging out that viral video, I think it was James. It had a Connecticut license plate on the back of the robot. People need to put license plates on the back of their robots from their home state or a state they like or something. Because that's really funny.
C
That was.
B
Was it the North Carolina college? I believe they were from North Carolina. That was a. That was a specific college. And they had like four, three or four robots. One was James, one was like Greg. They had a bunch of robots that just had people named. It was interesting.
E
Somebody do it. That's great.
B
Okay, so that is April. We're looking forward to that. I will not be there in person, but I will be watching and keeping track of the fantasy league. For anyone that wants to sit on in the fantasy league draft, that is going to be on the 31st, which is the Tuesday before the April event at 9pm if you hop over to the Discord, we will put the invite link and you can come and listen. I think we're going to be streaming it on Twitch or something as well. I don't know. We'll get it. You can watch whichever way. So it's always chaos and it's always fun. Okay, so we're moving from that and we're going to go into our signature segment where we ask our guests some really good deep or not deep questions. So let us move into the five in focus. Okay, cool. So, Max, I don't know if you were listening to the show before, but each of us have a question for you that has to do with robots or your life or your. Your history in the competition or any of the kind of stuff like that. Ashley, I have you going first.
D
Oh, fun. Okay, well, since I am the community girl around here, I was thinking about this the other day and I want to know if there's anyone that you've met at NHRL or any other competition that you feel you have made like, as like a friend for life that maybe you wouldn't have met if it weren't for this sport. Right. So, like a lot of people don't for like, they forget that that's how Zach and I met. Right. Like we met at nhrl. So, like, if not for that, our lives would be totally different. So is there anyone like that that's made an impact on you?
A
Oh, my gosh. There are so many builders that I look for when I get to the pits in terms of folks that I like probably wouldn't have crossed paths with two of Them come to mind. Jonah, who's the driver of Rickroller and Gastly, and Pete Covert, driver of Nightcrawler and Spanky, I think is his three pound robot. Yeah, both of them I met at NHRL. I met Jonah in. Oh, my goodness, sometime in 2023. Rickroller was the. I think at the time it was called the last chance fight before my robot, Deep cut to get into the bracket, and deep cut had brick roller on the ropes for probably a minute. And then one of my wheels, which was just a pla like circle with a rubber band glued onto it, melted on my drive axle, and so it fell right off and disabled my robot. And Jonah was able to take the win. And of course, since then, we have both dramatically improved our driving and competitive abilities. But he was very good natured about it. It was a super fun fight, even though it ended my day. And so the fact that both of us have been able to sort of grow up in the sport together I think has been really amazing. And then on the total opposite end of the spectrum, Pete Covert, who's been doing this, you know, much longer, probably longer than I've been alive, if I'm being honest, which might date me and definitely dates him. But Pete is awesome. And his robots are so well designed. Some of his mechanisms, his drive pods that he has on Nightcrawler and on Spanky are so intricate and so fantastically machined. They really set the bar for me coming up where I was able to look at a robot and go like, whoa. You know, this is what you can do if you have access to good machining tools and if you have the kind of experience to know, hey, it might be useful to just pop off a whole drive pod and put another one on, as opposed to like, you know, trying to fiddle with some mechanism and re solder it in place and all this other, you know, rookie bot nonsense that I was dealing with at the time. So two. Two very different individuals that I almost certainly would not have crossed paths with if not for Combat Robotics.
D
I love that.
C
Yeah.
B
I mean, you see those stories all over the place. This community is amazing. I mean, look no further than where we are right now. We would not have met. I know Ryan and I would not have met Tony, Ashley, or Thomas without the. Without this sport. So I don't know, I feel like
D
maybe Thomas, I might have crossed paths.
B
Yeah.
E
I would have been like, at an amusement park in line.
D
Yeah.
E
I can't leave riding some coaster for the 50th time. And Ashley's like, wait, Didn't I, like, see you just get off this, like, two minutes ago? Yeah.
C
Watch.
A
You were doing good.
B
Which reminds me, Thomas, we got a plan on going to an amusement park together this summer.
E
Well, Six flags New England. April 11th. Opening Day. Actually, no. So I've got. I'm going to Disney this upcoming weekend, and then I'm going to Six Flags New England, and then I'm going to Six Flags New England again. And then let's see how we go
D
when you get to Pennsylvania in July.
E
Oh, yeah. Memorial Day weekend, I'm going to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, California's Great America, Magic Mountain, and Knott's Berry Farm in four days.
B
Oh, my God.
E
So, anyone in California? I'll be there.
B
What does Thomas do with his money?
E
It doesn't cost much. Cause I have a season pass that gets me into, like, 90% of everything.
A
Yeah.
E
And the Disney tickets, they're from when I was one and a half years old. I cut my ear open on the kiddie pool and it started bleeding everywhere. So we went to the hospital and we left, like, two days early. So we still have days on the tickets.
C
What?
A
Yeah, they don't expire. Those are still good.
E
Yeah. So more recently, like the past five, 10 years or something, you have to pay the price difference. But these old tickets, they never expired. They never had any terms. So we have to go to, like, customer service. They, like, scan them on their ancient machine to convert them to a modern ticket type. But I've already got a case number. They said, yeah, come to this place so we can do all this stuff. So it's gonna be great.
B
That's insane.
C
Thomas, this is Thomas.
D
Laura. I didn't know I was getting tonight, and I love it.
E
There's always Thomas.
D
It doesn't end so good.
B
You know what, we usually save you for the middle, but, Thomas, why don't you do your secret question right now?
E
I hope nobody else was going to ask this one, but, Max, can you roast the podcast team?
A
Oh, my gosh. I knew this was coming. All right, we can. Well, I'll go member by member, and then I've got some notes for the overall podcast. Perfect.
B
Okay.
C
Okay.
A
So we're going to start with Ryan and Justin. I've been competing at NHRL since 2023, and if you guys didn't have nameplates on, I would not be able to tell which of you was which.
B
Yeah, that's fair.
A
Also, when I'm like, when it's sort of mid morning at an NHL event and I'm Stressed. What I'll do is I'll have one of my like hit crew members, usually whichever one is the newest, go over to you guys and ask if the three pound bracket is finalized or not, just so I can get here. You get more and more irate over the, over the intercom system and it calms me down. It has a nice relaxing feeling.
C
You mean, you mean when I'm super hostile? Halfway through the afternoon, I'm tired and I'm like, attention builders, the bracket is not ready.
A
It's always funny because I'll just stop asking. I'll make a comment, I'll make a comment to one of my picture members. I'm like, hey, just, just run over and ask him if the bracket is finalized or not. And without fail, 20 seconds later, the intercom comes in. Oh, it's fantastic.
C
Okay, so now in April, it's it. The call is going to be Max, leave me alone.
A
Tony, Tony, we'll jump to you next. Tony, you've built the most complex like high tech website in combat robotics right now and nobody knows that you're the one behind it. At best, they're going to link it to the podcast. You are. I don't even know if this is a roast. Maybe this is like a brilliant, you know, masked vigilante programmer moment. But like, you know, nobody, your name would never come up if somebody was like, who crafted that website. It's, you know, so burn if you were trying to get the publicity or you know, kudos if you are trying to remain incognitated. Know Thomas, you made one robot and it was so bad they had to make a rule so that you couldn't bring it back.
B
So interesting facts back. Well, I don't know if you were about to say this Tony, but we, we started Havoc TV and we just recorded 26 fights the other night where we were posting and talking. And that's one of the fights that we covered was Thomas's one fight.
E
Well, Max, I will have you know, not only did I make one robot so bad that they had to make a rule against it, my second robot was also so bad that a bird pushed me into a hole and I fell. I wasn't even looking at the cage during this match. It was so bad. So wait, that doesn't help me at all.
A
All this being said, all this being said, I do expect to see you back in the cage when they re legalize airbags in 2028 once the prohibition is up.
F
But so 2027 airbag, 2028. Got it.
B
Yep. That's right.
A
That's right. And then Ashley, again, I don't know if this is a burn on you or a burn on me. I'm going to be honest. For like the first year and a half that I knew you, I thought that you were Zach's mother. That's hilarious. Took way longer than it should have for me to be like, oh, there. Yeah, no, that's. That's not that relationship at all.
C
It doesn't help. If you've ever been around and we've gone, ashley, please go yell at Zach. Just go yell at him. Tell him to be ready.
D
I will say for the first like two years of us dating, I tried to not like, let anybody know that we were dating because his ego was a little bit too much for my loving personality and it needed to be checked down a little bit. So that's fair for sure.
A
All right, and then to close us out here, just to roast the pot in general, first of all, your intro song is like a minute long. We gotta trim that down to like a tight five. And then just get in there because I've, I've, you know, in our TikTok generations time span here, that's an eternity. People have already clicked away by that point. And then last but not least, you guys have five or six with a guest people on, and you're still getting beaten out in viewership by Jake and Brandon Bennett Young over with their podcast. So you gotta step it up. Either that or add more commentators, I guess. Maybe if you get it to 8, you'll finally be able to outpace them and roast them.
F
They've got that built in audience still.
B
Yeah, I was gonna say they got
E
people that forgot to unsubscribe from the last hosts and they're just like, oh, yeah, what's this now? This. Let it go on the background.
B
Yeah, so. So for one of them, they have the built in that. I'll give you one of those and then the other one. Noted. I can trim the intro. The intro is long. I have literally ends at the same exact time every single time. I have a, A thing in audacity of when the intro ends and I come in and it's 45 seconds.
C
So this long.
B
I can, Yeah, I could, I could, I could trim it down. I will note how long that. That's how long behind the bots original intro was with. With the whole like song. Yeah. And then hearing like Luke and them say so like that whole thing was that long. So. But I. Yeah, okay.
A
You know, one of my.
C
For this episode, and then no one
B
will know what you're. For this episode. Literally, I am making a note. It's going to be five seconds for this episode. I know.
F
You know what it is?
A
We should a B test it. You should just trim it for this episode, leave it long for the rest of the season, and then we'll do a viewer count comparison and see if it had any effect. And if not, I will totally eat crow and take it back. Yeah, and then I'm going to just. I'm going to have them bot this one up to, like 20,000 views. No.
B
You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do the intro, and it's gonna start the first couple seconds, and then I'm gonna just put your roast of the intro song into it and then just end the intro.
D
There you go.
C
Perfect. There you go.
A
Perfect.
B
Okay, so that was Thomas's. Ryan, why don't you go next?
C
All right, Max, what inspired you to start making your video content and what kept you going to put out an almost hour plus documentary on the growth of actual size?
A
Oh, my goodness. We've got some great inspiration in the community for good video content. Just talking about him. But Jake and the videos that Jake put out, I will still go back and watch his competition recaps and some of his maximizer build vlogs, Even though they're a couple of years out of date, it's so cool to watch that process and watch that robot evolve. And similarly, I think that there's a lot of storytelling in the evolution of a robot that you don't get to see. Obviously, people iterate and they come back and you might be able to visually tell that certain things are different on a robot. But the nuance of like, oh, this specific failure mode in this fight led to me doing this. And then the next match, it suddenly worked better, or actually it worked way worse. And I, you know, needed to pivot yet again, finding how people came to those conclusions and made those changes so that their bot looks the way it does today. I love that. I love sort of learning that story from others. And so that was what inspired me to share that story with everybody else. I also did not intend for that to be an hour plus video. Originally, I was going to do a recap of just December, and then I think my next fight after that was in March of 2025. And then I was like, ah, but I'll wait until June. And then I, you know, competed in June. And then I was like, ah, but I'm about To compete in September. It's gonna. I'll just wait until after that. And then suddenly it was December and I had a year's worth of footage that I had to go through. So the script emerged really early and then just kept getting longer and longer and longer until finally I pulled the trigger on it.
C
It's an excellent video. It's one of my favorite videos of this year of Combo Robotics stuff. It was really good.
A
I'm glad. And I got an unexpected bonus recently, so I will be getting a better lav mic. That should improve the audio quality, which I would say is probably the weakest point of the whole video. So I promise the next one will sound easier on the ears.
C
You have a very good radio voice, though.
B
You do, yeah.
A
Appreciate that.
C
Yeah, it reminds me. Your voice reminds me of. I can't remember what the YouTuber's name is, but you just made his own movie and put it out.
A
Oh, markiplier.
C
Yeah, your voice has a very Markiplier.
E
He's.
A
He's. It's like we're in that sort of middle low octave, I think, which. Which definitely helps it.
C
Yeah.
A
Cool.
B
Tony.
F
Okay, so you kind of partially answered the question, but I'm actually going to tie this into the stuff that we're doing on our site in our YouTube page as well. But you've got to fall in with some of your videos. And we're trying to start getting the YouTube page and our YouTube and social media stuff set up. And we're doing our bot of the day now. So every single day we're doing a little short with our bots. And it was funny you mentioned the intro because at the first one, I put the intro at the beginning. I'm like, no, don't do that. Put it. So I put it at the end of the thing now. So it's like right into the fight things. And we're doing HAVOC tv, which is kind of like a roast of old fights. It's in the Mystery Science Theater vein that we're going to be releasing weekly starting. Well, we put one out last week, but this will be our first real episode this week. What other suggestions or tips can you give us that can help enhance our YouTube and our social presence?
A
Oh, my gosh. I would say that having visual components is definitely helpful. So Havok TV already starting to get into that element there. The more media savvy amongst us, of which I do not count myself, will tell you that you are. And NHRL is a great example of somebody trying to do this a Great way to draw a lot of attention is with the shorter online, you know, reels. And then you use that to sort of segue people into the more long form content. So something that I thought about doing but didn't actually pull the trigger on was people will take a, you know, 30 minute build video of them constructing.
C
I don't know.
A
Colin furze is a YouTuber I watched. He just made a bike that uses like magnetic suspension instead of normal hydraulic or spring based suspension. He'll have a reel that is a preview of that that is like 30 seconds. And so, you know, as you're scrolling through your feed, you'll see him bouncing around and then his reel will end with, you know, basically like, come see how I built this thing. And then of course we'll link you to the 30 minute, 40 minute video of him actually constructing it. So little things like that to get you into a Havok TV or to get you into a podcast could be a way to start to grow the viewership. Yeah, and then just varying the content, which again, you guys are already starting to do with things like Havoktv. So, you know, breaking things up for me. Of course I've got the, the one off videos like Beetle Swarm. I've got longer form content of which there should be more coming. No spoilers, but I've got some things in the works. And then of course like the roast videos, which are very bite sized and very consumable. So depending on what a viewer is there for, they can sort of pick from their menu of options that you're putting out.
C
Do you have a roast video for
F
the Havok TV for right around like 20 to 30 minutes, like a half hour. It's like TV show. And then we got. The podcast is obviously like an hour to two sometimes, depending on how long
B
we want to talk.
A
I do have a roast video in the works. I also, I want to use this as a platform. I did not expect that to take off in the way that it did. The first one was supposed to be just like a one off thing. And the community reaction was, it was so positive and so it was like, okay, all right, you know, I'll, I'll run this back, but maybe it's getting tired and I put the second one out and people liked it even more. So I guess I just gotta keep doing it at this point.
D
Yeah, I'm expecting a full roast for Hive hysteria.
A
Get ready 24. Luckily I've got time, I've got time to prep for that one.
D
Exactly. You have Plenty of time. Plan ahead.
B
That's awesome. So my, my question is the final one. My question is, has breaking down fights and other bots and the roasting, everything like that in your videos changed how you look at your own builds or your own driving?
A
Well, first of all, it should go on record that I am in no position to criticize anybody else because my record as a combat roboticist is very poor. I have only recently finally started to eke into some moderate competitive success of all my robots actual size. Actually I guess technically Lemon Vinegarette has a positive record, but actual size is the only one with a real positive winning record. I've never made a podium, I've certainly never won an event. So you know, it goes without saying, or it should go without saying, but when I'm poking at other robots, it's very much in good fun. In that vein though, once you start to go down the road of like, okay, you know, you're getting fights that are put in the Havoc bowl, for example, where you know they're going to be on stream, you know that they're going to have some more viewership, the pressure mounts where it's like, okay, it's no longer acceptable to like go into a match with half drive or have your weapon go down. You really want to be in the fight the entire time. And so that added pressure I think is very positive because it's like, you know, instead of just being slapdashed with my electronics, I'm going to do a once over on them before I leave my house and once I'm in the pits just to make sure that all the connections look good, you know, little things like that. Where ordinarily or otherwise I would just be like, ah, send it. You know what, if there's an issue, we'll sort of work through it. Now because there's that added lens, you really want to make sure that you're fighting at 100% so that you can put on the best show for people. So I think that that side of it, that increased attention has had a positive impact certainly in my preparation for going into event.
G
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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 haver grown down now lives over@ Havocrundown.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 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. Okay, cool. So that was the five in focus. So that was each of our questions. We are going to move over to our final piece of the show, which is where we turn to the audience and see what the audience wants to hear about from our guests. So let us open up the voicemail box and see what we got in the listener mailbag.
A
You've reached the voicemail of the Havoc rundown.
B
Please leave your message after the tone. Okay, so the first question in our listener mailbag this week is from Corey from Team Pandemonium. And he says, hey, Max, how did you get such an epic name?
A
That is a great question, Corey. So my first name comes from my great grandfather, Max Kirsten, who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine. My last name is a bit of a mystery. It comes from my grandfather on the other side, John Morningstar. And all we know about him, I've just told you, we have his name and nothing else. So, you know, could there be some demonic influence? Could there be some. You know I'm gonna make up a fake name so I don't have to be responsible for this child I've just conceived. Who knows? But needless to say, my mother actually had the vision. And this was called out on NHRL commentary, which I don't know how they know this, because I didn't actually put this on any of my forums. But my. My dad was really pushing for me to be named Alex, but my mother wanted me to be named Max. So the compromise is that my middle name is Alexander and my first name is Max, which Alex Morningstar. Also very strong, but I think Max Morningstar really takes it to another level.
B
Yes.
F
Yeah.
D
Yep, it is.
B
So Julian's question was later on, but I moved him up to the question after this. But Julian says ask him to show his ID on the video call to confirm it's his real name.
A
I've got you ready here. I've tastefully redacted this id, but you guys can see. Let's see if it's in focus there. There it is. Yeah, it's mirrored, but I'm sure you can take that look at. Look at how happy and hairful I am in this photo. You can tell if this is from a coup years ago, but there you go, Julian. I have several witnesses now that my government issued ID just, in fact, say Max Morningstar.
B
It is.
C
Max Morningstar just sounds like a D and D weapon that, like, always rolls. Max Hit and everything.
A
Oh, my gosh. That's actually brilliant. I should. I should. I'm a DM for a campaign right now. I should give one of my players that.
C
No, do not give them that. That is way too powerful.
A
Trust me. The way I build combat, they're. They'll need it.
C
Oh, okay.
B
No, no, no, no.
C
You gotta use this one weapon that I built. They won't buy it. It's been in the store forever, and they won't buy it. It's a D20 of poison, a D20 of fire, a D20 of bludgeoning, and a D20 of piercing. And it's. I forgot what I named it, but it literally. But the only problem is it only hits on that 20, so otherwise it will not hit.
B
So.
C
And they will not take it. But I'm like, you have such a good. Like, if you hit, it's gonna be so good, but at the same time, it literally does nothing for most combat. So. But that's. That's. That's one of my favorite weapons. I gotta find out what it's called.
A
I wonder. So as A dm. If somebody specced into, like, the mass or the fighter tree where they critted, what is it? Champion fighter 19 and 20, would you let them? Would it count?
C
I would say no, because on the description, it says a nat 20 on it. It doesn't say a critical hit. Because my D and D group are. They're not. They're not min maxers, but they are very much so. Like, they know the rules so well that they know how to take advantage of things to the point where I'm like, oh, now I have. Right now, I have two monks that are both stunning at the same time. So combat is just like juggling two monks juggling people back and forth with stuns. So all my bad guys just kind of, like, stand there still until they get pummeled to death. It is sad at this point.
A
Brutal. Hey, when in doubt, Force cage. Okay? Best way to control martial characters. Having played a fighter against a mage with Force Cage ruins my day.
B
Oh, yeah, Psychic damage. Let's see. So the next up is Matthew from the Bot Killico. He says, what is the greatest medieval melee weapon that is not derived from any form of mace, maul, or bludgeon? So this is kind of on the same form of Ryan's thing.
C
I just found the weapon. I named it the Blade of the edgelord. It is a gigantic blade of black and red covered in spikes, skulls, poison stingers, Tesla coils and chains. Yeah, sorry, answer the question.
A
So, yes, I would say, obviously, first of all, for anybody who doesn't get the joke, Morningstar is a medieval weapon. It's a spiked ball on a chain that was often used by knights on horseback. Very, very fun weapon. If I was not going to pick a Morningstar, I would pick a poleaxe, because it's good at both penetrating and bludgeoning an armored opponent.
B
Okay, makes sense.
C
That is an excellent answer. Have you ever thought about going and doing some actual live action?
B
LARPing.
C
LARPing or kind of stuff?
B
Can you imagine showing up to a LARP and saying, my name is Max Morningstar? And they're like, yeah, but what's your real name exactly? Well, you know, that's your LARP name, but what's your real name, sir?
A
Oh, my gosh.
D
Let me show you my id.
A
That's right. Break the government ID out for that one, too.
F
Like an old boy pin on his chest, taped up.
A
I have not done any of that directly, but my older sister has really pushed me towards it. She's gone to a number of Renaissance fairs and Equivalent events. So it's a matter of time, I'm sure, before I would go to one.
B
Nice. Okay, so that was Matt Brand, Brandon Bennett Young, who we were talking about before, who's getting better views than us on behind the Bots, says, hey, Max, do you think. What. Who do you think is the scariest bot amongst the big wheels? And how will you continue to push the boundary of competitor roasting on the
A
Big Wheel front regardless of weight class? Right now I think you have to look at Samuel Herman. Sam is really putting up big numbers. Gargantuan just had its first event in the 30s and did very well for a. A first time, 31st time for Sam. At least Colossus has made it further in the 3 pound competition at NHRL than any robot other than Tiny Huge, which is the original 3 pound huge like robot. And it's actually, as of this past event now ranked higher than Tiny Huge on the NHL all time list, which is the first time any Huge like has been able to achieve that. So obviously you got to look at Sam right now. There's a bit of an arms race, I think, between Sam, myself and Peter Garnash, I would say. And maybe you can add in Seraph, the WPI Big Wheel vert for who's going to be the second Big Wheel vert in the Beatles to take a golden dumpster home. You know, Tiny Huge will always be the first, but the first non team huge robot to do it. I think there's definitely some bragging rights to that. So for my money, right now, definitely, definitely Sam.
B
Yep, Sam is a good friend of the show. We love Sam, so is awesome and awesome call out Sam. Definitely agree.
A
And then on the, on the roasting front, second part of that question. We've got a lot of Runway with these. I mean, you know, so far I've had a very fixed formula of just sitting in front of a opaque background in a black shirt. So lots can change there. Swearing is very funny even when censored, at least in my opinion. So, like, you know, there's a lot of opportunities on that front. So we'll see. Brandon, I think there's a couple of different ways that I can push the format and we'll play around and see what sticks and what makes the laughs.
C
Okay.
B
Alex from Cole and Team Panda says hi, Max, can you tell us about the Tufts basement fight club and your involvement?
A
So this comment came with a video attached which you guys can find on YouTube. It's the Tufts 2022 fall in house Robotics competition. It is My first combat robotics competition that I ever attended. Myself and a team of two other students built a robot called Robotiller, which technically was a Mantis. Weight, I think we had no, slightly less than that. I think we had a five pound overhead that we were trying to hit. And so we built this robot out of sheet steel and we had three quarter inch aluminum blades that we CNC'd into like a saw blade shape. It was very amateurly done. It's like the ideal first robot in the sense that looking back, it was just so glaringly poorly constructed. We had the weapon powered by one LiPo battery, but then the drive was powered by two AA batteries. And so in our first match I think we like killed the drive batteries and also we're spinning the wrong way. So we spun the nut off of our weapon stack and like all of our blades at the front, it was like just the most rookie bot that you can imagine. That event was also fairly formative in another way, which is that again, if you are digging around on YouTube and happen to watch through it, you'll see that the event was won by a sort of trapezoid shaped horizontal spinner named Leona. And we got beaten so badly by Leona, or rather saw Leona stomp our competition so easily that me and a couple other kids ended up building our own trapezoidally shaped horizontal spinner that I was the captain of called Deep Cut. And that became my first NHRL robot the following January. So this, that, that event was like the inciting incident for, for all of this that has come after.
B
That's awesome. Love hearing that. That's cool. Nick from Crafty Cat. Crafty Cat Combat is usually the first one to comment, but is not this time. What are you doing, Nick? Dropping the ball here says Max. Big wheels are a huge meta breaker. What is something you think we'll see in the next few years that will really disrupt things? So like another meta breaker.
A
I think that, and this is, this is a little bit controversial because I'm saying this from a position of not having the winningest big wheel right now. I think that the arc we are taking as a big wheel community is going the wrong way, which is right now we are seeing size as the ideal. Right? As long as I am as big as possible, nothing's going to be able to hit me. Colossus has a 12 inch wheel diameter. Seraph I think has a 13 inch wheel diameter, which considering these are 3 pound robots, the big wheels at the 12 pound level have usually a 16 inch wheel diameter. So the fact that seraph is at 13 really puts into perspective like just how ginormous that is. That being said, to avoid a robot like synthesis, I think you would need like an 18 inch wheel diameter. So at least in my mind, this idea of, well, if we just are as big as possible and are these total glass cannon robots, then we'll win events. I don't think that that's a pattern that's going to work. I think more people are going to come up with big heada esque designs that will allow them to hit at the chassis. And so that's one of the reasons why with actual size, I have not prioritized size. I prioritized durability. In a lot of ways that's been successful. In this last event, I got the absolute potato salad kicked out of me by Lunatic for a solid three minutes. And the robot was still mostly functioning at the end with the exception of the weapon gear, which was very, very skillfully sniped. And I have since made some design changes to hopefully prevent that in the future. The wheels that I use are TPU with spring steel. They have to date offered really terrific traction and superior durability, which, you know, if you watch fights with Seraph or with Colossus, you'll see that while they do have solid traction to start with, it does wane over the course of a match. Now granted, most of their matches aren't going a full three minutes because they're getting knockouts. So that's the flip side of that sort of glass cannon coin is, you know, you don't have to worry about damage if you've already KO'd your opponent. But I think that our next meta breaker is going to be reach verts, or at least robots that are capable of dealing with big wheels. And at that point, as a community, we're going to have to reevaluate our strategy a little bit.
C
Do you think that means fully investing in armor, or do you think that means finding more ways to avoid that damage? Like, are you going to put like the opposite of a plow so you go over or something like that?
A
We've got some interesting ideas that folks are cooking up. I myself, I have UHMW pieces that I'm able to fashion to the front of actual size that will allow it to take hits. I did a grudge match with seth Schaefer's Division V4 at this last event and the UHMW held up great and it prevented him from getting a clean shot shot against my chassis. I know that HUGE has run its own version of I think Tegris Chins before, like the huge team. So there's different potential routes we could take. One of the things that's really exciting about Big Wheels is we don't have all the answers. I mean, you know, something like the stanced configuration that Brendan Steele brought with Slam Plan was seemingly totally out of left field and now is fairly standard, at least across a good portion of Big Wheel robots. So you know, there's still evolutions to be made, there's still a lot of things that we just haven't tested yet. And I think that if people start to really push us with these big head of configurations, with these reach for configurations, then we will see some interesting solutions that people will pose, some of which I'm sure will be total failures, but others will unlock new configurations for us. So I'm, I'm frankly excited for it.
D
It.
C
The. Does the, the Big Wheel family just. Is that run by Jonathan Schulz and you just all gather around the table once a year and like discuss what you're going to be doing? Is that how that works?
A
So I, I was, I checked in with Jonathan Schultz at the November 2024 event and I have chatted with him previously. I actually walked.
C
Just to get your Big Wheel license. Exactly.
A
You know, it's, it's, you know. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta pay reverence to the OGs, you know.
C
Yep.
A
I checked in with him at the November 2025 NHRL event and Jake Hoffman happened to be standing there and Jake was so incensed that I was like reporting in that he turned around and made a fagomizer discord to make sure that his own community could, could grow and prosper in the way that the Big Wheels has. So yeah, we're definitely. There's a reverence, there's a love for the HUGE team and for Jonathan and hopefully I think that that extends into a lot of other communities. You know, I'm sure that Sean Becker gets hit up for Hammersaw advice all the time and things like that.
D
So there's definitely a melty system out there.
A
Yeah, yeah, melties, exactly. So, you know, whatever. One of the beautiful things about the community is whenever we can take hard lessons from someone else's loss instead of our own, we tend to do it.
B
So is it just eventually going to end up like Gangs of New York? Like all the cells are just going to have their own gang family?
A
I think it would be really fun to run back NHL teams but like, yeah, have a fixed Archetype. So it's like, okay, you got all the reach for. It's over here. You got all the beater bars on this team. You got all the melties. There's, you know, like, we have enough robots now that you could feasibly do that. And I think that that could be a really fun, like, you know, okay, who's. Which weight classes does that work for better than others? You know, there's. There's a lot of content to be had there.
B
Yeah. Which archetype comes out best at each one? Yeah, that would be a really cool tournament to see. I would love that.
F
Well, that was one of the interesting things about Robot Rampage is that they actually had the five bots and they all had to be of different archetypes.
C
Yep.
D
Correct.
F
So it was like it was trying to force you to fight things that were different.
B
Yeah. So Tom from Stress Concentration says, given your impending decrease in travel time to nhrel. Congrats on Pen. Would you ever consider commenting matches like people have suggested? If an offer came from Austin, would you take it?
A
I would love to be behind the commentator's desk. Austin, I'll do anything.
B
Yeah, well, you don't want to say that.
C
Austin's got a lot of money.
B
You don't want to say that.
A
That's true.
C
Probably a ball pit that you could go clean out somewhere. I don't. I don't know.
A
I'll clean the ball pit. I'll do it. Look, and maybe I, you know, we'll see. I'm gonna get up there with my little squeegee and suddenly realize that's a worse task than I thought it was. But no, I would. I would love to be behind the desk for. For these events. And certainly I. Yeah, I'm gonna be going to Philadelphia. I'm in. In Washington, D.C. right now. So the increased proximity makes that kind of participation easier. But at the same time, you know, as it is, NHL has a fantastic commentating team. So, you know, I would not want to displace anybody from that just so that I could be there. But if anybody on the NHL broadcast is listening, I am interested. So hit me up.
B
Okay. Ben H. From the. You know, The Wall Part 2 says in the Panda team says the documentation of your bots on the NHRL Wiki and now your YouTube channel are excellent. What spurred you to start these records of your bots? Additionally, when will Beetle Swarm finally debut?
A
Little context for the folks that don't know. When the NHRL teams event happened in 2023, we had an Idea to bring together a series of three pound robots and have them masquerade as a 30 pound and a 12 pound entry and then enter collectively as the team Beetle Swarm. We were not selected for fairly obvious reasons, but. And then of course they changed the rules, so they got us too, Thomas. They made it so that you could only have so many partitions in your multibot, which is unfortunate, but I would love to do that just even if for like a fun event, you know, 30 Beatles versus like Emperor or something. Come on, that would be fantastic. But yeah, the NHRA wiki, I started recording on that because similarly, back in 2023, I think the wiki was getting more traction at the time. And so getting to click through people's robots and sort of see the history and see their pages and learn about certain fights or certain paths that robots had taken through the tournament was very interesting. And so now all of my robots have very robust wiki pages that everybody can dive into. A lot of the content in my actual size video came from my NHRL wiki page that I have. I also, side note, hold the record for most number of edits to the NHRO wiki. I'm at 6,000. Yeah, I think I'm just under 6,000. And for reference, Gil Hova, the intrepid NHRL statistician, is at like fifth. Like I think he's 5100. So I recently passed him. Yeah. But I've also been doing it for two years less than he has. So my per capita wiki edits, my rate is fantastic.
C
Are you just editing your own or everybody's?
A
Oh, everybody's. And I don't generate content, but like, you know, when new robots are added, they don't natively have a page created for them. So I'll do that. There was a five year backlog of images that didn't have any tags on them or like weren't being used on pages. So I gotta be in my bonnet. I was sitting on a meeting at work and I was like, you know, twiddling my thumbs or doodling and I was like, I could be doing something more productive. So I just started like slowly chipping away at all of these images. And now if you, you know, go to the vertical spinners category, you can see like every single image of a vertical spinner that, so I've got you to set her up, being able to
F
pull all that information.
C
Got it. Bingo.
A
Yeah. So, you know, I, I, I. Something that I would love to dive into more. So again, nhrl, if you're looking for somebody to just be exclusive Wiki editor. Hit me up. My DMs are open. But yeah, it's been a nice passion project. And so hopefully when other people visit the wiki, they're able to have a better wiki viewing experience for it.
F
You know, I'm always looking for people to do like bot of the day video, like recordings and stuff like that too. You know, we could definitely use some help in, you know, organizing things.
A
I'll have to follow up with you on that, Tony. Certainly. I mean, I've got my own robots that I need to get in there at the very least.
B
Yes, well, yeah, that's. We'll cover that in. Yeah, we'll cover that in a second. So I have two people who have similarly themed questions. So Matt Lantry from the Pandas and Alex from Eclipse says. Okay, so here's, here's four questions that all have the same theme. What's your favorite flavor and type of milk? How do you feel about the dairy industry as a whole? When will you do an expose on the dairy industry and how much milk goes into actual size? Are you worried about it shorting the electronics?
A
All right, first of all, I'm not doing an expose on the dairy industry. I'm in the pocket of the dairy industry. So you'll get an hour long dairy propaganda video before you get an expose. I'm gonna say that favorite milk flavor, you gotta go with just a standard, regular 2% dairy. Okay? It's a classic. 1% is all right in a pinch. But skim milk, why bother? Just drink water. Whole milk. Why bother? Just drink cream.
B
Is it Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec says skim milk is just water pretending to be milk.
A
Right, Exactly. So, you know, it's just like, what do you. What are we doing at that point? So, yeah, you gotta nail that 2%. Just impossibly creamy, but yet still very smooth.
E
Wait a second, wait a second. You're telling me that why drink whole milk when you can just get cream? How much does it cost for a gallon of cream?
C
A lot. Too much.
A
More. That's true.
E
How much does it cost for a gallon of whole milk? Aldi? It's like 325, 375.
B
I don't know.
E
I'm all about that balance because I want to get in between the cream. But more than 2%.
A
I'll hear that. I'll hear that. I disagree, but I see where you're from. Coming, Coming from.
C
All right, Max, I'm lactose intolerant and I get lactate milk. Is that okay or is that wrong?
A
So I. If you had asked me like two years ago, I would have said that was wrong. I have a roommate who is similarly intolerant and buys exclusively lactose free milk. And it's kind of started to put me onto it a little bit. If I have the option, I'm still going to go regular milk, but I'm willing to say that if you're out here, you're lactose intolerant, but you're still drinking milk or a milk derivative. I'm not gonna say no to that.
D
Yeah, that's me over here.
C
I drink full. I eat full cheese, but I put whole milk into things. But it's lactoed, like, not lactate cheese, like full cheese. I will risk my life for cheese. I do not care. It's fine, you know, I'll take a lactate, but I'll risk my life. The meal for everybody working the last NHRL was calzones just full of cheese. And I had no lactate pills with me.
D
And I was like, if you ask me, I definitely.
C
Good to know for later. But I survived anyway. I wanted to calzone that bad.
D
Fun fact, mom. Ashley has everything. Those are in my bag, definitely.
C
But yeah, I will not, not have a little milk in my coffee. So it has to be lactate.
E
You could just like get cheeses that don't have lactose in them.
C
Those aren't as good. They're just not as good.
E
Cheddar. Cheddar.
A
They don't look. If you've ever tried to.
E
Yeah, if you've ever tried to cook,
A
they're not as good with lactose free cheese. You know that it does not handle at all like regular cheese. It's like.
E
No, no, no. There are types of cheese, specifically aged cheese, and the longer it's aged, the less lactose it has in it.
F
It's.
B
Cheddar is a bad example of that because cheddar is not aged usually. Unless you get like. We're going into a cheese conversation, but unless you get like really, really aged cheddar, but you're just talking about normal cheddar that's still got a bunch of lactose.
E
We live like, how far from Vermont, New York and Connecticut, New Hampshire. All these places that make great sharp cheddar. Easy. Next you're gonna tell me you have table syrup instead of maple syrup. Living in the Northeast, I'm pretty sure
C
the reason I'm lactose intolerant is because when we were kids, we took a family Road trip, a family trip up to Vermont and just ate cheese the whole entire time. And I'm pretty sure that's why I'm lactose intolerant to this day.
E
The other way. Usually you lose your lactose intolerance because you stop consuming milk and stuff.
B
The funniest thing about that is Ryan and Travis are both lactose intolerant and I am not.
D
So I was going to say, how's Justin doing over there?
A
Won the genetic lottery, apparently.
B
Also is also the funniest thing is, is Ryan and Travis are also both blind as a bat and need their glasses. And these, I could see perfectly fine without these. These are just to like sharpen and protect my eyes against the computer. So I'm not sure where the genetic lottery went there, but I got all the good genetics and then they kind of got the crappy ones at the end. How so? Okay, so last question comes from Tim Hebert of Chubby Unicorn. He says there's both a morning star and a morning star named robot on the NHRO Wiki. Given that these bots were clearly named after you, what is your favorite robot name that you'd name a human to return the favor? Not excluding Greg and James and you know, the human named robots, they definitely
A
heard heard on that one. I would say first of all, the fact that there is a robot named Morningstar that is a big wheel that exists independent of me is fantastic and hilarious. And I think I'm actually going to be potentially competing against them at the University of Pittsburgh event in late April, I think because they're. Yeah, it's got to be that one. So I'm very excited because they have not competed for a while and I'm always down for more sort of Starchild style Big Wheels. In terms of what I would name somebody Dymacharys. Like, you know, if I was at. If I was in my car at a stoplight and somebody ran up and was like, I am Dai McAris, I need this vehicle. Like, here are the keys, man. Just take it. I have zero questions. Clearly this person is on a mission and I cannot stand in their way. From a non combat perspective, I think any of the robot names from interstellar to like TARS or KIP or case, I think those would be solid, solid human names for, you know, like a scientist or a community member. I think you could. If I walked into the NHL pits and sat next to somebody and they were like, hey, I'm tars, I'd be like, yeah, that makes sense.
B
What about Kratos?
F
Right, right.
A
Kratos. Powerful, powerful. I think similarly, you know, you got a good energy.
C
I don't know how I get out of justice for Kratos now. It's just the rest of my life.
D
If you ever have a child, you must now name it Crust Kratos.
C
Very cool.
B
Okay, so that was the end of the mailbag. We're going to go into very quickly. The what's new from the Havok rundown with Tony. Tony, you want to tell everyone about our new things. We kind of touched on them earlier in the episode, but detail about some of the things we're doing.
F
Yeah. So we've launched a whole social media blitz kind of. We've really redesigned our YouTube page. We're doing a bot of the day. So every day there's a little short. The audio is from one of our community members or one of the podcast hosts here. And it's going to be a little short with some of the fight videos footage behind it. Just to give you a little update of a bot that's out there, we're trying to hit like odd name bots, not necessarily the big ones that everybody knows of. Like one day I did Bad Daddy, which is this cool bot from the United Kingdom that's been fighting. So definitely check that out on our YouTube page. Last week we released our pilot version of Havok TV, which is our new 20 to 30 minute basically mini TV show where we look at about five fights from everywhere and all times. We have some of the throwback videos from BattleBots and Robot Wars. And this one of the fights that we're going to be previewing soon is actually a fight from 20044 at Killabox. So we're looking for some of the old fights and then we have some of the newer fights as well. So we're looking at.
B
We even did a human robot boxing,
F
like two humanoid robot boxes, robots fighting. So if you have fights that you'd like to have us preview and look at on our show, send them to our Discord and we'll be putting those up. The video is going to drop every Friday at noon. So that'll be our basically our TV drop. And then every day after that point for the rest of the week, I'll actually be posting clips and shorts from it. So kind of like we were talking about earlier to lead you back to that show. So we'll have those there. But if you have a video or of your fight that you want previewed, send it to us in our Discord channel or email us on the website and we'll get those in there as well. And if you want to contribute to our bot of the day, join our discount channel. We have a sign up sheet where you can sign up to have your bot if you want and you can talk about your bot in one of our shorts. So those are the cool new things we're doing there. We're also going to be launching our Twitch page, so we're going to do live previews of our shows before they're released on YouTube on our Twitch page. So if you actually want to log in and view it first with us, you can. And we are going to be streaming our the draft next week on Twitch. So we're trying to build up our Twitch profile and get that monetized too. You know, money is always a good thing in the back end,
B
so.
F
But we're all about community, so the more you guys help us out and more guys you guys put in there and share, the better this whole thing is going to be. So I designed the page and everything else to bring the community together and share out the amazing things that are happening. And now we're just going to do that in a couple other places too.
B
Okay, thank you, Tony. So that is going to wrap up this episode of the HAVOC rundown. Huge thanks to Max for joining us and giving us a look into both the competitive and creative sides of Combat Robotics as we head into the April NHL event. Between what's happening in the arena and the growing presence of content creators in the space, it's clear the sport is evolving in more ways than one. And Max is right in the middle of that shift. Before we wrap, make sure you go check out Max's content. His roast videos and breakdowns are some of the most entertaining, insightful in the community right now. Max, please let everyone know where they can find you. And we'll make sure to link all of your socials in the description of this video. The podcast as well.
A
Well, you can find me at TRC, the Team RoboTopi Combat Division on YouTube, which is a nod to my FRC team of the same name. And certainly check out the NHRA Wiki if you want an in depth look at all of my robots and not just actual size. Okay.
B
We also have them into our registry as well. Probably not as detailed as the NH Roll Wiki because you've edited that yourself, but we've got some information there as well if you want to stay up to date with everything we're doing. From podcast episodes of Fantasy league standings and event coverage, head over to havokrundown.com that will link you over to our YouTube and Tik Tok and and Discord and everything else. So again, that's havoc. Rundown.com thanks for listening and as always, we will see you in the pit. Everyone say goodbye to our listeners.
D
Bye.
E
See you in April.
Date: March 31, 2026
Host: Justin (Hunter Bro Studios)
Guests: Max Morningstar, Ryan (Game Master), Ashley (Community Connection), Thomas (Chaos Master), Tony (Webmaster)
In this vibrant episode, The Havoc Rundown team sits down with Max Morningstar, a rising talent in the combat robotics world, known for his “Actual Size” big wheel bot, sharp engineering mind, and distinctive roast-style video content. As the crew prepares for the April 2026 NHRL event, they delve into battle strategies, community friendships, content creation, evolving bot meta, and the lighter sides of robot fighting.
Selected Questions & Memorable Answers:
How did you get such an epic name?
Family story, mixed Ukrainian heritage, and a dash of mystery.
Max: “My mom wanted me to be named Max. My dad wanted Alex. So, the compromise: Max Alexander Morningstar.” (53:08)
Greatest Medieval Weapon (not a bludgeon):
Max chooses the poleaxe for medieval combat versatility. (56:46)
“Big Wheels” Meta and Future Breakers:
Max predicts new “reach vert” bots will force big wheel builders to prioritize durability/armor rather than just ever-bigger wheels.
Big Wheel Family & Jonathan Schultz:
Big wheel builders still look to the origins, but new innovations are arising outside the Huge team.
Wiki, Documentation & “Beetle Swarm” Lore:
Max leads in NHRL Wiki edits, seeing it as key to community storytelling, and dreams of a “30 beetles vs. Emperor” showdown for fun. (70:29)
Milk & Dairy Jokes:
A running gag—his favorite is “classic 2%,” asserts loyalty to “Big Milk,” and playfully shuns skim and whole. (74:10)
Best Bot Name for a Human?
Dymacharys (implies instant trust), or fun science fiction robot names like TARS or KIP.
On Community & Learning:
On Roasting and Preparation:
On Bot Design Meta:
On Big Wheel Evolution:
On Name Lore:
Host Justin:
“Between what's happening in the arena and the growing presence of content creators in the space, it’s clear the sport is evolving—and Max is right in the middle of that shift.” (84:12)
Listen, watch, and engage: