Even in Sports with Rules, Predicting the Winner Is Impossible
The Wangsimni Battle Center sits near Exit 4 of Sangwangsimni Station. The seven-thousand-seat battle robot arena enjoys a prime location and is frequently used for concerts as well.
The RTH fan section is packed with 4,500 spectators. Light pouring through the glass walls reflects and sparkles even brighter. The metallic gold, silver, and brown of RTH’s signature colors create a spectacular sight.
Those three colors carry two meanings.
1. The three primary materials used in wiring: gold, silver, and copper.
2. The top ranks symbolized by gold, silver, and bronze. The only real difference is between copper and bronze.
The Diapl section is fairly full too—around seventeen hundred fans. It isn’t that RTH supporters have flooded the away stands. RCLK strictly prohibits home fans from entering the away section, and away fans are barred from sitting in the home stands. Those seventeen hundred must therefore be Diapl fans or neutrals. Of course, there’s no guarantee that zero disguised RTH fans slipped in.
RTH — 83.2% | 16.8% — DFL
RTH Victory All But Certain
RTH Crown’s bold decision to lead off. “RTH picked first? Classic Ronos move.” As expected, they deploy their signature robot, Ronos.
Pros and cons of choosing to go first:
Advantage: A powerful robot can seize control of the match immediately.
Disadvantage: The opponent can easily counter with favorable matchups.
Ronos as the lead pick is a choice that can showcase both.
So what will Diapl, now forced to respond, choose?
“Let’s counter with Hapagonis. Eunha, you’ve got this, right?”
“O-of course!”
She answers with the four-wheel-drive vertical spinner Hapagonis. (Win against Ronos? The matchup exists, but it still feels like a tall order…)
Any team could make this call, yet Ronos is simply too strong. It isn’t just “pretty strong”—it’s one of the top robots in the entire league. Overcoming the unfavorable matchup is entirely possible.
Ronos is a textbook horizontal spinner with a blade. True to its name, it sports a purple base with black and gold accents. When stood upright it really does resemble a windmill. T-shaped blade supports run top and bottom. The blade sits almost dead center but is angled slightly downward thanks to the wheel size. It becomes a touch unstable, yet the lower hit point makes it excellent at striking ramps. Large exposed wheels sit on the sides and protrude rearward. Although the wedge angle is slightly reduced, the windmill-like profile means it almost never gets flipped.
RTH fans are already calling the win. “Hapagonis is just going to lose anyway!!” Even if the odds looked bad they would still cheer, but in this case they genuinely believe victory is guaranteed. Of course, on paper the matchup gives Hapagonis an absolute edge. The difference in experience, however, seems more than enough to cancel that advantage out.
When a horizontal spinner is flipped upright and immobilized, the situation is called a “windmill.” Once it happens, recovery is nearly impossible, making it surprisingly lethal. Two conditions must coincide, yet quite a few robots are vulnerable.
1. Completely square rear end.
2. No protruding rear wheels.
Ronos only meets the first condition, so it never suffers this fate.
Thanks to its large exposed wheels, Ronos boasts excellent mobility. It charges first and slams into Hapagonis.
Normally a horizontal spinner’s weapon would be flung away on impact. Instead Hapagonis is the one giving ground. You can feel how overwhelmingly powerful Ronos is. Hapagonis tries to target Ronos’s side, but it isn’t easy.
Even though Hapagonis’s blade is on the large side for its class, the problem remains. “It flipped Ronos!! But Ronos doesn’t care if it’s upside down, does it?” The advantage comes from its nearly perfect top-to-bottom symmetry. The only minor difference is the blade’s rotation direction, which requires the pilot to reverse their controls. There’s no way an RTH pilot would struggle with that.
Ronos lands another hit on the exposed internals after tearing the blade free. The KO count begins for Hapagonis.
In just 1 minute 1 second, Ronos used five years of experience to cleanly overturn the matchup. The 100 percent set win rate was shattered after only three matches.
Second set: RTH’s Snakehead versus DFL’s Pandemic Survivor.
Snakehead uses a drum that is slightly short in length but wide in diameter. The body is a vertically elongated rectangle. Only the upper side plates are sloped armor; the lower sections are vertical. Although the drum sits high, it has a sloped wedge that can dig under opponents. That wedge can be swapped for a fork depending on the matchup.
Snakehead isn’t particularly fast, but it is quicker than Pandemic Survivor.
Pandemic Survivor fires straight into Snakehead’s drum. It looks like a gunslinger shooting the club out of an opponent’s hand to neutralize them.
After taking only a single blow, Pandemic Survivor’s armor is already warped. It looks like wet newspaper torn to shreds. “If it gets launched far away, Survivor actually gains the advantage!!!” Another shot lands, this time in the body, and it stops moving.
After two consecutive wins since their founding, is Diapl riding luck or skill? The answer should become clearer after at least two more sets.