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[Martyn]

Anyway on to my preview of Series 8.

So some spoilers about the competing robots and format of the show ahead.

So lets get some general bits out of the way first. We've lost Sgt Bash, Growler, Mr Psycho, Cassius Chrome (thank god for that shit heap) and Refbot from the House Robots team. I would have kept Growler and Sgt Bash. Refbot was useful at times too, particularly after he got the count down clock.

As for the four we've kept Shunt and Dead Metal, look basically the same as they did in Series 7, just bigger and badder than before. Matilda looks shorter and her whole face now flips up rather than just the tusks. Sir Killalot looks the most different from Series 7. They seems to have combined Sir Killalot, Mr Psycho and the live shows House Robot Major Damage into one killing machine.

The arena floor is now steal instead of wood, so that should be less easily damaged by spinners and axes than before.

The heats will be different this Series too. They retain the four way round 1 melees from Series 6 and 7, however after that it all changes. The four qualifying robots will face of against each other 1 on 1 in a round robin, even fighting again against the robot in it's round 1 melee. With points award for a win by KO (including pitting and flipping out the arena, basically anything that stops the opponent from continuing) or a win by a judges decision. I think you will get a point if you lose by judges decision and nothing if you lose by KO. The two robots with the most points meet again in the heat final. This will be the same for all 5 heats. The 6th finalist will be decided by the judges (one would assume it would be a losing heat finalist but who knows.)

Anyway let's get on to Heat A. (Click the names for a photo of the robot)

We have a nice mix of newcomers and veterans here.
Behemoth

(DNE is standing for Did Not Enter or Did Not Qualify)

Robot Wars History
Series 1: DNE
Series 2: Semi Finalist (Lost to Killertron (4))
Series 3: Heat Finalist (Lost to Pitbull)
Series 4: (Seeded 6th) Heat Finalist (Lost to X-Terminator 2 (22))
Series 5: (Seeded 15th) Round 2 (Lost to Crushstachien)
Series 6: Round 2 (Lost to Bigger Brother)
Series 7:(Seeded 10th) Round 2 (Lost to Mute)

Other notable achievements: First World Championship Runner up.

Behemoth retains it's main shape pf a box with scoop it's had since series 3 for the 8th war. The main difference is they have ditched the over head axe for this war and the side self righting arms have been beefed up. It's had reliability issues in the past, notably in Series 7 when the robot went insane after Mute self-righted over it and damaged the ariel.

Bonk
Robot Wars History (As Mute)
Series 1-6: DNE
Series 7: Semi Finalist (Lost in the last 16 to Firestorm 5)

Other notable achievements: Extreme 2 New Blood runner up.

Ah the team who beat Behemoth in Series 7 and here they meet again. Sadly Mute was not battle ready, so they return with Bonk, a box shaped robot with a powerful Hammer/Axe weapon. Hopefully the axe will act as a better self-righting mechanism than Mute's flipper, which provided some amazing gymnastics but was not great at putting Mute back on it's wheels.

Bonk won't be the only former rival of Behemoth in tonight's hear... More on that later though.

Carbide
We'll call this a newcomer, although parts of the team were members of the Tiberius team, the Razer-esq robot wasn't that sucsessful, reaching one Heat Final between Seires 4 and 7. It did manage to win the University Challenge episode of Extreme 2.

Carbide looks impressive. Invertible with from the preview clips shown on BBC 2 what looks like an incredibly powerful spinning bar at the front. This robot is one to watch, and in a heat full of very successful past robots, could cause a few shocks tonight. Particularly as the live circuit does not have many spinners at all, as the live circuit arenas don't usually permit spinners.

Kill-E-Crank-E
Built by Robin Herrick, who designed former finalists Body Hammer and Pussycat as part of Team Cold Fusion, this robot looks incredibly like Series 5 and 6 Semi-Finalist S3. It has a long wheel base, with a front spinner, it is just much shorter than S3 with a smaller disc. The builder has good pedigree will that be enough?

Nuts
An actual complete newcomer now. A three part cluster bot (A first for Robot Wars I think), who is clearly making use of the increased weight limit for this series. As 2 parts of the robot are completely tiny wedges. I am not sure how the cluster bot rule works for series 8, in the past it has varied from 50% of the robot being immobile to 100%, that could really impact on Nuts. The robot itself reminds me a bit of Stinger, although it is not an axle bot. The arms with chains flail and thwack around trying to cause as much damage to opponents as possible. The cluster wedges are designed to get under robots and impede their movement to allow the main robot to do damage. I am intrigued to see how this works out.

Terrorhurtz
Series 1: DNE
As Killerhurtz
Series 2: Heat Semi-Final (Lost to Road Block)
Series 3: Round 1 (Lost to Cerberus)
Series 4: (Seeded 16th oddly) Round 2 (Lost to Splinter
As Terrorhurtz
Series 5: Round 2: Lost to Fluffy
Series 6: 4th (Lost to Razer (1) in the Grand Final eliminators and then to Firestorm 4 (3) in the third place playoff.)
Series 7: The robot was not ready in time, but since so many semi-finalists from series 6 dropped out prior to filming (rule changes are to blame) they were shown on screen being disqualified for not being ready or something really ridiculous.

Other notable achievments. As Killerhurts, they came second in the first ever pay-per-view Battle Bots competition. They competed to differing levels of success all the way up to season 4.0.

Terrorhurtz has such a powerful axe, the robot lifts itself off the ground and shakes violently when the axe is fired. Reliability problems have hurt it in the past, but I wouldn't want to have my robot on the end of the axe when it hits right. Terrorhurtz have won the Live Shows "UK Championship" whilst the show has been off air and they are not the only former finalist in tonights show BUT more on that later.

And now a comeback that is really odd.
The General
Series 2 (As Spartacus) Entered and lost the Light Weight battle.
Series 3: Football Side Competition- Finalist

Then nothing... till now. This invertible box is equipped with a front vertical spinning disc, the disc is heavy and powerful. However it's got rather exposed wheels, and it's thin armour doesn't look safe, with some powerful looking spinners in this heat, as well as Terrorhurtz's axe and also the last robot in our heat...

ARE YOU READY?
Razer
Series 1: DNE
Series 2: Heat-Semi Finalist (Lost to Inquisiter)
Series 3: Heat-Semi Finalist (Lost to Aggrobot)
Series 4: (Seeded 3) Heat Finalist (Lost to Pussycat (19))
Series 5: (Seeded 4) Champion
Series 6: (Seeded 1) Runner Up (Lost to Tornado (12))
Series 7: DNE

Other notable achievements, winner of All Stars 1 and All Stars 2, First and Second World Champion, Southern Annihilator Winner, Killed Matilda among many other mini-tournaments and end of Series awards.

THEY'RE BAAAAACK!

Yes one of the most destructive (and in the past unreliable) robots in the history of The Wars is back and with a point to prove. Razer has won pretty much everything at one point or another. They missed series 7 and the robot does't appear much changed from when we last saw it in Extreme 2, if they haven't changed it much will Razer keep up with this new breed of Robot? They have had major reliability issues in the past (see their loses in Series 2, 3 and 4 as well as their vengeance loss in Extreme 1) will Razer be the first former champion to take back a crown they've lost, or will we be in for a shock exit for the former champions? Having controversially beaten Behemoth on more than one occasion in the past, they will be out for revenge tonight.

With a former champion, a finalist and two semi-finalists in this heat there is some great pedigree in this heat, so we are in for a great opening show.