Wooooooh, Shane de Rijk, Jack Barker, Steve Barker and I are all on the team and have been hurriedly working to get our bot done.
@StimpNZ @jacko @steventhebarker
We’ve all come through the VEX program and it would be epic to have the support of the VEX community behind us going into battle!
(I just wanted to be able to announce it somewhere, Jack keeps stealing my thunder)
Oyes, XD 
TRUMP
The team list looks like almost the best of NZ… cool!
Sorry for stealing your thunder Tabor!
It’s been a busy few weeks for us preparing. We’ve built a brand new robot (very similar to the one we won the FMB World Cup with earlier this year) - but its faster and stronger than before. It’s called End Game.
Death Toll was the robot we took to China earlier in the year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdRYj5Qh_Mg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uguN5sMrhJo
End Game is 110kg, with a 23kg vertical spinning disk that spins at 6000RPM. It easily rips through 30mm steel!
The team will be in Long Beach for a couple of weeks at the start of April filming the new season. It will be airing on Discovery and Science channels later this year. We’d love to have you guys cheer us on through Facebook/Reddit/Other channels when it airs (will post more information here when it does).
While I’m here, I’ll do a shout out to our major sponsor, The University of Auckland Faculty of Engineering - building a heavyweight BattleBot is not cheap, and without their financial support we would have been a bit stuck!
Our experience in VEX has helped us a ton through the design and build process (and also driving them!) so our success at FMB and any future success we may have at BattleBots has been largely influenced by VEX.
Lets hope we can bring home that giant nut… Stay tuned for more…
p.s I’m sad this will be the first VEX worlds I miss in 8 years :{
p.s again, pls like our facebook page
BATTLEBOTS SEASON 3 IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING? OH MY WQEUIFHODPIA
Honestly, I know which team I will be cheering for! Tombstone Death Toll! End Game. I seriously misread the info. Jacko, you’re not the only one who has to correct things
@jacko , your link leads to example.com btw
End Game! Death Toll is our other heavy.
Fixed the link, I’m an VEX old boy still getting used to this new forum…
Jack of course.
Awesome! And great to hear you got your start on VEX. I’ll have to show my students.
I really like the vertical disk combined with the sloped front. They work in combination nicely. If you weren’t so maneuverable, I could see someone trying to get behind you to get you to flip yourself over. At the same time, I wonder how familiar the opposing drivers are with angular momentum and torque to know what attacks will actually make you more stable, for instance.
I’m very excited to have a team to root for in the latest season of BattleBots! You guys are going to do great!
Awesome! Good luck at the competition. Will you guys be the only team based outside the US?
There are a few. Not sure on full list of competing teams though.
Think to date, jack has the most vex world championships red trophies.
High school… skills challenge… vexu…
Ya he has a running tally of 9 red trophies.
Sack Attack- Driver skills, Champion
Toss Up - Driver skills, Programming skills, Excellence
Skyrise - Driver skills, Programming skills, Excellence
Starstruck - Champion
Now just need to get VEX to give us a red trophy if we win Battlebots, to bring Jack to a round 10.
Would love to see him get his number 10!
But think vex would rather see him back in vexu though
I’d love to hit the elusive #10, but decided to retire on a high after Starstruck. This would have been my last year eligible. I’m hoping to come back next year as a volunteer, crossing my fingers that experience will be less stressful than that of a competitor! Watch out for team XD in the VEXU competition though, Lucas and Shane have been working hard and I know their robots are pretty special. Driving a BattleBot is an entirely different experience to a vex robot, every game the stakes feel as high as the VEX world finals because at any second you know it could all be over.
Looking forward to seeing what the 8059 teams bring to worlds! I’ll be watching from down here.
Oh… Lucas is back in the fold. That’s great. I will make sure I drop by their pit. You guys always have interesting stuff 
Saw some of the battlebot matches online… you are right - there were so many times that I thought one robot was winning and things just turned around in the next moment.
But come on… go and do us proud! You have been our driving champion!
I always wanted to set up a robot for battlebot… but sadly, I just couldn’t get the support and approval in singapore 
The Barker brothers are Kings.
Er, thanks.
Now this has been bumped I’d like to make a shameless plug for the show.
What? BattleBots Season 3 (wooh)
When? May 11th, 8pm
Where? Discovery Channel
So yeah, make sure you tune in on the 11th at 8pm to support your fellow competitors (although, we probs wont be on episode one) and get the viewcount up so we can have Season 4!
The team had a great time, and got to talk to and learn from many of the greats in the sport. There was so much to learn, some of the guys who have been doing it for 20ish years have a great wealth of knowledge! The event itself was a blast, but also a big effort from the whole team (imagine VEX Worlds for 2 weeks straight). I’m still recovering.
I know there are some AMAZING fights in this new season, so you wont be disappointed. Hopefully the show thrives on Discovery and we have many seasons to come!