In the effect of Spikes, change 15 to 3.

In the effect of Ram, change ten to 2.

Increase the Consumption of Spikes to 90, of Flamethrower to 230, and decrease the Consumption of Ram to 60.

In the status Scorched, change 5 to 10.

Idle me. I’ll join the next dynasty

Advertisers are getting tetchy, Danny.

I don’t see why? Viewership figures are up on all previous years, engagement is through the roof and sponsorship opportunities…

All of that’s great, Danny, but the advertisers want spectacle.

Spectacle?

You know, pizzazz, razzmatazz, other words with a surprising number of z’s in them…

Embezzelment?

Danny, if you’re going to be like that then tis meeting is over.

Okay, look, you want a show? Fine. Name two Bots who haven’t fought yet, your two favourites.

Dark Lord?

I shoulda guessed you’d be a Dark Lord guy. Okay, and…?

DuckTank.

Slightly more surprising, but okay. Dark Lord and DuckTank… done. Tomorrow, 7pm, Arena Hall A. It’s prime time, baby!

Oh, you say baby too?

You bet your sweet ass. And we’re going to have obstacles at positions 8, 10 and 13 - ah, the audiences are gonna love it.

In the rule ‘Winners at War’, add the following paragraph after “...continuing in the same pattern until the single Bout in the last round of the Tournament Bracket has concluded.”:

While the game is in Tournament Mode, any Operator whose Readiness is Workshop or Ready may privately message the Announcer with a list of Systems they wish to be added to their Bot for their upcoming tournament Bout. Once an Operator’s Readiness is set to Staging, the Announcer should remove all the Systems in their list from their Spare Parts Bin and add the Systems to their Bot, given their Bot has enough spare hardpoints to accommodate all the Systems in their list and all the Systems in the list exist in their Spare Parts Bin.

A highly anticipated match today as SupernovaStarbright meets Trapdoorspyder - for the third time in this tournament, in fact. This has become one of the classic pairings, as no two operators have met each other as often, and going into the bout the score is tied - their first meeting in Bout #13 was a DuckTank win, while their more recent interaction in Bout 21 was famously the bout that SupernovaStarbright threw in order to get onto Trapdoorspyder’s LED board. We of course can’t know what happens behind the scenes here at the arena halls but the rumour is that she has recanted that position, and possibly also that Trapdoorspyder reneged on his side of the deal anyway, so we should see a more competitive match today.

In the left, in position 4, it’s DuckTank - still a chunky little pusher, now decked out with a nuclear engine to give some heft to its battering ram / cow catcher combo. Assessors seem to think that DuckTank is now likely to have similar pushing power to Hard Hat, but of course the shoving meta has faded a bit since the mid-portion of this tournament - we’ll see if Annoy-o-Tron has the answers.

Except that Annoy-o-Tron is no more! Over in position 15, instead of the usual mound-shaped body, we have the newly rechristened B.A.D, as it seems like Trapdoorspyder wants to capitalise on his recent infamy - under the hood it looks like the same sort of loadout as Annoy-o-Tron, but the whole presentation is much gothier, like the robot version of black eyeliner and a tattoo on the inside of your lip.

And they’re off!

DuckTank steams forward to position 13, getting right into the range of B.A.D.‘s axe but not close enough to get a shove in or give a poke with that battering ram - but what do I know - position is everything here, after all. B.A.D. declines to take a swing, instead opting for an evasive move, clearly anticipating a shove, but DuckTank has anticipated the anticipation and makes its own blocking pattern, trying to dissuade B.A.D. from attempting to bypass! This is some very high-level tactical play from these two, play and counter-play being rolled out seamlessly - and the crowd loves it - even BAD is getting some encouraging cheers amongst the usual boos.

BAD breaks formation first, swinging in with a quick axe attack - but this requires BAD to stand still for a second, and that gives DuckTank an opening, which it uses to crunch forward, moving to position 17 and pushing BAD to 18 in the process! The damage from the ram is superficial but the danger is acute - the edge of the arena is right there - BAD tries evasive moves again but DuckTank snaps right back into that blocking pattern, keeping BAD corralled into the corner, and BAD is going to try to fight its way out, another huge swing with that axe, but DuckTank isn’t missing an opportunity like that! One more big shove and that’s it - BAD is in the gutter and out of this match! What a Bout!

DuckTank wins by TKO!

Create a new rule entitled “Damage” as follows:

When a Bot’s hardware component suffers condition loss, that condition loss is known as damage.

If a Bot’s System would take damage greater than the total remaining Condition of that System, the difference between the damage inflicted and the remaining Condition of that system is applied as damage to that Bot’s next-frontmost System, or to the Bot’s Chassis if the bot has no next-frontmost System.

Add the following as a subrule of the “Bot Loadout” rule, titled “Compounding Systems”:

If a Bot would have two or more systems that share the same name equipped on their Bot, that Bot is considered to have exactly one of that system equipped on their Bot for the purposes of applying the effect of that system, unless all instances of that system on that Bot are at 0%. If a System refers to its own condition, then the highest condition instance of that System on that Bot is used.

It’s a small crowd tonight due to counterprogramming - this Bout has been scheduled at the same time as Dark Lord vs Hard Hat in the next Arena Hall over, and this match between CrowBot (with its slightly underwhelming win/loss ratio) and a new pilot of mysterious background seems to have been written off by many as the lesser attraction. This commentator, however, can’t help to be compelled by the mysterious Habanero - there they are now, in the operator pit, shrouded by a heavy poncho and a wide sombrero hat. Who are they, and where have they come from? How will they shake up this league?

We’re about to find out. CrowBot2000 has taken position 4, unchanged since its loss to Credit Score: F - still working with that flamethrower/axe combo.

Opposite it is our first look at CarolAIna Reaper. Its form factor is similar to a stumpy chilli pepper but it is covered in spikes - and under the spikes, thick ablative plating. This is an interesting loadout, and not one we’ve seen before; in this league we’ve seen spikes do some damage but there must be twice as many spikes on this Bot as we’ve seen before and that can only compound the potential for damage.

There’s the blue light - they’re off.

CrowBot is first to act, taking a cautious position at square 9, and Habanero - oh! Habanero moves decisively out to meet it, its chassis spinning as it does so, and it slams into CrowBot, and there it is! There are those spikes, tearing and smashing into CrowBot with incredible ferocity, a single bump rips CrowBot’s flamethrower clean off and throws it across the arena, and the double-spike loadout suddenly makes a load of sense!

CrowBot gets a swing in with its axe but that gets absorbed by the ablative plating on the Reaper, who pulled back a little to position 14 - CrowBot just sits there, stunned - but here’s the Reaper again, with its little run-up, smashing back into CrowBot and this time ripping the axe straight out of the chassis and sending it flying into the pit wall! This is stunning and the crowd are on their feet - what an incredible Bout - they’ve never seen anything like this before!

Once again Habanero pulls the Reaper backwards for a big run-up, and Raven is just looking at his controller - he has no idea what to do in the face of this!

Here it comes again - boom - those spikes shredding chassis now, and that’s that, one little bump and CrowBot is eviscerated. The Bout is swiftly called and I can guarantee that Habanero’s next Bout will be much more closely watched.

CarolAIna Reaper wins by TKO!

If Proposal: Needs Less Halting Problem was enacted, revert its changes.

Add a new System to the list in the rule Systems:

| Advanced Logic Module || ₩4,500 || 290 || Passive: Enables all Advanced Triggers and Reactions in the rule Botscript.

In the rule BotScript, add the following to the bulleted list immediately after the sentence ‘All otherwise-legal Reactions are Resolvable, except if that Reaction’:

Triggers and Reactions marked Advanced may only be Resolvable if the Actor is permitted to use them by a System Effect or other ruleset-defined mechanism.

In the same rule, after “Combined triggers are accompanied by a single Reaction as normal”, add:

Combinable Reactions may be combined with one other other Reaction in the same manner as Triggers; however, a Combinable Reaction must be the first in the combined Reaction.

Add the following to the list of triggers:

* Advanced: “If the value of Token X is [greater than / less than / equal to] Y”, where X is any string of one five characters in length and Y is any integer
* Advanced: “If [the Actor’s / Y’s] [chassis / engine / exposed System] has a Condition that is [greater than / less than / equal to] X”, where x is any positive percentage value and Y is the name of a single Opponent that is a current participant in the same Bout as the Actor
* Advanced: “If line #X of this script was the trigger that took effect in the Actor’s most recent round preceding this one”, where X is an integer between 1 and 10
* Advanced: “If on the Opponent’s last turn they uses system X” where X is the name of any System

Add the following to the list of reactions:

* Advanced, Combinable: “...[increase / decrease] Token X by Y”, where X is any string of one five characters in length and Y is any integer
* Advanced: “... then move X times towards opponent Y”, where X is a positive integer and Y is the name of a single Opponent that is a current participant in the same Bout as the Actor

Add the following as a new subrule to the rule BotScript, called Tokens:

Some BotScript Triggers or Reactions may refer to Tokens being tracked or modified. Tokens only exist relative to the BotScript that created them; the Announcer may distinguish between Tokens of the same name generated by different scripts as they please. A Token is created for a BotScript whenever its value is modified by a Reaction in that script, if that token does not already exist for that script; each Token may only hold numeric values, defaults to a value of zero, has its value privately tracked by the Announcer, and is reset to zero and then destroyed at the end of the Bout in which is was created.

Create a subrule of Winners at War called Formalised Disputes:

This rule is flavour text if the game is not in Tournament Mode.

If the events of a bout in tournament mode are ever being challenged by a call for judgement and that call for judgement’s text requests a pause in the tournament, the schedule in Winners at War is paused for as long as that call for judgement is not resolved; time spent with the tournament being paused is not counted towards the 12 hour and 24 hour thresholds in the schedule. Only the Announcer is permitted to enact calls for judgement that request that the tournament be paused.

Where multiple open calls for judgement each request a pause, that pause lasts until all of them have been resolved.

In cases where a rule has been unambiguously applied incorrectly by the Announcer in a bout in tournament mode in the opinion of the Announcer, the Announcer is permitted to recalculate the results of that bout without the use of a proposal or call for judgement so long as less than 24 hours have passed since the end of that bout. The new ending time for a recalculated bout is considered to be the ending time of that bout’s Round, with the most recent ending time being used in the case of multiple recalculated bouts in the same round. This ending time recalculation applies whether the bout was recalculated as a result of the enactment of votable matter, or as a result of the Announcer choosing to recalculate without the use of a votable matter.

In the case of a declaration of victory existing while a call for judgement requests a pause in the tournament, all Operators are encouraged to vote against that declaration of victory if they believe that the revelation of new or secret information as a result of the possible enactment of that call for judgement could change their vote. There is no 120 hour cooldown on the use of a Declaration of Victory while the game is in Tournament Mode, though fair play rules still apply.

Where this rule refers to a Round, it uses Round in the context implied in Winners at War rather than the context in The Arena.

There’s history between these tow Operators; the last time they met SingularByte contested the result, and still holds that Brendan essentially stole the match - most lately calling Brendan out in a series of guest verses on rap tracks, as SingularByte is also a very skilled MC besides being a skilled Operator.

Still, the expectations for this Bout are low; Brendan was public about being willing take on anybody to deny Trapdoorspyder further victories, and the sense in the air is that neither Operator is going to be trying too hard here, or wanting to risk valuable components in advance of a possible Tournament finish.

In position 4 we have Hard Hat, unchanged since its last bout against Annoy-o-Tron, in which Cool Hand Luke provided a famous assist. Opposite from Hard Hat is Dark Lord - who seems to have varied its loadout at the last minute with a giant mitt, to prevent bypassing manoeuvres, thanks to its modular breakpoint.

And they’re off - but Hard Hat is just sitting there - is this another SingularByte stratagem? In the Operator pit SingularByte is looking expectantly at Brendan, who jams the control forwards, moving Dark Lord over the traps and past the various obstacles to position 8. SingularByte looks disgusted - it’s unclear what he was looking for from the Bad Boy of BlogBot but he didn’t get it - and now h’s dramatically jamming Hard Hat backwards, and yes - out of bounds! SingularByte declines a post-match handshake from Brendan and stalks out of the arena, but Brendan just shrugs and updates his LED Banner, as the judges announce -

Dark Lord wins by TKO!

In the rule Showboating change “quorum or more” to “more than four”.

Brendan is to be Habanero’s mentor.

Enact the proposal ‘Needs More Turing Completeness’, changing the Reaction it adds to read:

...then [enable/disable/toggle] the Triggers at the following positions in the list: X. If the Script has been run less than thrice this turn, run it again after this Reaction is Resolved without incrementing the turn number of the Bout”, where X is a set of integers denoting valid positions in the list of Triggers

Meanwhile, in a seedy bar not far from the Arena Hall complex…

If you give the bartender the exact right kind of nod, they’ll gesture you towards a nondescript door which will lead you to a dark corridor. At the end of that corridor is a heavy steel door, which, when opened, will reveal a narrow, rusted-iron spiral staircase leading down into a damp cellar. From the foot of these stairs you will now be able to hear the sounds of people shouting and the tortured whine of metal on metal. This is the real deal; push through the curtains and what you’ll see is the real BlogBot fighting league, the dark, dangerous underbelly of the sport where everything is for keeps and nothing is off limits.

Take this bout, for example. One Bot, called Zero Wing, is basically a control unit surrounded by autonomous modules that can break away, charge down the opponent and detonate themselves - expensive for the Operator, worse still for the Opponent. It’s hanging back, now, at the edge of the fighting pit, its drones circling its main unit, looking for an opening through which to strike.

Because its opponent is also a Bot of no common factor; named Six Eyes, its form profile is more or less a series of rotating rings inside a fixed frame, each of which holds a lens in place. When activated a single laser beam can be split into a half-dozen, scoring the centre of the stage and preventing even a determined bot-cloud from getting through. This bot is making aggressive moves; it’s a battle of positioning, as the ring-bot tries to find a position where it can catch its Opponent’s central unit with its laser with enough force to knock it out in one, while the Operator of the cloud-bot is trusting their gut, watching the rings, waiting for a moment where -

Ah. There it is.

For just a split-second the rings are misconfigured, giving too much coverage on the left and not enough on the right. And that’s all that the swarm needs; two of the detonation modules peel away from the central housing and score up the left hand track of the pit - but it was a feint, and actually the rings were never misconfigured at all, and suddenly those lenses are snapped back into position, the detonation modules are fried and dead-stick, and that’s now created a little safety-corridor on the left for Six Eyes, who takes it…

Because behind Six Eyes is a player knows that you don’t play against the Bot, you play against its Operator.

In the chaos as the Bout concludes, with the bookies collecting their winnings and the crowd jostling and yelling, someone appears at the Operator pit, by Six Eyes’ Operator: someone in the livery of the BlogBot league. The Operator is handed a note; it reads:

ANNOY-O-TRON. ARENA HALL B. NO CONFIGS.

SupernovaStarbright stands up and, with a thin smile, grabs her competitor’s pink slip, her winnings, and a fat manilla folder marked TRAPDOORSPYDER. Time for DuckTank to get back to work.

Meanwhile, across town, a mysterious figure stepped off of a boat and onto the dock. Despite the lashing rain, this stranger had no coat or umbrella, and nor did the man there to meet him - although this person at least could be identified thanks to the BlogBot League pin on his lapel. “Are you… Habanero?” asked the man, and the figure just nodded. “Come this way please… Your first bout happens imminently, it’s against Raven1207 and CrowBot2000, do you need time to get ready…?”

Habanero’s response was simply a shake of the head. It was time to shake up this league.

In the rule ‘BotScript’, change the first sentence to read:

Each Bot has a Script, being a list of up to ten Triggers, each Trigger having a corresponding Reaction and a boolean value indicating whether it is Enabled or Disabled (defaulting to Enabled).

In the same rule, change:

until they find a Trigger which is true for the Bot in question and its corresponding Reaction is Resolvable

to read:

until they find a Trigger which is Enabled, true for the Bot in question, and has a Resolvable corresponding Reaction

Append the following Reaction to the bullet point list starting with “Possible Reactions are:-” in the same rule:

...then [enable/disable/toggle] the Triggers at the following positions in the list: X. If the Script has been run less than thrice this turn, run it again after this Reaction is Resolved”, where X is a set of integers denoting valid positions in the list of Triggers

I formally announce my intention to become an Operator.

In the rule Taunt, change

When a Bout concludes, the Winner gains additional Money equal to ten times their own Red Mist, and any non-winning participants lose percentage points of Condition to their chassis and exposed system equal to their Red Mist, to minimums of zero; then, the Red Mist of all participants in that Bout is set to zero.

to read

When a Bout concludes, the Winner gains additional Money equal to one hundred times their own Red Mist, and any non-winning participants lose percentage points of Condition to their chassis and exposed system equal to five times their Red Mist, to minimums of zero; then, the Red Mist of all participants in that Bout is set to zero.

[A music video for the track Safety Gear by Lil Botty]

[The first verse features typical scenes of rap music excess - Lil Botty on a boat, Lil Botty in the club, Lil Botty shooting at a helicopter with a gamma pistol]

[The second verse, however, is a guest verse from none other than MC HardHat himself - now watch out as SingularBeat drops some rhymes]

Yeah, yeah
Ayo, the fans, it’s time.
It’s time, the fans (aight, the fans, begin).

Straight out the metallic dungeons of rap
The trap drops deep as does my ajax
I’m a mothershover, ‘cause to shove is the sister tax
Beyond the walls of bots, life is defined
I think of victory when I’m in an Arena Hall C state of mind

Hope the axe got some tax.
My max don’t like no dirty wax.
Run up to the syntax and get the lax.

In an Arena Hall C state of mind.
What more could you ask for? The strong trap?
You complain about Dark Lord
Out and about stealing Bouts, Brendan I’m calling you out
I gotta love it though - somebody still sneaks through this crap

Brendan, you got called out bruv,
Brendan, you got called out

I’m rappin’ to the chassis,
And I’m gonna move your profligacy.
Weak, damaged, defunct, like a bar
Boy, I tell you, I thought you were a spar.

I gotta take the Dark Lord, gotta take the map.
I woulda tried to win I guess I got no rap.
I’m rappin’ to the profligacy,
And I’m gonna move your chassis.

Yea, yaz, in an Arena Hall C state of mind.

Thinking of victory. Yaz, thinking of victory (victory).

[Behind him, Hard Hat does donuts while an effigy of the Arena Hall explodes in a CGI effect]

We’re in for a spicy match tonight - over the course of this contest Trapdoorspyder has emerged as the villain of the piece, and the fans just love to hate him. Here he is now, entering the stadium - the boos are starting up - but oh, he seems to be pushing his elderly granny along in a wheelchair, oh, that’s blunting some of the audience response, the stands seem to be quieting down - WHAT! He’s just tipped granny OUT of the wheelchair and asked the hottest person in the audience that he could find to hop in instead! That’s his grandma, sprawls on the floor, while he is flirting with his front-row floozy! Oh, what a villain, what an vicious brute!

By contract, here’s chiiika, dressed in a white power-suit, looking like she’s ready for nothing less than business in this bout. Yvette doesn’t have the strongest record in this contest, in three bouts she’s chalked up one win, against Credit Score: F, but she’s the firm crowd favourite tonight.

In position 4 starts Annoy-o-Tron, which seems to have been redesigned to look more… menacing? Lots of extra spikes, and it seems to have a mohawk now. Other than that its configuration seems to be unchanged.

In position 10 we have Cool Hand Luke, the house bot that herds horses and axes bots. Cool Hand Luke is perfectly capable of knocking out a competitor if left to its own devices, so both Operators will hopefully be cognisant of its threat and will have planned to work around it.

And in position 16 it’s Yvette, similarly unchanged in configuration.

The blue light is on and so is this Bout! Trapdoorspyder jams on his controller, sending Annoy-o-Tron into a 180 - it’s facing outside of the arena, towards the bumpers - and Yvette jumps forward before clattering into the back of Cool Hand Luke. The house bot is unperturbed, facing the other direction - and then Annoy-o-Tron jams had backwards, sketching an elaborate bypass pattern to push across the entire arena to position 19.

Luke moves into the area vacated by Annoy, heading into square 7, and Yvette - oh goodness - Yvette pulls the same move again, ramming Luke hard from behind, and why is she picking a fight with the house bot when Annoy-o-Tron is right there? He’s not even doing anything, just sitting smugly on the sidelines, and now Luke is turning around - he won’t take being hit twice - and Yvette seems to be stuck in place, watching it happen.

A grapple and three swift axe-blows later and that’s it - it’s all over for Yvette. Trapdoorspyder smugly steps into the middle of the arena, as if conducting the audience’s boos, while chiiika gives a small wave and then heads out through the Operator tunnel, disappointed by unbowed. Over the tannoy comes the announcement -

Annoy-o-Tron wins by TKO!

In the rule Winners at War, in the bulleted list immediately following the line that reads “Once the Bracket has been posted, the following schedule takes effect”, change all instances of 24 to 12 and then change all instances of 48 to 24.

Remove the words “50% of” from the sentence in the rule “Systems” that currently reads “An Operator whose Readiness is not Set may remove a System from their Bot at any time by either increasing their money by 50% of the Effective Cost of the system being removed or adding that system at the appropriate condition to their Spare Parts Bin.”

If there exists a rule called “Repair Wrench” then repeal it.

In the rule Income, change “Once in between each Bout in which they participate, while their Readiness is Workshop, an Operator may add 5% condition to each component in their Bot” to read as follows:

At any time while their Readiness is Workshop, an Operator may add 5% condition to each component in their Bot for each full 24 hour period that has elapsed since they last performed this action or since the end of the last Bout in which they were a participant, whichever is most recent.

.

Repeal the rule Repair Wrench.