Mystic Lake Casino Invitational

July 16-17, 2002
Prior Lake, MN, USA

Brad Borchard and I left Monday afternoon, after work from Louisville, CO and drove straight out through the night, getting to the Mystic Lake Casino and Hotel in ST. Paul, MN at 10:AM on Tuesday. The TCMechWars workers were setting up the Battlecage in the parking lot next to a bandstand and various outdoor game booths. We set up the awning I had purchased just four days before when Wayne Cook and I were out at the Las Vegas Street Fight. This is going to be mandantory equipment if we continue to go to outdoor venues. We rested up after checking in at the hotel (valet service of course) and got back out to the parking lot where the 'Hot Summer Nights 2002' event was being completed. The Mechwars portion was scheduled to be at 6:30 and 9:30PM both evenings. Between the two MechWars shows, they had various bands that provided (loud) entertainment for the audiences. The best was a Beatles look-and-sound-a-like group.

We took Heavy weight Kumite (pronounced Koo-mitt-tay), MechWarsIV HW Champion as this event was an Invitational only for the top finishers of MW-IV. That night we only fought one hardfought match against BugBite during the second show. The rest of the HW fights took place on Wednsday. There were no inspections or weigh-ins as it was assumed that the bots that were there were the same as the ones at MWIV. Also, a lot of the rules (in some cases) were ignored as this was supposed to be an 'unofficial' low-budget fun ad-hoc event. Mad Mer/Christina show up with new armor and two extra drive motors and wheels, but with a lucky hit from Kumite's weapon some of the welds broke giving us the win. Team Van Cleave were great sports and invited us over to their house, a stone's throw from the casino, for an after fight party. It was great fun and they are great hosts.

Mpeg of Kumite vs, Thresher (1.3 MB)

Kumite was able to win all of its matches, including the HW championship but because of an error in judgment on my part (due to being senile, hot and tired) I committed a safety violation after the match, while in the cage with Kumite, when I drove Kumite over to the loading door instead of pushing it. This was was deemed henious enough by one judge that they took away Kumite's 1st place as a penalty and gave it to Mid Evil. Rats...a rookie mistake! I thought it was a bit harsh, since one of the senior staff members was driving his bot through the pit area earlier, but...you couldn't ask for a nicer family to lose to. Mid Evil can take LOT of punishment!

We'd would like to thank the promoter who invited us back to Minnisota, and all the volunteers and staff (including all the judges) that worked hard to make this event happen. They worked their collective butts off getting the battle cage setup in time for the show and we are sorry we could not stay to help break it down as we needed to drive all night back to Colorado. We got to the Dojo in Louisville at noon MST, but Brad had another two hours to get to his home in Colorado Springs.

Mystic Lake results

Mystic Lake was run in a round-robin format.

To read the tables, the rows and columns are by robot placement number. For example, in the first column in the results, each row represents the result against robot #1.

LIGHTWEIGHT
________________1 2 3 4 5 total
1_YU923________ X W W W W 4
2_BOB__________ L X W W WF 3
3_JO JO________ L L X W WF 2
4_PARALLAX_____ L L L X WF 1
5_WEDGEDWOOD_ L LF LF LF X 0

MIDDLEWEIGHT
_______________1 2 3 4 5 6 total
1_STANLEY______X W W W W -- 4
2_MAD COW_____L X W W -- W 3
3_TURBO GNOME_L L X W L -- 1
4_Chilopod____L L L X -- WF 1
5_SPONGEBOT___L -- W -- X X 1
6_LOKI_________-- L -- LF X X 0

HEAVYWEIGHT
____________1 2 3 4 5 6 total
1_MIDEVIL___X W D W W W 4.5
2_KUMITE____L X WF W W W 4
3_TORNADO__D LF X LF W W 2.5
4_M3__L L WF X W LF 2
5_BUG BITE__L L L L X WF 1
6_THRESHER_L L L WF LF X 1

Copyright © 2012 Mike Konshak. All Rights Reserved.

Contact HM 303-673-9853