Creature @ RCL National Championship 2025 (Event Recap)

May 10, 2025

Creature vs Full Court - RCL Nationals 2025

Robot Combat League (RCL) Nationals 2025 was held at the Discovery Cube in Santa Ana, California, on May 3rd-4th. This annual event is the culmination of each RCL season, and only the top-ranked robots on RobotCombatEvents were invited for each weight class. This was my first year attending, and I brought my 3lb bot “spinny boiii” and my 12lb bot “Creature.”

The competition took place across 2 days, and matches felt fast-paced. It was my first time running multiple robots at an event, and I found myself bouncing back and forth between their pit tables. I am exceedingly grateful for my two teammates, Benji (spinny boiii) and Caleb (Creature), for keeping me grounded and sane throughout the event, and putting in a majority of the repair work on both robots while I focused more on strategy and driving.

RCL Nationals 2025 event venue — A view of the pits at RCL Nationals 2025, held at the Discovery Cube on May 3rd-4th

Fight Recaps

The rest of this post will focus on Creature’s fights. spinny boiii’s event recap is covered in a separate post, which you can read here.

Fight 1: Untitled Goose Bot

Untitled Goose Bot is a large vertical spinner, built in a somewhat similar shape to the heavyweight robot Uppercut. The robot was constructed entirely in the builder’s garage with basic hand tools, which is admirable. Unfortunately, it still had some new-robot gremlins to work out. The spinner turned on initially, but then struck the floor, flipping the robot onto its back. Creature then pushed Untitled Goose Bot around for a little, after which they stopped moving, presumably due to an electrical failure. They were counted out shortly after.

Fight 2: Antihilator

Antihilator is a classic 4-wheel-drive vert built by a college team. After some initial back-and forth, Creature was able to shove Antihilator into the side rails of the arena, getting them stuck and resulting in a count-out.

Fight 3: Whomper

Whomper is a dangerous horizontal spinner with a strong pedigree, and it’s driven by Matt Vasquez, who is a veteran builder and highly skilled driver from the Battlebots team Whiplash. Luckily, Creature is heavily armored and well-equipped to handle horizontal spinners. Still, as a lifter, we’re effectively required to ram our armored wedge into them until we can create an opening to disorient them with our lifting arm, which can be difficult.

We were able to stay pointed at Whomper, and pop them into the air each time we rammed our wedge into them. Whenever they slowed down, we tried to gain control with our lifer. After about 30 seconds, Whomper’s weapon belt broke, allowing us to be more aggressive with the lifter and repeatedly flip them over.

At one point, one of our drive magnets came loose, which hung up one side of our drivetrain and had us crab-walking. This was spooky, but luekily we still had partial mobility, and we were able to shake the rogue magnet loose after 15 seconds or so, restoring our full drive power. We then continued to control Whomper for the rest of the fight, and won by unanimous judges’ decision.

Fight 4: Full Court (first time)

As a control bot fight, this was a very close match with a lot of technical driving. We attached some long wooden sticks to the front of Creature in a half-joking attempt to stiff-arm Full Court, but the sticks quickly fell off. Luckily, this didn’t count too much against us in terms of damage, as the sticks were a flimsy, last-minute addition.

As expected, the fight went the full 3 minutes. Both bots had plenty of pins on the other, but Creature won a narrow judge’s decision for having slightly more control. With this win, we advanced to the finals.

Fight 5: Full Court (finals)

After their first loss, Full Court wen on to fight and defeat Whomper in the second chance bracket, which allowed them to advance to the finals for a rematch against us. This fight started off with a dramatic spinning dance in the center of the arena, with both bots pushing the other and trying to gain control. After that, the fight was quite similar to the first one, with back-and forth pins and very technical driving.

This time around, Full Court probably had more control than we did, but the fight came down to a critical moment when, with 30 seconds left, Creature managed to prop Full Court up diagonally in the corner of the arena. Their self-righting arms barely couldn’t reach the ground or the wall, and they were counted out shortly after, giving Creature the win!

Given that Full Court is over 6ft wide and designed to smother opponents, this was one of the only times they had every been KO’d. It was an incredible moment that drew a gasp from the crowd, and you could see the looks of excitement and awe in our faces as we realized the ridiculous victory we had just pulled off.

The winning moment of the final fight, with Full Court propped up in the corner of the arena. You can see the shock on my and Caleb's faces as we realized we had won. — The winning moment of the final fight against Full Court. You can see the shock on my and Caleb's faces as we realized we had won.

Conclusion

I am incredibly happy with how Creature performed at RCL Nationals 2025, and I am so grateful to my teammates Benji and Caleb for all their work throughout the event. This was our first time at Nationals, and it was so satisfying to come away with the win after the countless hours of work, 4 robot iterations with several configurations each, and tons of driving practice. Winning the championship was an amazing experience, and I am still in awe of the victory we pulled off. Here’s hoping we can come back next year and defend our title!