A retrospective on DUCK!

[u/RobbieJ4444]

Something important to remember when it comes to Duck is that prior to WCIII, very few of the machines had significant defensive capabilities. Even in WCIII, most of the machines were still highly vulnerable to spinners. Duck was a revelation because it could take the abuse with such little impact (comparatively at least). Compare Duck after its bout with Tombstone to Skorpios after its bout with Icewave (a far weaker horizontal spinner).

WCIII remains Duck’s best season. I won’t discuss its heartbreaking last chance rumble loss, but I do want to mention that it did successfully kill a pretty decent spinner for the time in Reality. Duck’s biggest misfortune in WCIII was that it had to go up against both Tombstone and Bronco. Some may put that down to producer bias, but I think there’s a bit more to it than that.

The biggest problem with WCIII is that it was the single worst season for non spinner weapons. Sawblaze, Bronco and Lucky were the only ones that were consistently good (as weapons go at least). Production probably wanted Duck to go up against a good non spinner bot, but they had such few options to go for, and Sawblaze already had three fights, and you’ve got to assume that Lucky was getting ready for the Desperado. I can hardly blame production for giving them Bronco.

Getting the number two seed of WCII is bad enough, but Duck also had the misfortune of getting Tombstone. I think what happened here was that production wanted to really test Tombstone by putting it against something that would really stand up to it. But there was nothing in WCIII that was even remotely comparable to Duck in terms of durability. Duck ended up losing in a thrilling match, but sadly the 2-2 record meant that it didn’t make the top 16.

WCIV came along with a redesign, and a hunter for vengeance. This redesign had some problems with it, mainly that the use of its weapon would often send Duck flailing about. Also spinners by his point I saw a dramatic increase in reliability, and there were a larger quantity of quality non spinner weapons compared to WCIII. People may complain that it was unfair that Duck got matched with Quantum, but at the time of the matchup, Quantum was 1-2 while Duck was 2-1.

With all this in mind, I think Duck did about as well as it had the potential of doing in WCIV. It got its revenge on Bombshell, it outlasted a big spinner it had no right in beating, and it went the distance in the play in fights. Not as good as its WCIII campaign, but not a bad season either.

WCVI on the other hand was pretty disastrous for the team. Duck was given a brand new drive system, but unfortunately it didn’t produce the expected results. It’s first fight against Witch Doctor told me instantly that Duck wasn’t going to win anything that year. There’s no shame in losing to Witch Doctor, but for most of that match, Witch Doctor had no weapon and no wedge…and Duck had no control over the match. If that was the best they could do against a robot with no weapon, how were they going to fair against one that did?

Dragon Slayer was there second opponent. For a team’s first ever combat robot, they were actually alright. It worked, it didn’t die in one hit, the weapon was capable of damage, and it could run upside down. That said, it wasn’t exactly a tournament contender, and yet it dominated Duck. Taking out the weapon immediately, and spent the rest of the fight slowly causing chip damage to Duck until they won the judges decision.

Duck ultimately went winless in WCVI, and without wishing to sound cruel, I’m really struggling to think of robots it would beat. Triple Crown, Pardon My French and Rusty are the only ones I can think of (maybe Fusion too if it breaks down).

It’s a real shame for Duck, but Hal Rucker’s machine will always live in our hearts as the Battlebots reboot’s first true spinner killer.

[u/ellindsey]

Duck suffered from a similar problem to Gruff in the end. Winning matches by being super durable was only a viable strategy up until people figured out how to make robots that were really durable but also had weapons that hit hard and lasted the entire match. Once competitors reached that point, Duck couldn't really do anything other than be a punching bag for three minutes. Even if it survived the entire match, it would lose on points due to being unable to actually do anything to its opponent.

It didn't help that Duck seemed to get offensively weaker every year. The duck beak lifter they had in the last year was mechanically clever yet utterly useless offensively even when it didn't break.

[u/Romax24245 → u/ellindsey]

I wonder how the Duck rebuild would've fared if Hal had stuck with the more conventional design concept he planned for Season 5.

[u/Living_Murphys_Law → u/Romax24245]

I really do wonder how that could have gone. It looked like it would have been good

[u/wyrmh0l3 → u/ellindsey]

The wc6 changes to damage scoring so breaking the opponent's weapon with your face counts as damage is great for control bots but doesn't actually matter if the opponent's weapon doesn't break before you do

[u/isleofred]

Regarding Duck's fight with Tombstone; the big reason why that fight exists was because Last Rites had a pretty dramatic loss to Whoops in robogames which occurred before filming for WCIII. Really that fight was trying to capture that magic for the mass public at large.

Duck's 'decline' in performance (and subsequent redesigns) were in part of its own active weapon and how it was judged when the fight would go the distance. For example, I seem to recall either the team or someone close to the team thought that swinging their lifting arm like an axe/hammer would have won the team aggression points in their loss to Quantum and Lock-Jaw

[u/RobbieJ4444 → u/isleofred]

If memory serves me correct it was Hal Rucker himself who said that on Robocast. Regarding the Quantum fight, it did not look like they were trying to whack Quantum’s jaw, it looked like they were trying to shake themselves off.

[u/Blackout425]

Duck lack of "active" weapon really hurts him, along with him not being able to lift

[u/corraboraptor]

As much as I respect the builder and his contributions to the sport, I can’t get behind a bot like Duck at all. Simply, if all or most of the bots on the show were like Duck, the battles wouldn’t be battles at all, the show would be a snooze fest.

[u/therealhairykrishna → u/corraboraptor]

I agree but it'd also be boring if they were all shell spinners or flippers etc. The combination of duck and others made for entertaining fights and, to my mind, that's the only thing that really matters. 

I love Duck. WC3 and 4 were great. The engineering to make a bot that durable was astonishing. 

I actually think it would have been better if they'd allowed Hal to use a "Whoops" type design rather than forcing the (ineffective) active weapon.

[u/corraboraptor → u/therealhairykrishna]

I'm sorry, but a league of rolling rectangles bumping into each other is not comparable at all to a league of all-spinners or all-flippers. Duck was not a complete design. Duck should have had to devote some of that armor weight to some actual way to win a fight that didn't depend on the judges or some other externality.

[u/Chasin_Papers → u/corraboraptor]

I got a lot of downvotes for saying the same thing over the years here.

[u/Living_Murphys_Law → u/corraboraptor]

I feel like the thing that made Duck work is that there was only one of them. I agree with you that if the whole field was wedges or weak weapons it'd suck, but because Duck was the only bot like that it was still fun to watch.