Nor'easter: Robot Combat Club

05/27/2026

🚨🚨 Looking to get started in the world of combat robotics? With just under 7 weeks to go until our next tournament in the 150g fairyweight class, now is a 🚨 GREAT TIME 🚨 to start your robot combat journey and get in on the action.

Check out this video by Just 'Cuz Robotics, as they explain the ins and outs of the sport, what you need to know, and how you can get started!

Here at Nor'easter, we also have a very active Discord group with all our builders. It's a great community of competitors who love the sport and love helping each other grow, and welcoming newcomers. If you're interested in joining, send us a DM and we'll get you the invite link!

Registration for our next event is now open, and there is enough time to start designing something, ordering parts, and building! If you're looking for a super fun summer project, look no further - and get started on your own little 150g machine!

931 likes, 60 comments. "Introduction to Robot Combat & How to Get Involved"

05/26/2026

We're back! Did you miss us? Following two successful tournaments this Spring, Nor'easter will return on Saturday, July 11 at the Lakeville Lions Club for our first summer tournament!

Come join us for competition number five (already! wow!) on Saturday, July 11 as we battle some mighty 150g fighting machines. Exact start times are TBD, but the venue is hosting a breakfast that morning so we're likely looking at an afternoon start, probably around 2pm.

We are going to open registration for twelve (12) machines and fingers crossed we can fill the roster. Will we crown a new champion? Will one of our previous winners be the first to repeat 1st place? Come see us to find out!

To help cover expenses, we are asking builders a straight $20 per robot registration fee. Registration will be open until end of day June 20!

More details on our BuildersDB event page below - register today, spots will be first come first serve and you need to be registered to compete!

We're back! Did you miss us? Following two successful tournaments this Spring, Nor'easter is back for our first summer fling! Ouh la la!It has been a struggle to find a good summer venue for us, with everything in town booking up quickly, and other venues being either a) out of our financial reach o...

05/21/2026

Send in the clowns! It’s time for another competitor profile, and this time it’s fan-favourite Binky! 🤡

Binky made his debut during our second tournament, at Dieppe’s Manga Expo last fall, and came from a desire to showcase a different type of weapon style: hammers. Our inaugural tournament was devoid of any hammerbots, so yours truly here thought it would be a good time to build something new. And to match the energy of all the local cosplayers and pop culture fanatics, why not meet them with some big and silly energy?

And so the idea for Binky started taking shape. Build a hammerbot, sure, but what if we built not just any hammer… but a COMICALLY-LARGE hammer? Could it be done with the 150g weight limitations? We set out to find out and after a lot of CAD design and prototyping, Binky was born and successfully brought to life just in time for his debut last November.

Binky was always meant to be just silly fun, so the clown motif came naturally. Nice, pastel colours and, my personal favourite element: a weapon-lock in the shape of a clown nose that not only completes the look but also prevents the hammer from swinging out unintentionally. The original plan was to include some sort of loud squeaker with the hammer, to squeak on every strike – akin to Team Panic’s attempt with their hammerbot (look it up on YouTube!), but it just hasn’t been in the cards (yet!).

Ok so Binky looks good, that’s been established – but how does he do in combat? Well… not as terrible as we expected, actually, with a 2-4 record. Binky was able to dispatch The Sponge and CTRL-UNIT-ONE at the Manga Expo, before being bested by Chibets and Grawlix. Still, he was rewarded with the love and adoration of the crowd, which is the true reward that he was after. Binky returned unexpectedly to the Gunningsville tournament to fill in a spot left by a last-minute withdrawal, but problems with his hammer servo left him without much of a chance against Benard and Levitate, who were clearly not in a laughing mood, and it was Binky who left with pie in his face after two straight loses.

But fans, don’t despair, Binky will return. He has his eyes (his eye?) set on a Crowd Pleaser trophy that he knows he can win, so expect more of that hilarious hammer until he comes back home with some proper hardware! So if you love Binky, give him a big applause at our next tournament!

05/20/2026

Alright, I'm back. Where was I? Oh yeah, bot profiles.

Levitate good times, come on! 🎵

Team Critical arrived at Gunningsville Court in March, our third tournament, excited to finally take part in the bot breaking action. Coming all the way from Halifax, Nova Scotia, they brought two very interesting machines, a drum spinner named Thunderclap and today's profile: the very unique Levitate.

Levitate was the first lifter bot to take part in a Nor'easter event, and our legacy builders were quite excited. It was a design style that a lot of the team here had wanted to attempted, but nobody quite dove straight into it like Team Critical did. These are tough machines to get right. Engineering challenges notwithstanding, driving and controlling a complex grabbing arm can make for a bit of a coordination nightmare during a fight. Add that to the general stress of fighting in the arena, or rapid pit repairs, these can be some pretty high-maintenance machines.

Still, Levitate gave it a solid try during its first tournament. We all gotta start somewhere, but beginner’s luck wasn’t quite on its side. While he was able to best the clown robot Binky in a battle of attrition, Levitate would lose a close judge’s decision against Punishusher, and eventually get knocked out by Corvid (despite a very impressive grab-and-lift that worked exactly as planned and got the crowd roaring with applause).

While Team Critical likely wanted better than a 1-2 showing, Levitate remains a very well-engineered machine with potential. We have a great community of builders who, after the event, all agreed that they want to see Levitate return – with the first tournament jitters now out of the way, this may be a machine to watch down the road!

Your bot keeps lifting me higher 🎵
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher and higher, higher)🎵

05/15/2026

While we wait for our next event, why not keep some robot profiles going! Lots more bots to talk about!

Today, let's go aaaaalll the way back to October 2025 and our very first tournament: the Battle at the Big Dreams Club. We had an awesome day and there was a lot of fun energy that can only come with a first-time event. We were in uncharted territory: were people going to show up? Were the machines even going to work? Who knows, but we were going to give it a try.

Out of our initial field of 9 machines, a few of them looked a little... well, scarier than rest. And among the scariest was a black and green drum spinner named Vandal.

Vandal may have been finished in haste the night before the event and had to drop some extra armour in order to make weight - but still, folks could tell this machine might have some championship pedigree. Right out of the gate, Vandal started making an impression. In the very first fight in Nor’easter history, Vandal faced off against the T-rex inspired T-Bone and quite literally tore his face off. His path of destruction continued, turning Gouda Riddance into shredded cheese, and disarming Shrugger with extreme prejudice. In the grand final, Vandal met fellow-drum spinner Purple Ankle Eater and both machines danced a violent duet, but it was Vandal that came out on top after the judge’s decision, maintaining a perfect 4-0 record on the day and taking home Nor’easter’s very first gold trophy.

Interesting bit of trivia, but his perfect record almost came to an end when, during a flight home for the holidays, the luggage containing Vandal was lost. Poor machine could go toe-to-toe with the best of them, but Porter Airlines proved a difficult opponent. It all ended well though, and Vandal was returned safely to his constructor with Team Vanquish.

Fast forward to today, four tournaments later, and our ranks are filled with devastating hammersaws and spinners with metal discs. Poor Vandal might seem quite tame now, given how fast the Nor'easter arms race has picked up. But still, his name is etched on the pantheon of tournament winners. He is Nor’easter’s first champion, a special distinction that can never be taken away!

Vandal hasn’t returned to the box since our inaugural tournament, with Team Vanquish instead privileging their newest machine, the devastating Vox Populi (another champion! Folks were right about that pedigree).

Will we see Vandal enter the fray again some day? Who knows – stay tuned, the future is unwritten!

05/15/2026

Since we're on a bit of a hiatus here between events, now is a great time to start looking into building your own 150g combat robot and getting one ready in time for our next tournament (possibly this July)!

Our chief sponsor, FingerTech Robotics, has a lot of great components for sale. While they focus more on larger weight classes, you'll still find lots of super useful parts for 150g fairyweights too - like N10 and N20 drive motors and the holy grail of the 150g class: the Malenki Nano combination receiver and dual ESC. Fingertech is the first to carry this crucial component in Canada - so elbows up, and send some love their way!

Your Source for Competitive and Hobby Robot Parts.

05/10/2026

"Only YOU can prevent lipo fires!"

05/03/2026

Interesting bit of Nor'easter trivia: after four tournaments, not only have we had four DIFFERENT champions (Vandal, Purple Ankle Eater, Vox Populi and Goose), only ONE machine has actually made more than one podium appearance (can you guess who it is?)

That means throughout four tournaments, we've had ELEVEN DIFFERENT MACHINES on the podium! Wow! A testament to how much our club has grown in such a short time, and how many different bots and builders have been able to find victory in our arena!

With a bit of a break between events, now is a great time to get started on building your own 150g fighting robot and maybe finding your place on the podium too!

05/01/2026

We've been so busy since the Place Resurgo Place tournament finished, that we didn't get around to posting our winner's podium until today!

🥇Congratulations to Goose on bringing home the gold! Goose, from Team Receding Hairlines, turned a lot of heads at our tournament in Gunningsville in March, but the podium was just out of his reach after going 3-2 in that event. This time though, a complete redesign saw him go on a perfect 4-0 run, and earn his spot at the top. Congrats Goose - you've joined Vandal, Purple Ankle Eater, and Vox Populi in the pantheon of Nor'easter champions!

🥈Our second place goes to Wrex from Team Drift, another hammersaw (which is a robot with a spinning buzzsaw on top of a striking weapon) that used a unique shuffler mechanism to move around - ditching traditional wheels gave Wrex a weight bonus as per international robot combat rules, and while he did well to destroy his opponents (and our arena), he couldn't best Goose in his final battle. Proving that bigger isn't always better.

🥉And third on the podium, the ferocious spinner Ortho, also from Team Drift. Ortho sent a lot of his opponents flying into the air, and out of the competition, but couldn't quite survive those dangerous hammersaws. Still, a great showing amid some fierce competition - and definitely a robot to watch in future events!

Thank you again to all our builders, fans and volunteers who came out to support us! It was a super fun event, and we can't wait to start planning the next one. Our builders and volunteers need a bit of a breather after two big events in less than 30 days, so no upcoming tournaments for another few months, but we promise - we'll be back in early summer with some more robot destruction.

While you wait, why not get started on your own machine? Send us a note for an invite to our Discord group and we can help you get started!

See you at the next one!

04/30/2026

Fair warning, if you name your robots after birds, they're going to go flying! 🪿🐦‍⬛

Photos by Lilpark Productions