P1 is a fighting robot for the TV show BattleBots that's sponsored by SolidWorks. This is the story of our first fight of the 2021/22 season!

We were excited when we heard we'd be fighting Valkyrie, a huge horizontal undercutter from Somerville, MA. It's a team connection that runs deep- there's a couple with one person on P1 and one on Valkyrie, Fred from Valkyrie helped Brandon from P1 get onto his feet in combat robotics, we rented a house together for filming, etc. It was something we always thought could happen but hadn't really believed it would.

From a robot perspective, it was a really good matchup for us. A horizontal is what we want to see from the start- our 40 lb plow is specifically designed to munch hits from the most powerful spinners on the planet. We decided to run our shortest forks, what I called our "wedge fillers". They don't stick up from the wedge at all, and fill the gaps in the wedge to avoid catch-points. To prep, we watched some of Valkyrie's old fights- the one that stuck out the most was Monsoon, where the big British vertical spinner sat on Valkyrie's disk for 2 minutes to try and break it. We would also try to do this strategy. The more current we can force Valkyrie to pump through their weapon system, the better the chances that it breaks.

The fight was the very last of Day 1 of filming, and was filmed at 10:30 at night. Getting the fight in was important because if we didn't fight, we would lose an entire fix day due to not fighting on Day 1. We put the bot in the box and prepared to fight. The robot felt quick and responsive, with good grip.

As the fight started, we box-rushed Valkyrie, according to plan. Surprisingly, they didn't start spinning immediately. We later found out their plan was to try and drive over us and attack from behind. When that didn't work, they spun up and started to try and hit us. The first exchanges went OK, with us knocking Valkyrie around, but losing a rear wheel as Valkyrie landed on top of us. In retrospect, I wish I had either went full-send and driven fully under them or had just sat under their weapon. The in-between style I used at the beginning caused the wheel loss.

As we bashed away, I saw flames shoot from Valkyrie's center. Their weapon speed controller had exploded. Unfortunately at the same time, our drivetrain jammed on the left side. Both robots limped around for 1:30, with us showing more control and mobility for the unanimous JD win. It was the biggest win of our lives. We exchanged hugs with each other, then with the Valkyrie team members- it was time to go back to the rented house together and party.

When we got in the next morning, we were faced with the challenge of repairing the robot. The wedge was banged up badly, with cracks and missing chunks everywhere. Fortunately, it wasn't bent- bends are utterly brutal to get out of AR500. The flipper had been mangled as well from the time we sent it into Valkyrie's weapon. We decided to just put on our second wedge and flipper and work on fixing those subassemblies off the robot. While we were at it, we did a full 4-tire change and re-chained the whole robot.

With help from Valkyrie's welder, we patched the wedge together again, but the flipper was irreparable. The bends in the upper part of the assembly were just too much to un-bend. This would end up being our "trophy" piece for the season, with all the teams at the event signing the lifter as a commemorative token.

We were finally ready for our next fight: stay tuned to see it on BattleBots!