By the time Advanced Robot Combat Defiance had ended, the veterans thought they'd pretty much seen it all in terms of designs. Returning veterans accounted for three of the four championships won, and the fourth being from a veteran roleplayer. But new designs can always come, and many times from newcomers, as Siphai recalls:

It was around the end of Defiance. viper13black and RFS had decided to start their own RPG league in FRR. There I entered my first bot: Feedback

Siphai would later on join in the ARC community and design more bots, among them Tank.



Now revered as a champion, Tank's roots begin humbly, borne out of frustration.

During Vengance there were a lot of extreme spinners going around, Valkyrie and Extreme Malfuction to name a few, and during that season, I entered some pretty cool, and pretty interesting designs that got destroyed by them. I eventually looked at them and saw how cheap they were. They could sit there with a 19 weapon stat, and just spin and win. I'm pretty sure that if Valkyrie didn't forfeit, it would have crushed everything in it's way...So, I decided to put a stop to all that. Enter the rammers.

One of those prominent rammers was a superheavyweight named Eurypterus. Another rammer was a box rammer middleweight named Tank.



The bot we now know is a heavyweight, but it originally started out as a middleweight. Siphai explains.

In Annihilation, I entered Cosmic Thunder in the HW class, since he was my first Champ, in AI2. I really wanted to enter Tank, so I just stuck him in MW.

Despite an impressive run in Annihilation, losing only to AMP and Barrier, something seemed to be awry with Tank the way it was.

Well just look at him! He looks way too heavy to be a MW, and I honestly thought that the HW class would suit him better...It was going to have just the plow, when I entered it in FRR. But then I saw how many wedges there were, and decided to make a wedge attachment.

As a heavyweight with both wedging and plowing capabilities, Tank set out to do battle in Fantasy Robot Rumble, which in its third season had just opened the doors for heavyweights and superheavyweights, and despite the big names entered in the heavyweight division, such H-Bomb and Stampede, Tank began to make a name for itself, winning fight after fight. With each win, came an exhilirating rush.

I never saw any win as a close win, I just saw it as a win. Every time I won, it was a big rush, that led to my RP for the next one. It pretty much snowballed in to some destructive fights.

The snowballing eventually led to the finals, where a resilient flipper would make its stand, and upset the rush.

My RP in my first [Truth Or Consequences] fight was, what I thought to be, my best RP yet. At the end of the season, that RP was actually voted as 'Best RP of the Season'. And yet, I still lost. As much as I was dissappointed, I couldn't let it phase me. I knew that I could still win in the second round.

And win he did. Tank was crowned the heavyweight champion for the season, but even with such an honor bestowed upon him, Siphai was not content to leave well-enough alone.

After I won, I saw some major flaws within Tank. I saw that it wasn't actually that well equipped to take on wedges. So, I went about redesigning him, to make him stronger, better, immune. I made him a lot more sleek, which I modeled after a sort of Steath Bomber design: flat, and lower to the ground. Also, I made his front 'Underall-like' wedges a lot longer and lower so that they'd be mroe successful. I also surrounded him with wedges, and a wheelguard. He was pretty much untouchable by spinners at that point, due to his high armor stat, and his plus two defense all around.

The new Tank looked even more menacing than before, and was ready to defend it's Giant Nut.



Tank was the bot to beat in the heavyweight division in Fantasy Robot Rumble's fourth tournament. A combination of pride from being the defending champ, plus an abundance of budget bots filling in the ranks of that weight class made Siphai pretty confident in his abilities to repeat. In fact, the top three bots of that division were the same as the last tournament, with Tank and an improved Truth Or Consequences 2 in the championship match again. Once more, it ended going to an Ultimate Final. This time, however, the flipper from Team Blood Gulch took home the nut. Despite the agony of defeat, Siphai doesn't mull too much about that heartbreaker.

Nothing really caused the ultimate loss. It was a 22-23 decision and could have easily went the other way. It was probably just that he got in one too many flips.

The future of Tank is now. Entered in ARC's Revolution tournament, Tank and Team Targeted are trying to adapt that which made them great into a different system: chiefly points distribution, which in turn gives the bots a more equal footing, and no budget bots.

Tank's second design was, what I considered, as perfect as it could get. I really don't think I could do anything to improve it's design. It's stats are the ones I'm not happy with. I can never get just the right mix of that big speed, that heavy torque, and that strong armor. Things have definatly been stepped up since FRR4. Now I have Adrenaline, Striker, Babaganoush, Flaminco and others to contend with. This is an extremely strong HW class, and it will really come down to RP skill. I'm not sure if he can make the finals again, but by God I'll make sure he gets close. I have, all in all, cautiously high hopes.

Many bots, and indeed several champions, have been retired, but for Tank, the door always remains open, ready to steamroll through it and take on whatever comes into its path. What began as the need for revenge evolved into the love of the game and the bloodlust that all designers and roleplayers feel course through their veins. Tank's solid build, and real-life capabilities made it one of the Greatest Custom Bots ever, and still makes it a viable threat in the arena to this day.



Tank is definitely my greatest CFL achievement of all time. It's ranked #14 of best bots of all time, which just goes to show its strength. For me, it was the bot that broke through the shell and really got me started on better robots. It is well and truly a Tank.