Ink Thorns

Ink Thorns

"*It is born elegant, but bloodthirsty aggressive, it is both a noble son and a butcher, it is the contradiction between beauty and power - Ink thorns!*"
— King of Bots website (translated from Chinese)

**墨刺** (romanized as **Mò cì**, meaning **Ink Thorn**, also translated to **Ink Thorns** or **Inks**) was a robot from Shanghai built by a father-and-son team which competed in the first season of *King of Bots*. In the main competition, it was eliminated in the first round after being quickly immobilized by Knife Legend. Ink Thorns also took part in an end-of-season Rumble, which it lost after also becoming immobilized.

## Design

Ink Thorns was a black and gold robot with a roughly hexagonally-based box-shaped chassis. Its primary weapon was a set of interchangeable cutting discs (ranging from a serrated saw-type disc to a four-toothed blade) mounted on a chain-driven arm, which could swing 180 degrees to lower and cut into opponents. To help facilitate its attacks, Ink Thorns featured a pair of large claw-like wedges at the front, which were used to get underneath other robots and prevent them from driving away before the disc was lowered. Ink Thorns' basic design and color scheme resembled that of a traditional pen nib, while its shape and weaponry also gave it some similarities to the original builds of Dead Metal, a House Robot from the UK TV show *Robot Wars*. However, it is currently unknown whether the Inspiration team were directly influenced by the House Robot's design.

## Robot History

### King of Bots (Season 1)

In the first round, Ink Thorns faced the horizontal bar spinner of Knife Legend. It immediately drove out of the red square and negotiated around the rear of Knife Legend, getting underneath and manoeuvring it across the center of the arena. However, Ink Thorns turned round and drove away from Knife Legend, eventually allowing the latter to hit its left-hand side and send it spinning away. Ink Thorn was left immobilized and with a large gash through its armor; however, Knife Legend short-circuited and also became immobilized during the same hit, resulting in the battle going to a Judges' decision. The Judges ruled Knife Legend victorious, with Ink Thorns being eliminated from the competition as a result.

Ink Thorns also fought in the nine-robot Rumble shown at the end of Season 1. Still bearing the damage inflicted to it by Knife Legend, it competed alongside Blue, Crossfire, Dark Knight, Griffin, Nuclear Bomb, Steel Dragon, The Grubs and Violent Dragon.

Ink Thorns twitched forwards in the opening seconds, but immediately sustained two blows from Blue’s axe as the American machine attacked. It retreated to the center of the arena, before briefly pushing Banger (the bi-wedge part of The Grubs) towards the flame jets. Shortly afterwards, Ink Thorns kept driving across the arena, narrowly dodging another axe blow from Blue in the process. However, it soon lost drive on one side, momentarily lingering over one of the floor flippers; moments later, Dark Knight pushed it and Crossfire into Blue and Nuclear Bomb. Ink Thorns was left completely immobilized following this, but was pushed into Nuclear Bomb and one of the grinders by Dark Knight, before being left next to the overturned chassis of Violent Dragon. After sustaining damage from Steel Dragon, it was eventually left by the corner, where it stood for the remainder of the battle. Needless to say, Ink Thorns was eliminated, and ultimately lost the Rumble to Nuclear Bomb.

## Results

### Wins/Losses

* Wins: 0
* Losses: 2

## Trivia

* Ink Thorns, along with Scorpion, Deep Sea Giant Shark and Suspension, appeared in a teaser trailer for the series.

## External Links

* Ink Thorns on the *King of Bots* website (Chinese, archived)