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19. Again? (Ankle Biter vs. F5, Season 3, Middleweight)

Fast forward to 1:11 for this moment.� Ankle Biter has great potential to be a strong robot, and in fact, I believe it's in season 5 that he actually manages to win about 7 matches in a row before being KO-ed.� But prior to Season 5, Ankle Biter had to have been one of the most unlucky robots in Battlebots history.� Season 1, he made the elite 8 and have an easy win against Pressure Drop.� After all, Ankle Biter was too small for Pressure Drop's weapon to work well and he was much faster and more aggressive.� But then in a stroke of bad luck, Ankle Biter got his wedge stuck under the wall and was considered knocked out.� Fast forward to season 3 where Ankle Biter was not as dominant, but it certainly had a lot going for it.� After losing its saw blades, all it had to do was push F5 around.� And in a stroke of bad luck, Ankle Biter moved over the kill saws and rather than landing on its front or bouncing onto its back where it could still run, it landed perfectly on its rear end, getting KO-ed in a completely random manner.

18. Out with the Old and in with the New (Minion vs. Atomic Wedgie, Season�2, Superheavyweight)

Fast forward to 0:48 to see this moment.� It's really quite simple.� Minion in season 2 was the reigning superheavyweight champion and Atomic Wedgie was a newcomer.� Yet in this fight, in the only season where Atomic Wedge was even half-way decent, Minion got completely owned.� Atomic Wedgie started the match by ripping Minion's wedge off and ended it by getting Minion to drive himself into the wall and wind up on his back.� Not much else to say about this moment, other than how cool it is to see a bot get flipped without use of a flipping arm or the hazards, really.� Finally, this is the last superheavyweight moment on the list.� I told you they were boring.

16. Toro, He's Not (The Matador vs. M.O.E., Season 4, Heavyweight)

The Matador was a much more boxy and honestly, less well-designed robot than Toro or T-Minus, but it still got the job done from time to time.� M.O.E. on the other hand, up until this point, was known for a brief insert shot during season 2 in which his seemingly wax armor was shredded to pieces by the killsaws during a fight with Biohazard.� So basically, the match-up seemed to favor The Matador, if only because of the legacy his older and younger brothers had.� Well shortly into the fight, M.O.E. brought out his new weapon of a spinning blade and just started tearing Matador up, first taking off a back wheel, then moving around to the front to take out a front wheel.� You'll see this�moment at 1:14 in the video, with further results of the damage at 1:33.� M.O.E. took out the hyped up Matador, probably the only bot in the Toro family that never stood a chance at winning the tournament.

97. Erik Reichenbach (Survivor: Micronesia - 5th Place)

Erik is probably the biggest Survivor fanboy ever to play the game. I mean sure, you've had Survivor fan geniuses like Todd, Rafe, and Rob C., but Erik is the first real fanboy we've had on the show. He basically seemed to follow everything he saw on television to the letter and had absolutely no idea how to really play the game. So while Todd was a fan of the game, Erik was simply a fan of the show. His idolization of Ozzy tended to be annoying at times, but it provided for some funny moments on the show. Erik's fanboyish ways definitely helped improve the season in terms of quality moments, as he seemed to be deliberately playing to the cameras at times, and if he wasn't, he simply had a way about him that allowed for him to just be entertaining.

Still, Erik can't possibly rank too high on this list, given just how pathetic and lame of a player he was. He road the coattails of the favorites early on, begging and pleading them to keep him around and even going so far as to hope he could be an "honorary juror." He was extremely naive and got caught in several lies as he told players one thing and did another or simply told different things to everyone. In the end, he got called out on his naive ways and wound up making the single most stupid move in the history of the show by giving away his immunity necklace at the final 5 and getting himself voted out in the process. For that, Erik winds up at only 97.

And the bamboo pole is his weapon.

And now for my final Micronesia rankings:

The Players


134. Natalie Bolton (Survivor: Micronesia - 4th Place)

I'll give Natalie credit. She may have been extremely lame for the first ten episodes of the season, but those last few were epic and amazing. She was a psychopath who relished in the idea of blindsiding a guy who completely trusted her, and let out some psychotic emotions when talking about flossing with his jugular. After that, she talked about slapping Erik around for betraying her, and she was just a crazy cat for the end of the season. She was probably one of the best maipulators we've ever seen, as she managed to convince Jason that, after being hated and nearly voted out only one day before, he didn't need to play his hidden immunity idol. And to top THAT, she managed to convince Erik to give her the immunity that he'd won in order to keep herself in the game. Add to that her jury speech, in which she basically hit on Parvati, and Natalie earns a spot outside of the bottom 100.


7. Cirie Fields (Survivor: Exile Island - 4th Place & Survivor: Micronesia - 3rd Place)

At the beginning of the show, I saw Cirie and I thought "There is no way in hell she makes it past the first two episodes." but then Cirie surprised me. Day one, she was afraid of leaves and she was the weakest member of her tribe. Did she get voted off? No. She voted off the strongest woman in the game instead. Next tribal council, did she get voted off? No. She got her fat, boring friend voted off instead. NEXT tribal council, did she get voted off? No. She sided with the women and took out one of the biggest physical threats in the entire game (probably more of a threat than Terry). Cirie was a fan of the show and a brilliant strategist who managed to get all the way to the final four before Terry made the stupid move of voting her out over Danielle. She, along with Fairplay, is one of the two players I think did everything they could and made no bad moves, and just got screwed by stupid players. She was also the mastermind behind the Courtney triple-play boot, which was one of the more complex strategic maneuvers we've seen on the show. All in all, Cirie was a nice person and a smart one to boot, and she made Exile Island great.

In Micronesia, she was an even better player, controlling the entire game from almost day 1. She wanted Yau-Man gone, sensing that he would be a threat, and he was gone because of it. She was able to control the game in order to eliminate many of the stronger men while keeping herself under-the-radar so as to avoid getting voted off as a threat. She teamed up with Amanda and Parvati early on and worked with them all the way through the merge. She managed to turn the tides against Ozzy earlier than expected in order to get him voted out. She then came up with the plan that Erik actually fell for and gave up his immunity necklace to. Cirie positioned herself perfectly in order to win, and had it not been for James' evacuation, the season would've ended with a final 3, and she would've had an extremely good chance of winning the entire game. She is easily the best player never to win, having overcome her physical shortcomings and making it to the final episode in two seasons.


238. Amanda Kimmel (Survivor: China - 3rd Place & Survivor: Micronesia - 2nd Place)

I've already listed a lot of boring girls on this list, and Amanda definitely fits in with them. You can tell she's a former beauty pageant contestant, given the way she was so nice to everyone when they were face to face, but when they weren't stuck together either at camp or on reward, she couldn't really care less about anyone but Todd. Honestly, Amanda is probably the least worthy girl from China's post-merge to be called back for All-Stars, because even Denise and Jaime, who I like less, were more interesting. All Amanda did was break down in the last four days of the game, blowing the easiest strategic move of all time to lose to COURTNEY of all people in the final 3.

That being said, Amanda was a slight breath of fresh air from the horrendous female casting of Cook Islands and Fiji, where female players would sit back and let the men control their games. She was in a close alliance with Todd, and she exhibited a fair amount of control in that alliance. She was also responsible for enacting the plan to oust James and his idols, which SHOULD have been a no-brainer. Still, no reason for her to have been anywhere near Fans vs. Favorites.

Speaking of which, Amanda winds up just above Amber on my list, given that she was basically the same player. She was a complete failure in terms of any real gameplay and she basically ruined the first half of the season with her Ozzy lovefest. Showmances, for the most part, make for irritable television, and honestly, I can't stand watching two people suck face. Amanda started to gain some respect towards the end of the season, after she blindly stuck with Parvati after the Ozzy blindside and blindsided Alexis with the hidden immunity idol. But then she threw all that respect away when she started getting pissed at Cirie at the final 4 tribal council, just like in China, and started sobbing at the final 3 tribal council. She hadn't changed one bit, and her jury performance was pathetic, saying, like in China, that she played an honest game, yet when questioned about what she actually did, she apologized, rather than owning up to her game. She beats out Amber solely because while Amber ruined All-Stars by winning, Amanda at least lost to a better player.


81. Parvati Shallow (Survivor: Cook Islands - 6th Place & Survivor: Micronesia - 1st Place)

Going back over this list, I realized that I listed Julie much lower than I did for Parvati, when they were very similar in how they played the game. Parvati was a flirt who got herself some serious power by not playing into the rift between men and women on her tribe. Instead, she worked with both sides and was basically in control of Raro until Candice showed up. And even then, Parvati was still in a good position. She was a strong competitor physically, as far as women go, and she was even enough of a threat that she was targetted ahead of Adam.

The reason she ranks so much higher than Julie though, is because while Julie came from a season where 9/10 of the merged tribe were in my top 10, Parvati came from a season where the casting was poor and the merged tribe was half lame, and thus she was a shining light in the season. She even wound up being one of the few likable Raros.

Following Cook Islands, Parvati showed up in Micronesia for a second chance at the million dollars. It's ironic how the two times we've had All-Star or semi-All-Star seasons, the winners have been 6th place brunettes that no one really felt deserved to be in the cast. However, I do have a great deal of respect for Parvati in terms of how aggressively she plays the game. She's one of the best players of all time, and one of the few women that actually orchestrates moves and could still go far in any given season. She formed the couples alliance, which docked her some points, but she proved to be quite dominant in the season regardless. After most of the best players were eliminated from Micronesia, she finally gave us a break and took out the arrogant Ozzy, providing for one of the best tribal councils of all time.

Parvati completely worked the jury, screwing over quite a few of the other players (and it's only natural that the men would be angry at a strong woman kicking their asses). She owned her game, and one of the main reasons why she only fell a few spots on my list was because of just how much worse the season would have been if Amanda had won it all. Parvati, as a great player in her own right, saved us from a crappy ending to an otherwise halfway decent season. It was also nice to see a woman win the game after the four-man streak from Exile Island to China.

The Merged Tribe


5. Dabu (Survivor: Micronesia - Alexis, Amanda, Cirie, Eliza, Erik, James, Jason, Natalie, Ozzy, Parvati)

Dabu winds up in the top half of my merged tribe rankings mainly because of the ten players involved, there was only one real dud (Alexis) and even if I hated several of the players, I have to admit that they made for great television. The merged tribe was like that of Pearl Islands in that almost every vote, save for the first vote and the last two were blindsides with players having no idea what hit them. There will never be a tribe to give as many awesome reaction shots as Dabu did. We got to watch Amanda become a likable hero once more, only to wind up as the same dumb, idiot that she's always been. Cirie was the mastermind we knew and loved, and Ozzy got his comeuppance. Jason made two of the stupidest moves in the history of the show and Erik went right ahead and one-upped him. Even Natalie wound up being interesting as a diabolical schemer at some points. The season doesn't rank higher though, because of those people that I hated and because of the ever-so-boring Alexis Jones (she even has a boring last name!)

The Winner


11. Parvati Shallow (Survivor: Micronesia)

Parvati really wasn't that bad of a player, and had she not gotten so many lucky breaks that would've otherwise screwed up her game, I would've ranked her much higher, at the top of the list perhaps. She wasn't playing against complete idiots, although they were certainly in abundance. Most of the favorites, with the exceptions of Fairplay and perhaps James, had some strategic ability, as did Tracy. Parvati took out the threats and worked her magic on the jury to get the necessary votes in order to win the game. She cut her allies loose when she needed to, and wound up with very little spiteful blood on her hands.

In terms of why she ranks in the bottom half of my list, it's mainly because, as I mentioned, she's one of the luckiest winners of all time. Jonny Fairplay quit on day 3, but if he hadn't, he would've teamed up with Jonathan's alliance and Parvati would've been the first player booted from the season. Despite landing on the lesser tribe beach with fewer strong men, her tribe wound up winning every immunity challenge. Jonathan was injured early on and had to be evacuated, which ended the alliance between him, Eliza, Alexis, and Natalie, allowing for Parvati to scoop up the fan girls. Chet's injury led to Ami being unable to take control of Malakal, which resulted in her having trouble down the road, when she would've been a threat to Parvati at the merge. Kathleen quitting prevented Jason from throwing the immunity challenge to help Tracy, which may have hurt Parvati's game as she hadn't had enough time to work over the girls after Jonathan's departure. And finally, James' elimination meant that the proposed final 3, which would've included Cirie, was cut to a final 2, thus eliminating anyone Parvati would've split votes with. Still, she's better than players who got even luckier, and she did play one helluva strategic game.

The Season


9. Survivor: Micronesia (Jonny Fairplay, Mary, Yau-Man, Mikey B, Joel, Jonathan, Chet, Kathleen, Tracy, Ami, Eliza, Ozzy, Jason, James, Alexis, Erik, Natalie, Cirie, Amanda, Parvati)

For a while there, this season was going to be at the very bottom of the list. I mean, there's only so much I can stand of watching some of my favorite players destroy their reputations while the new players that I actually like get voted off. The first ten boots eliminated nine entertaining players (in one way or another) and one who was ignored. At that point, I almost gave up on the season, and after Eliza was booted, I was only a few steps away from putting Micronesia at the worst season ever. But then the blindsides started happening and I started to enjoy the remaining players and find entertainment in them. Seeing Jason get fooled by a stick is good. Seeing Jason get fooled by the other eight players is better. But seeing Jason survive at the expense of arrogant Ozzy was priceless, especially since Jason was the next to go. Alexis' blindside was great, given how boring she was, and Erik's dumb move made the season for me. Unfortunately, those four episodes, and the first four episodes too, I guess, only made up half of the season, and the other half was just disappointment after disappointment, right up until Cirie lost right before the final again. And so, Micronesia ranks JUST below the halfway mark on my list.