BBB Ant / BAnt rules update for April 2023!

As mentioned at Cider Box last weekend, we have a BBB Ant & BAnts rule update: bbb.gd/antrules

We’re excited to see in 2023 there are more pub / casual events across the country and more organisers try non-AWS rules, so it felt like a good time to finally make the shift away from 4" cube.

150g full combat ants
Instead of a 4" cube, we are requiring Ants fit in a 200x200mm starting square (that will be on the arena floor) with no overhangs (no height limit apart from the arena ceiling!) - this is so they can still go down the pit and fit in our fairly small arena :slightly_smiling_face:
You can of course continue building your ants to a 4" cube size if you wish to take it to AWS or Ant Freeze.

2v2 BAnts (plastic ants)
We’re increasing BAnts starting square from 125x125mm to 200x200mm as well and bringing the weight limit from 175g down to 150g too (to be considered plastic 2v2 antweights) We will however be stricter on acetate usage next time and would be open to a discussion about allowed materials as spinners are already getting very scary, so let us know your thoughts on that!

With this we’ve updated our website’s guide page bbb.gd/guide to new feature a rules tab for each weight class with links to rulesets for every public UK event, so you can be sure that your robot is legal for an event you want to attend!

We welcome your feedback, we want to make stuff as clear and easy as possible to get building and fighting :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

Imagine the answer is probably: “let’s see how it goes”

But I wonder if in the long term it might be worth moving TPU to the banned materials list like in most US plastic ant categories? :thinking:

Makes for a virtually indestructible material for armour without sharp metals as an option for weapons. And for weapons removes all risk of big spinners doing as much damage to their weapon as the opponent is my thinking

On the whole tho some great changes. Down with the cube !

1 Like

Ooo should look at the US plastic ants list again, we haven’t tweaked our material lists since 2021 when we first made it based on some CIRC rules I wanna say! I think for now as there’s TPU discs, peeps should try more tpu armour too, mine held up in principle! (Just other stuff didn’t!(