The last tournaments show a renewed interest in JROBOTS thanks to the great new server that hosts the matches provided by Frank. New authors upload their creatures in the arena and some of them are promoted: Five, this month.

First of all, some comments about the Veterans' League. They are written by Samuel, the promoter in the recent past of the JROBOTS prizes and subtle interviewer of some of the strongest players.

"The January competition was an important one.
Here I have some my comments for the Veteran League.
The important robots met at the same time. The robots that survived December challenge in the Veterans League and veterans coming back (from "Shoot to kill mission" in Cadets League) met at the main arena to decide who was going to be the genuine veteran.
At the very top there was no surprises.

Singles:
Tango, Starkle and IonStorm took the lead over the rest. Tango again proved its killing power winning 93% of the matches!
Starkle and Tango were more than 80% effective.
The list of robots killing most of the time follows:
Hellfire, Stately, Headhunter, Bohan, DOOM, StrangeMatter, RoboOlm, KillerBees, Mouth, FlameBall, GulleFjun, Shrike. 15 Great robots!
Please notice great performance by new robots Hellfire and StrangeMatter.
Updated and equipped with bag of new tricks will be a permanent fixture in the Veterans League now. Being more than 70% effective Hellfire burned many robots on its way to the top. RoboOlm and Shrike had a good performance too.

Doubles:
Tango, Starkle and IonStorm were at the top as expected.
Stately, DOOM, Bohan, Headhunter, StrangeMatter, Mouth, Hellfire, KillerBees, FlameBall, Bosozoku, Jimbo followed. Bosozoku and good old Jimbo joined the group pushing down RoboOlm, GulleFjun and Shrike. We have 14 robots here.

Team:
No one knows how to play the team challenge as good as Tango and IonStrom. The efficiency gap over the rest is 20%! Bohan was third. Good player!
This is a game for the mature boys only and the list follows:
Tango, IonStorm, Bohan, GulleFjun, Mouth,Starkle, FlameBall, DOOM, StrangeMatter, RoboOlm, Hellfire, KillerBees, Stately. 13 robots.
I regret that Headhunter cannot join the group due to the internal error. Also Teddybear and 845bytes was very close to stay in the league. With the Hellfire and StrangeMatter around fights will be tough now!
My special kind words go to the 845bytes. This very symmetrical robot fights by the same rules in all modes. And this makes him quite effective! Here is a word of encouragement for some robots. It is very easy to implement "Do not shoot to the friend rule" – see examples done by Leo. It would allow many good robots e.g. CounterStrike to become Veterans

   Samuel"

Thank you Samuel for your comments!

On the cadets' side there are a lot of good (and bad for someone) news.

Five new jrobots succeeded in being promoted. They are: Genuine, GenuineA, Jwpazz2, Ender, AronsRobot01. The last two especially seems to be quite effective, if further improved, among the veterans, thus the February challenge is going to be very interesting with 37 teams in the Cadets' League.
The other jrobots promoted are: DirtyCoward, Sprate, Ajax, Kraft, Platoon, Shark, MarukoV4, Snutteplutt, Ladybug, Vampire, Dragon, DeadDuck, Janeway, CounterStrike, DarkSoldier. A special mention for the last two: CounterStrike for the gained percentage and DarkSoldier for its particular tactic (if you saw DarkSoldier fighting, you can imagine where its name comes from).
The survivors among the cadets are: DarkDestroyerV04, T900, Carnage, DirkGently, Satellite, Shank, Jwpazz, FoxSierra, GiovyVbis, AlessioV3, DarkDestroyer. They are going to met the following demoted veterans: Leech, NeoBot, Phalanx, Stinger, Touche, MaudDib, 845bytes, Ciaky, ELECTRON, NumeroOtto, RauaRoobert, Berserk, Yoda, Bizarro, Teddybear. The last one is the only jrobots written by a girl that I'm aware of, so I hope it is going to come back among the veterans soon.
Finally, the removed jrobots are: Jerobot, ZBot, Ro1, Ro, T100. A quite large number for the usual standards, but they are all new jrobots and takes a lot of time to novices to reach the requested skills to survive. The next challenge will be easier for them.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the February 2006 JROBOTS Challenge (February 4^th-25^th 2006) aka Cadets Attack!

The January Challenge ends now. The official results will be available within a few days, please be patient!