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Robot Facts

Builder/Driver	Max Morningstar
Team	Roboctopi
Weight Class	3lb
Body Material	TPU Chassis with Carbon Fiber plates
Weapon	Vertical Spinner (AR600)
Weapon Drive	BadAss 2315-1480kv Brushless Motor
Drive	Repeat Drive Max from Repeat Robotics
Power	3S Lipo
NHRL record	5-3
Lifetime record	14-11

Overview

Actual Size is a bigwheel vertical spinner robot built by Max Morningstar. Coming off of an educational but competitively lackluster 2024 season with his bigwheel horizontal spinner Jot, Morningstar sought to take some of the experience gained from Jot and translate those hard-won design lessons into a more traditional (and far more competitively viable) bigwheel design.

Actual Size's first design debuted in December 2024 at the MIT CRC House Battle and finished a respectable 2-2. Sporting a hubmotor weapon and repurposed wheels from Morningstar's January 2024 version of Jot, the design was given the designation V0 because it lacked many of the trademarks of subsequent iterations.

Actual Size V1, which competed in the June 2025 NHRL event, would borrow multiple design elements from the highly successful 12lb bigwheel SLAM PLAN. Most notably, Actual Size V1 sported a hollow weapon shaft that allowed the whole robot to run on a single electrical system, ran its primary weapon with gears instead of belts, and had an optional "stanced" configuration to aid in taking on opponents with horizontal weapons. Actual Size V1 also marked the debut of Morningstar's signature "composite bigwheels", which blend 3D printed TPU with spring steel cleats in order to offer superior traction and durability over more traditional UHMW bigwheel designs. The V1 iteration earned Morningstar a solid knockout win over opponent Reflex, but held some glaring design flaws that revealed themselves in tough losses versus Pipeline Punch and TurboFIEND, bringing the robot's lifetime record to 3-4.

Actual Size V2 debuted at the Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025 event, and saw Actual Size swap away from a hollow weapon shaft but lean further into SLAM PLAN's all-or-nothing style of bigwheel design by fully exposing both drive motors. The composite bigwheels also returned, sporting significantly updated geometry and a slightly larger diameter. Actual Size V2 would fight across two competitions in September 2025, putting up relatively disappointing performances in both. Design issues across the new weapon shaft, new wheel design, and newly discovered issues with Actual Size's TPU outriggers contributed to back-to-back 1-2 showings, bringing Actual Size's lifetime record to 5-8.

Actual Size V3 was created to specifically solve many of the issues of Actual Size V2. With a machined Misumi weapon shaft, new UHMW outriggers, and a refined wheel geometry, Actual Size V3 stormed to a 4-1 finish at the November 2025 NHRL event, getting knocked out in the quarterfinals by Project LiftOff. Since the event took place the day after Halloween, Morningstar dressed up as a milkman (reprising his appearance at the October 2024 NHRL event, where he had dressed as a milkman while competing with his robot Jot) and printed Actual Size's components in white instead of orange to add some thematic cohesion with his costume. Actual Size V3 and its white look would appear one more time in December 2025 at the MIT CRC House Battle event, where it racked up 5 wins across 7 matches and placed 4th overall out of a field of 31 robots. With a strong finish to the year, Actual Size wrapped up 2025 with a 14-11 record across 25 fights, with 5 KO wins and a solid 56% winrate.

Actual Size V4 will debut at the March 2026 NHRL event, with slight design tweaks to enhance robot durability and modularity. It will once again sport an orange and black color scheme.

Actual Size's name and angry eyes are both references to HUGE, the robot that pioneered the modern bigwheel vertical spinner design. The name itself comes from the song She's Actual Size by alt rock group They Might Be Giants. Morningstar prefers the live version of the song, which he grew up listening to on CD with his family. That version of the song can be found on YouTube here.

In December 2025, Actual Size participated in what is believed to be only the second recorded mirror matchup between bigwheel vertical spinners when it fought Colossus at the 2025 MIT CRC House Battle. According to Jonathan Schultz, builder of the original bigwheel vertical spinner HUGE, the first occurrence of this was a match between Captain Jack Spinnah and Straddle in 2022. Actual Size lost to Colossus by TKO after its battery was ripped out of its chassis.

Fight History

MIT CRC House Battle - December 2024

Actual Size debuted at the inaugural MIT CRC House Battle, an event hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Combat Robotics Club. Fresh off of competing with Jot at the October 2024 NHRL event, builder and driver Max Morningstar had only a few weeks to turn around a design for a then-unnamed 3lb bigwheel robot with a vertically spinning weapon.

In addition to the time constraints he faced, Morningstar (who had rather spontaneously decided to attend the MIT event) was low on cash and so designed the robot to be as cheap to produce as possible. To accomplish this, the robot was designed almost entirely out of 3D printed TPU, with the only metal components being the weapon blade and two aluminum side plates onto which the drive motors and wheels mounted. The exception to this was the UHMW bigwheels, though here too Morningstar was able to save money. The bigwheels that Actual Size used at the MIT event were actually the exact wheels that Jot had fought with in the January 2024 NHRL event, albeit with refurbished cleats and being driven by gears instead of axle-mounted on the drive motors.

The decision to reuse January Jot's wheels was as much driven by cost as by frustration. One of the biggest recurring failure points on Jot's several iterations were the wheels, so rather than try and develop a new design Morningstar chose to instead use the only wheels he had on hand that had proven their durability in combat. This simplified the challenge of designing the new robot considerably.

While the chassis and wheel designs were able to be crafted directly off of the lessons learned from Jot, one new challenge that Morningstar had to surmount was the issue of powering the vertical spinning weapon and securing the two chassis halves of the robot. For this, Morningstar looked to his other 2024 beetleweight robot, Lemon Vinaigrette, which had used the RDY-5536 Hubmotor from Just Cuz Robotics in the September 2024 NHRL event. Morningstar had been impressed by the hubmotor's ease of use and effectiveness, and saw the motor as a way to seamlessly integrate a weapon system into the robot that could also act as an anchor between the two chassis halves. With the RDY-5536 selected, Morningstar was able to complete what he referred to as the "V0" design of Actual Size, assemble the robot, and eagerly set off to his seventh and final combat robotics competition of 2024.

Actual Size vs Flycut

By random chance, Actual Size was one of four robots selected to fight in Round 1 of the MIT event's double elimination bracket. This smaller round (necessitated by the number of competitors in the tournament) would see Actual Size pitted against the 2WD vertical spinner robot Flycut. However, Flycut was unable to be ready in time for the fight and so Actual Size picked up its first win of the day by forfeit, advancing into Round 2 of the Winner's Bracket.

Actual Size vs Basics

Actual Size's first real fight of the day was against the fearsome 2WD drum robot Basics, from Donald Sung of Team Pandamonium. The fight began with a series of weapon-on-weapon hits, as Donald kept his drum firmly pointed and Actual Size and Morningstar, attempting to snipe the drum's belt, obliged by driving into the weapon repeatedly. This exchanges were fairly even until a particularly nasty exchange shattered the magnets in Actual Size's hubmotor, killing its weapon. The repeated strikes also ending up caused a solder connection to break on one of Actual Size's drive sides, meaning that it had only a single wheel active. With half drive nonfunctional and no weapon, Actual Size tapped out, taking its first loss of the day and dropping into the Loser's bracket.

This fight would end up being pivotal for future Actual Size iterations. The fight gave Morningstar two key insights: firstly that as a driver he wanted to be able to confidently go weapon on weapon with opposing bots, and secondly that a bigwheel hubmotor would not be conducive to this driving style. The logic behind this was that the additional energy of an oversized bigwheel blade, which are generally larger in diameter than most vertical weapons, stopping suddenly (as often occurs during hard weapon-on-weapon strikes) meant that there was a good probability of such a magnet-shattering failure occurring again in the future. Actual Size would never again run with a hubmotor weapon.

Actual Size vs Power Outlet

Actual Size's third match of the day was against Power Outlet, a newly built robot designed by a member of MIT's Combat Robotics Club. Actual Size had been seemingly fully repaired after its fight with Basics, and both robots made it to the arena, but Power Outlet was unable to turn on due to unknown electrical issues. As a result, Actual Size took its second forfeit win of the day and advanced to Round 3 of the Loser's Bracket.

Actual Size vs Hat Trick

Actual Size's fourth fight of the day was against Hat Trick, a classic midcutter horizontal. Morningstar was excited for the fight, since it marked an opportunity to gather data around how Actual Size's bigwheels performed against a horizontal. Heartbreakingly, upon reaching the arena it became clear that half of Actual Size's electronics were nonfunctional, and that Actual Size's weapon and half of its drive were once again disabled. Not wanting to give up a chance to fight, Morningstar chose to run the match anyway, limping Actual Size around the box as it was knocked around by Hat Trick. Despite its wheels holding up fairly well against the horizontal, eventually the solder joints on the functioning drive side also failed and Actual Size was counted out for the KO. The loss to Hat Trick pushed Actual Size out of the loser's bracket and ended its first event, with Actual Size leaving having achieved an even record of 2-2.

NHRL June 2025

With a substantial 6 month break between the MIT event and driver Max Morningstar's next planned competition of the June 2025 NHRL event, Morningstar had an opportunity to do an extensive redesign of Actual Size. This redesign focused on three things: Actual Size's bigwheels, the weapon stack, and the ever-present challenge of connecting the two halves of Actual Size's chassis.

The redesign of the bigwheels for Actual Size had been a long time coming. Originally, Morningstar had based the wheels for his first bigwheel robot Jot on the cleated UHMW wheels of High Steaks], a bigwheel vert by veteran builder Mike Jeffries. The traction that the spring steel cleats on these wheels provided were excellent, but the durability of these cleats was lacking. An excellent example was in Jot's bracket-ending fight against Sir Spinny at NHRL in Janaury 2024, where almost every single cleat was stripped off the robot due to repeated strikes by Sir Spinny. Morningstar tried to provide more protection for the cleats by sandwiching them between thinner pieces of UHMW for Jot's October 2024 NHRL event, but these wheels proved far too fragile (as seen in Jot's brutal loss against Kamino in the qualifying rounds). Morningstar liked the traction of these cleats, but realized that the geometry needed to adequately secure them would be highly challenging to accomplished with a 2D UHMW part. This revelation pushed Morningstar to the development of Actual Size's composite wheels. Made of 3D printed TPU, the wheels were designed to offer superior protection for the cleats while hopefully delivering just as much durability as UHMW.

It is worth briefly pausing to speak about the 12lb robot SLAM PLAN. Driven by Brendan Steele, SLAM PLAN had an incredibly dominant 2024 season, winning Motorama, the October NHRL event, and the NHRL Championships. Seeking to replicate this success (while simultaneously being wary of the "cargo cult" phenomenon that can quickly creep into combat robot design), Morningstar selectively incorporated certain elements of SLAM PLAN's design into Actual Size. These elements included using a hollow weapon shaft to run the whole robot off of one electrical system, making the weapon gear driven instead of belt driven, and having two chassis configurations to allow for "stanced" wheels when fighting horizontal spinners.

The decision to emulate these elements of SLAM PLAN guided the redesign of the robot's weapon stack and chassis connection. Shaft supports were selected to act as the fastening point between the two chassis halves, since they would not obstruct the wires being routed through the shaft. The choice to use shaft supports would prove to be disastrous in the debut of the new Actual Size design, dubbed "V1", at the NHRL June 2025 event.

Actual Size vs Reflex

Actual Size's first fight of the day was against Reflex, a 2WD eggbeater vert. Going into the day, the non-stanced configuration of Actual Size was having drive issues, so Morningstar had to run the stanced configuration. This was not a major concern, since Reflex was running a standard FingerTech Beater Bar, which did not have the reach to hit Actual Size's chassis even while stanced.

The robots were initially somewhat evenly matched until Actual Size was able to snipe the weapon belt off of Reflex. For the rest of the match, Actual Size was able to knock Reflex around the box until its top plate popped off, exposing the robot's internals and prompting a tapout. This started Actual Size's day at 1-0 and allowed it to advance into the Cusp.

For driver Max Morningstar, this fight marked what he considered to be his first "true" win in combat robotics, meaning a win in which a robot he had fully designed went into the arena fully functioning, against a fully functioning opponent, and disabled that opponent through inflicted damage. Considering Morningstar had first competed at the January 2023 NHRL event (with Deep Cut), this meant that finding this first "true" win took 859 days to achieve.

Actual Size vs Pipeline Punch

Actual Size's second match of the day was against Pipeline Punch, a fearsome robot from the midwestern United States. Unlike Reflex, Pipeline Punch had enough weapon reach to hit the chassis of Actual Size even when non-stanced. Despite this, Morningstar didn't change up his strategy, choosing to focus on delivering weapon-on-weapon hits in an attempt to remove Pipeline Punch's weapon belt, or damage its weapon motor.

Like the previous fight, the first few exchanges between the two robots were relatively even. However, unlike the previous fight, the devastating blow came when Pipeline Punch was able to remove one of the "snowman noses" that Actual Size used to keep from tipping onto a wheel. These snowman noses are designed to be ablative as necessary, but what Morningstar hadn't realized is that the new bolts holding on Actual Size's wheel had a smaller head than the previous revision, which meant that there was now nothing retaining the wheel onto the drive axle! The next hit from Pipeline Punch removed the wheel entirely, prompting a swift tapout from Actual Size and pushing it into the Bubble at 1-1.

Actual Size vs TurboFIEND

It was soon determined that Actual Size would be facing Golden Dumpster-winning TurboFIEND for its chance at a spot in the bracket. TurboFIEND, which at the time was the #2 ranked 3lb robot at NHRL and was being driven by the highly skilled Dima Papasian, once again had a smaller weapon diameter than could reasonably strike at Actual Size's chassis, so Morningstar was cautiously optimistic at his chances during the fight despite his opponent's pedigree.

The resulting fight was a bloodbath for Actual Size. Right off the bat, Morningstar's inexperience driving the robot showed through when, after TurboFIEND hit a tight turn and gyro'd onto its head, Actual Size was unable to capitalize and land a hit on the vulnerable robot. This paled, however, in comparison to the structural failures beginning to occur on Actual Size. The shaft supports that held the weapon shaft had no way to laterally constrain the weapon axle, which meant that every time the chassis halves were reconnected Morningstar had to "eyeball" how much room to give the weapon so that it could spin freely on the axle. In the prep for the Bubble fight, Morningstar over-widened the gap between chassis halves ever so slightly, resulting in the overlap between the weapon gear and its driving motor gear to be insufficient. This led to the motor gear, made of aluminum, quickly slipping against the TPU weapon gear, melting its teeth and disabling the weapon soon after the match began.

With no weapon, TurboFIEND was free to begin attacking Actual Size without fear of reprisal. These attacks quickly began shredding Actual Size's wheels, as well as the TPU "legs" that enable Actual Size to drive. Once the wheels were sufficiently damaged, TurboFIEND was able to get the chassis low enough that it could land a direct hit on the aluminum plate into which the shaft support for the weapon axle was mounted. This hit broke the tension on the shaft support and the weapon axle pulled free, bisecting Actual Size and bringing a swift and spectacular end to the fight. Actual Size's brutal loss against TurboFIEND ended its day, and marked the second time in as many competitions that Actual Size had lost to a robot from Team Pandamonium. The loss knocked Actual Size out of the event and it finished the day at 1-2, bringing its lifetime record to 3-4.

Rumble: Chonkiv vs Everybody

Left with one intact and fully functional Actual Size copy, Morningstar decided to enter it into the "Chonkiv Rumble", a special event where the 30lb Golden Dumpster-winning shell spinner Chonkiv would face off against a variety of robots from other weight classes.

While being loaded in, many of the rumble's participants opted to stay a health distance away from the menacing Chonkiv. Morningstar, never one to shy away from a challenge, planted Actual Size right next to the daunting opponent. When the rumble started, Morningstar immediately drove Actual Size directly into Chonkiv's weapon, and was promptly hurled clear across the arena in two pieces, ending its participation in the rumble and bringing an end to the final V1 Actual Size.

Despite being thrown all the way across the cage, Actual Size was able to retain both of its wheels, confirming that Morningstar had found an effective solution for mitigating wheel loss even when the anti-tip snowman noses were removed. Aside from a similar weapon axle failure to the one that had occurred against TurboFIEND, it initially appeared that Actual Size had emerged largely unscathed (bisection notwithstanding). However, months later, while examining Actual Size's parts for reuse in Actual Size V2, Morningstar realized that striking Chonkiv had noticeably deformed Actual Size's 1/4" AR500 weapon blade! It served as a strong reminder that 3lb components are no match versus 30lb hardware.

Barnyard Buzz Brawl 2025

Actual Size's dramatic loss to TurboFIEND at the June NHRL event made it clear that Actual Size V1's shaft support method for holding the chassis halves together were woefully inappropriate. Recognizing a change needed to be made but unwilling to to invest in 3D machined parts, Actual Size's designer Max Morningstar decided to revert back to having two electrically isolated chassis halves and to use a steel shoulder bolt as the weapon axle. The bolt would be locked rotationally on one side of the chassis with a simple aluminum part and would use a locknut to secure the other side. Since the bolt threads were longer than the shoulder diameter, the width between the chassis would be fixed, allowing Morningstar to avoid the gear misalignment that took Actual Size's weapon offline in the fight with TurboFIEND. In addition to the weapon shaft changes, Morningstar significantly redesigned Actual Size's composite bigwheels, better utilizing 3D geometry to make the wheels both larger and lighter, and formalized the addition of a plastic washer to keep the wheels secure even if the self-righting cones were removed. Last but not least, for weight purposes the drive motors were moved outside of Actual Size's chassis, doubling down on the all-or-nothing vulnerable design style pioneered by SLAM PLAN. This new iteration of the robot would be called Actual Size V2.

It is worth noting that Actual Size V2 also had a stanced configuration like Actual Size V1. However, due to the new wheel geometry causing more sag than expected, the stanced configuration was never used for fear of embedding the weapon into the arena floor.

Actual Size V2 debuted at the Barnyard Buzz Brawl event hosted by growingSTEMS at the St. Mary's County Fair in Maryland in September 2025. The competition was a 16-bot double elimination bracket, with fights lasting two minutes instead of the typical three.

Actual Size vs Chromatic Aberration

Actual Size's first opponent in the Winner's Bracket was Chromatic Aberration, a hubmotor vert with a large weapon diameter. After facing squirrely driving in June 2025, ahead of the match with Chromatic Aberration driver Max Morningstar turned his transmitter settings down significantly, to make his drive more controllable. Under limited testing this control adjustment seemed appropriate, but as soon as the match with Chromatic Aberration began it became clear Morningstar had severely overtuned his limiting. Actual Size barely made it out of its starting corner, and without being able to drive effectively Chromatic Aberration was able to pin the robot, strike Actual Size's weapon motor, and dislodge its top plate to the point where the battery came loose, prompting a match stoppage and TKO loss.

Aside from the transmitter issues, it became clear during this match that the changes to Actual Size V2's weapon shaft had not fully fixed the issues from Actual Size V1. While the robot did not break in half, the side of the chassis held in place by the locknut on the weapon axle rotated significantly over the course of the fight, revealing yet again that friction was not an appropriate method for securing a bigwheel chassis rotationally. While Morningstar was able to immediately increase his transmitter sensitivity after the match, changes to the weapon shaft would not be possible until a later iteration of Actual Size.

Actual Size vs Lifeline

Having lost its first match, Actual Size dropped into the Loser's Bracket where it faced Lifeline, an overhead saw robot. With no weight for top armor, Morningstar was forced into a strategy of driving aggressively to keep Lifeline on the back foot and prevent giving it an easy opportunity at an overhead attack on Actual Size's chassis.

Despite doing a good job of keeping Lifeline reeling through repeated strikes, Actual Size took several chassis shots from Lifeline's saw, including one strike that cut through the balance leads on one of Actual Size's batteries. Had the strike been millimeters to either side of where it landed on the chassis, it would have either punctured the battery or severed its leads, killing half of Actual Size's chassis. Near the end of the match, Actual Size was able to remove Lifeline's saw, though by this point Actual Size's TPU legs had taken significant damage and began to fail completely, allowing Actual Size's chassis to rotate around its wheels rather than driving forward. With both robots heavily damaged the fight went the distance and the judge's ended up narrowly deciding in Actual Size's favor, with Control being the dominant factor.

Given that the match only lasted two minutes, it is Morningstar's opinion that had the match gone on for an additional minute the damage to Actual Size's TPU legs would have either severely crippled the robot's ability to show meaningful control in the final minute or perhaps even forced a tapout.

Actual Size vs Pinevictus

With its first win of the day secured, Actual Size advanced in the Loser's Bracket to face Pinevictus, a fearsome 4WD eggbeater vertical spinner. This match would prove to be brutally short for Actual Size. The TPU legs once again failed, but this time the failure was due not to the legs themselves but instead due to the single screw that mounted the legs into Actual Size's chassis. This meant that after taking some quick and violent strikes from Pinevictus the legs were able to flex outward, fouling Actual Size's wheels and effectively crippling its drive. Subsequent strikes on a barely moving Actual Size caused a top plate to come loose and a battery to fall out, forcing another match stoppage and TKO. This ended Actual Size's run in the competition at 1-2, and brought its lifetime record to 4-6.

September Smackdown at RCE 2025

The weekend following the Barnyard Buzz Brawl event, Actual Size competed in the September Smackdown at RCE even in Massachusetts. The tight turnaround between events meant that the extensive redesign needed to correct Actual Size's chassis rotation issue could not be completed ahead of the competition. In fact, the only substantive change ahead of the September Smackdown was adding several extra screws to Actual Size's top plates, to prevent the battery ejections that occurred at the previous event.

The September Smackdown event had a modified qualifier setup, where each bot was given two qualifier fights. A win in either would guarantee the bot a place in a single elimination bracket later in the day. Qualifier fights would last two minutes, while bracket fights would last three.

Actual Size vs Beeble

Actual Size's first opponent of the event was Beeble, a servo lifter. With matchups announced prior to the event, Beeble's driver had known they were facing Actual Size and as such designed a TPU cowcatcher configuration to better corral Actual Size. They also ran the fight with a hefty top armor package.

The fight ended up being very one-sided. While the top armor, in addition to Beeble's already dense TPU chassis, meant that Actual Size was unable to do substantial damage to the robot, Beeble experienced servo issues with its lifter that left it frequently stranded in awkward positions. As a result, Actual Size was able to bully Beeble around the arena and even successfully executed some pins on the control bot, a rarity for a bigwheel to achieve. The judges gave the fight to Actual Size, which started the day at 1-0.

Actual Size vs John Undercutter

Actual Size's next qualifier opponent was Aaron Fan's John Undercutter, an iconic Team SawBlaze shuffler with a horizontal spinner known to the community as the "CEO of Undercutters." Despite being a horizontal, due to the ongoing issues with Actual Size's stanced configuration driver Max Morningstar was forced to run Actual Size's standard configuration.

After a strong win to start the day, it was Actual Size's turn to be on the losing end of a one-sided match. John Undercutter was able to deal hefty damage to Actual Size's wheels, even ingesting one of them briefly (though it was able to be removed by a referee and the match continued). Amidst these damaging strikes, as a side effect of the new wheel geometry both wheels also ended up shearing their own gears off along their 3D printed layer lines. Shortly after, John Undercutter managed to nick Actual Size's weapon gear, shearing it clear off the weapon motor axle. With no weapon and no drive, Actual Size tapped to take its first loss of the day, finishing the qualifier round at 1-1.

Actual Size vs Silent Spring

Since it had won one of its qualifier fights, Actual Size was entered into the event's single elimination bracket where it promptly faced another Team SawBlaze shuffling undercutter in Jamison Go's Silent Spring.

The fight played out much as the previous match had. Damage to the wheels caused the wheel gears to shear and disabled Actual Size's drive quickly. Silent Spring even ended up briefly ingesting one of Actual Size's wheels just like John Undercutter had. With no drive, Morningstar tapped and ended Actual Size's day at 1-2 for the third event in a row, bringing its lifetime record to 5-8.

NHRL November 2025

After two competitively disappointing events in September, areas of improvement for Actual Size were clear. Aside from the obvious need to prevent the chassis from rotating, a better outrigger design and updated wheel geometry were needed to prevent the gear failures that had occurred at the September Smackdown.

To fix the chassis together, designer Max Morningstar selected a 12mm Misumi shaft with machine key holes and threaded ends. The chassis would be secured together using bolts into the shaft, and fixed together with the machine keys fitting into matching 2D aluminum parts on each chassis half. The TPU legs were replaced with UHMW outriggers fixed to the same mounting plates as the drive motors. Once again, to save weight the weapon motor was moved outside of the chassis to join the previously exposed weapon motors, allowing the overall chassis size to shrink and returning the mirrored chassis look of Actual Size V0. As part of the wheel and chassis changes, Actual Size's stanced configuration was also once again able to be used. Morningstar called this new revision of the robot Actual Size V3.

Actual Size V3 debuted at the November NHRL event. Since the event took place the day after Halloween, Morningstar dressed up as a milkman (reprising his appearance at the October 2024 NHRL event, where he had dressed as a milkman while competing with his robot Jot) and printed Actual Size's components in white instead of orange to add some thematic cohesion with his costume.

Actual Size vs Chaos Upright

Actual Size's first match of the day was against Chaos Upright, a shuffler with an enormous vertical spinning weapon. Going into the fight, driver Max Morningstar knew Chaos Upright could easily hit Actual Size's chassis, but also knew that it had an exposed weapon motor. With this in mind, he planned to fight the robot head-on, hopefully taking the weapon offline before it had a chance to do real damage to Actual Size's chassis.

The fight ended up being challenging for both robots. Chaos Upright was able to execute some solid pins, using its larger than average size to neutralize Actual Size's typical height advantage. Both Actual Size and Chaos Upright struggled from weapon spinup issues, the former due to an extra spacer adding increased friction to the weapon stack and the latter due to a loose connection to the weapon motor popping in and out. By the end of the match, Actual Size's weapon actually briefly seized and wouldn't spin up, so to dislodge it prior to showing weapon functionality Morningstar drove the robot deliberately into the face of the house bot, which broke the friction and allowed Actual Size to demonstrate full weapon functionality. The fight went to the judges, who awarded Actual Size the win by just a single point, with both judges returning 9-8 scores.

Actual Size vs Jet Lag

With its first win of the day Actual Size once again advanced to the Cusp where it faced Lars Elliott's recently unretired robot Jet Lag. Jet Lag was a hubmotor vert kit robot and two-time NHRL runner up, though the bot hadn't been run by Lars since 2023. Despite the strong archetype advantage, Morningstar recognized Lars' driving abilities and knew this match would be far from a free win.

Actual Size ultimately ended up winning the match handily, forcing a tapout after Jet Lag sustained heavy damage. After the match, Lars stated that he felt like there was "nothing I could do" against Actual Size - the archetype difference between the two robots, coupled with Morningstar's aggressive driving, kept Jet Lag destabilized and earned Actual Size its second win of the day and a birth in the Eliminations bracket.

Actual Size vs Dimachaerus

Actual Size's first bracket match was against Dimachaerus, a 4WD vertical split disk spinner. Dimachaerus had attended NHRL Championships in 2024, and had brought a secret bigwheel configuration to the event: in place of a wedgelet, driver Beckett had added a hook-like TPU attachment designed to aid him in controlling Actual Size by allowing him to snag its wheels.

The match ended up going the distance. While Dimachaerus' hook attachment proved itself useful, allowing Beckett to execute several solid controlling maneuvers against Actual Size, Dimachaerus sustained significant damage over the course of the fight and spent much of the fight upside down. The judges gave Actual Size the win, improving its record to 3-0.

Actual Size vs Drumder Child

Actual Size next faced Nate Franklin's robot Drumder Child. Like its match against Jet Lag earlier in the day, Actual Size ended up dominating the match, disabling Drumder Child's weapon before tearing off its top plate and ripping its battery clean out. The win brought Actual Size to 4-0 on the day, advanced it to Quarterfinals, and earned Morningstar his first NHRL Primetime appearance.

Actual Size vs Project LiftOff

Actual Size's Quarterfinals Primetime opponent was the meltybrain spinner Project LiftOff, an iconic NHRL mainstay and one of the few robots that has competed annually at NHRL since its inception in 2018. In addition to being between Actual Size and a berth at the NHRL Championships, Project LiftOff had just freshly knocked Actual Size's bigwheel beetleweight brother Colossus out of the event, ripping one of its wheels off in the process. The match marked the first time Actual Size V3's stanced configuration was used, since every other match that day had been against vertical spinners. Ahead of the match, Morningstar went back and forth with several other drivers about how he should approach driving against Project LiftOff, with some drivers recommending he slowly approach the meltybrain and others stating that a box rush would be the better option.

Ultimately, Actual Size ended up going with a middle ground approach that set it back early, rushing towards Project LiftOff at the start of the match but then stopping short, allowing Project LiftOff to get spun up to full speed. After several weapon-on-weapon hits, the weapon gear on Actual Size was sheared off. The fight footage isn't clear enough to tell exactly how this happened (Morningstar suspects a hit from Project LiftOff deviated Actual Size's blade and caused it to strike the gear, though Project LiftOff could also have gotten a lucky shot on the gear itself like John Undercutter did at the September Smackdown event) but regardless of the cause Actual Size's weapon was disabled for the rest of the match.

Shortly after this development, Project LiftOff got hung up on the arena wall and was forced to use its unstick. Morningstar realized that if he could position Actual Size between the house bot and Project LiftOff he might be able to prevent the unstick, but this realization came too late and Project LiftOff was able to get free.

The remainder of the fight was fairly benign from a viewer's perspective but had a lot of unseen nuance from both drivers. For Actual Size, Morningstar realized that if he could get Project LiftOff to deliver a strong strike against Actual Size's wheels they might fling themselves back onto a wall to get stuck and counted out. As such, Morningstar kept rolling Actual Size above Project LiftOff, simultaneously showing aggression in the best way that he could. Project LiftOff, also recognizing this possibility, chose to spin down to the minimum RPMs needed to still allow them to move around the arena, since they knew they would win the judge's decision on damage so long as they could make it to the buzzer while keeping control and aggression relatively equal. Ultimately, this is exactly what happened, and after two minutes of dancing around each other the fight went to the judges who ruled in favor of Project LiftOff. Actual Size was eliminated from the competition with a 4-1 record, its strongest event showing to date.

After judge's decision was revealed, the Project LiftOff team revealed that their battery leads had nearly been ripped out of the battery during one of the more vicious strikes between the two robots, meaning that if Actual Size's weapon had kept working it likely would have been able to KO Project LiftOff and make it to both the semifinals and NHRL Championships. However, despite falling short, Morningstar was extremely proud of how the competition had gone. In a single event Morningstar and Actual Size made it further than they ever had in a combat robotics event, with two solid knockout wins alongside two JD wins and a solid three minute match against a veteran competitor. With this one event Actual Size's lifetime record went from 5-8 to 9-9, bring Actual Size back to a 50% winrate for the first time since its first match in December 2024.

MIT CRC House Battle - December 2025

Actual Size's last fight of the year would be the 2025 MIT CRC House Battle. One year since it had debuted at the 2024 MIT CRC House Battle, Actual Size had undergone 3 major design revisions, fought in 18 matches, and racked up 9 wins. The only design made ahead of the competition, which took place on the MIT campus in Massachusetts, was to swap the weapon gear for one slightly thinner in order to increase the clearance between the gear and the weapon itself. With plenty of spares from the November NHRL event, driver Max Morningstar kept the robot's white and black color scheme for an additional competition.

The House Battle's format was a standard double-elimination bracket, with robots seeded randomly.

Actual Size vs Chucky

Actual Size's first fight of the day was against Chucky, a hubmotor horizontal brought by a student from The Hewitt School in New York, which had several students competing at the event. Since its opponent had a horizontal spinner, Morningstar opted to run Actual Size's stanced configuration.

Chucky ended up having some weapon spin up issues which Actual Size capitalized on to good effect, getting the robot stuck on the arena wall twice in quick succession after Chucky opted to use its unstick. With a strong win to start the day, Actual Size advanced in the Winner's Bracket at 1-0.

Actual Size vs Stress Concentration

Actual Size's next fight of the day was against Stress Concentration, a hubmotor vertical spinner. Actual Size's driver Max Morningstar is good friends with the driver of Stress Concentration Tom Jaeger, and both drivers had previously been members of TRC. Despite having attended many competitions together since January 2023, the two drivers had only gone head to head one time, in an unofficial grudge match between Jaeger's robot Indubitably and Morningstar's robot Deep Cut in the fall of 2023. Since Deep Cut had been counted out after losing a wheel (due to Morningstar not tightening the wheel hub's set screw enough) Morningstar was eager to even up his record against Jaeger. With Stress Concentration having a small weapon diameter, Morningstar opted to swap to Actual Size's standard configuration for the match.

The fight was mostly one-sided. Actual Size knocked Stress Concentration around the box, ultimately disabling its weapon and parts of its drive. With a JD win Morningstar avenged Deep Cut, and Actual Size earned its second win of the day, advancing in the Winner's Bracket at 2-0.

Actual Size vs Flashfreeze

Actual Size's next fight was against Flashfreeze, a hard-hitting horizontal midcutter spinner from WPI. Morningstar switched back to Actual Size's stanced configuration and got ready for what he knew would be a challenging matchup.

The fight effectively ended after the first 30 seconds. After a few minor changes, the two robots came together in a devastating weapon-on-weapon hit. The strike bent Actual Size's chassis uprights and pulled Actual Size's weapon motor clear out of its mounting screws. The energy of the strike inverted Flashfreeze's weapon belt, disabling its weapon as well. The two robots limped around until the match ended, at which point the judge's gave the match to Flashfreeze. Actual Size took its first loss of the day and dropped into the Loser's bracket with a 2-1 record.

Actual Size vs Silent X

Morningstar had brought two copies of Actual Size to the event, one in the robot's standard configuration and the other in the stanced configuration. The damage taken in the match with Flashfreeze retired the stanced configuration for Actual Size V3 permanently, which was bad news considering Actual Size's next opponent was yet another hard-hitting horizontal spinner in Jamison Go's Silent X.

In conducting the postmortem of the match versus Flashfreeze, Morningstar realized the hit that totaled Actual Size's stanced chassis was a hit where Flashfreeze was able to get good bite onto Actual Size's weapon, the force of which was transferred through the weapon stack and into Actual Size's nutstrip uprights (which bent severely). If Actual Size could avoid taking a similar hit from Silent X, it would increase its chances of winning dramatically. To accomplish this, Morningstar drew inspiration from Sir Slicey, a 4WD split disk vertical spinner that had just won the November 2025 NHRL event. Sir Slicey's weapon is unique in that the split disks sit at an angle rather than parallel with the ground, giving the robot a unique weapon geometry. In the November 2025 NHRL event, Sir Slicey had fought and beaten Caldera, the pinnacle of beetleweight horizontal midcutter spinners. Coming out of the match, Caldera's driver Glenn Boxell stated that Sir Slicey's weapon geometry had reduced Caldera's bite in weapon-on-weapon hits and therefore had prevented Caldera from getting a weapon-breaking strike on Sir Slicey. Using this as inspiration, ahead of his match with Silent X Morningstar chose to stance only half of Actual Size's chassis, which meant that his weapon would sit at a slight angle. Morningstar hoped this would give him the edge he needed to get revenge on Jamison Go for eliminating Actual Size from the 2025 September Smackdown event with Silent Spring.

Actual Size's "wonky" weapon worked like a charm. While Silent X went the distance and kept moving until the end of the match, it sustained a number of hits and was not able to meaningfully damage Actual Size at any point. With a JD win, Actual Size got its second revenge win of the day and improved its record to 3-1.

Actual Size vs Gh-Astley

Actual Size's next opponent in the Loser's Bracket was Gh-Astley, a hubmotor midcutter horizontal. Actual Size had never fought Gh-Astley before, but like Stress Concentration Morningstar had fought and lost to Gh-Astley's driver Jonah back in 2023, with Morningstar's Deep Cut losing to Jonah's Rick Roller at the 2023 May NHRL event.

Once again running the wonky half-stanced configuration, Actual Size got an early lead in the match when it got Gh-Astley stuck twice on the arena wall. To be sporting, Morningstar voluntarily freed Gh-Astley from being stuck the second time (the first time Gh-Astley had opted to use its unstick) and almost regretted it - Gh-Astley was able to mount something of a comeback despite having its weapon down, pushing Actual Size around the arena and even executing some successful pins. However, Actual Size was able to once again get Gh-Astley stuck on the wall again and wisely chose not to free the robot a third time, earning a 3rd revenge win by KO that brought Actual Size to 4-1.

Actual Size vs THE WALL PT2

Actual Size's next fight in the loser's bracket was against THE WALL PT2, a shuffler robot from Team Pandamonium. Typically a hammersaw, THE WALL PT2 had been forced to run as a lifter or hammer due to MIT restrictions against robot archetypes prone to causing battery fires. For this match, THE WALL PT2 was run as a hammer, and Actual Size returned to its standard unstanced configuration.

The fight ended up being incredibly close. While Actual Size was able to land a number of shots against THE WALL PT2, the robot's extra armor (on account of its shufflers) meant that these attacks were largely ineffective. On the other side, THE WALL PT2's hammer was unable to do real damage to Actual Size, but it proved to be the perfect height to grab Actual Size's chassis, leading to a number of pins. Both robots went the distance, and while the JD was extremely close Actual Size was ultimately declared the winner. The deciding factor was that, near the end of the match, one of the screws holding together a shuffling mechanism on THE WALL PT2 ended up backing out, disabling half of the robot's drive and giving Actual Size a slight edge in the damage category.

It is Morningstar's belief that had THE WALL PT2 been able to use its true hammersaw configuration, it would have triumphed over Actual Size. However, with the win Actual Size improved its record to 5-1 and advanced to the Loser's Bracket Semifinals.

Actual Size vs Colossus

Actual Size's Loser's Bracket Semifinals opponent was Colossus, the only other beetleweight bigwheel competing at the House Battle. After taking an early loss, Colossus had worked its way through the loser's bracket. Now, it stood between Actual Size and Morningstar's first ever podium finish.

The fight was short and sweet. While initially back-and-forth, Actual Size was significantly outreached by the larger weapon on Colossus, which managed to rip into the top plate of the weapon side of Actual Size's chassis, punching a hole clean through the weapon ESC and pulling Actual Size's battery out of the chassis, prompting a match stoppage and TKO. The loss ended Actual Size's day at 5-2, just shy of a major milestone for the second event in a row. However, much like the loss at the November NHRL event, Morningstar could not be upset by the loss. Actual Size had more fights and more wins in a single day than ever before, and more than any other combat robot Morningstar had ever driven. With a strong finish to the year, Actual Size wrapped up 2025 with a 14-11 record across 25 fights, with 5 KO wins and a solid 56% winrate.

Statistics

Info

Rank: #59 in 3lb.
Last 5 fights: WWWWL
Current streak: L1 (0 KOs/KO'd)
Longest winning streak: 4 (2 KOs)
Longest losing streak: 2 (2 KO'd)
Avg fight time (seconds): 106.0

Record

Year	Events	Fights	W	L	%	KOs	KO'd
2018-19
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025	2	8	5	3	0.625	3	2
All-Time	2	8	5	3	0.625	3	0

Events

Date	Fought as	Reached	Place	Fights	W	L	KOs	KO'd
June 7, 2025	Actual Size	Prelims Rd. 3		3	1	2	1	2
November 1, 2025	Actual Size	Quarterfinals		5	4	1	2	0

Opponents

Opponent	Fights	W	L	KOs	KO'd	Last Meeting
Jet Lag	1	1	0	1	0	November 1, 2025
Drumder Child	1	1	0	1	0	November 1, 2025
Reflex	1	1	0	1	0	June 7, 2025
Chaos Upright	1	1	0	0	0	November 1, 2025
Dimachaerus	1	1	0	0	0	November 1, 2025
Pipeline Punch	1	0	1	0	1	June 7, 2025
TurboFIEND	1	0	1	0	1	June 7, 2025
Project LiftOff	1	0	1	0	0	November 1, 2025

Click "Expand" to see this table.

Full Fight History

Date	Opponent	Round	Result	By	Points	Fight Length (s)	Video
June 7, 2025	Reflex	Prelims Rd. 1	Win	Tapout	1.00	58	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=EX-817841f2a88c404c&tournamentID=nhrl_june25_3lb
June 7, 2025	Pipeline Punch	Prelims Rd. 2	Loss	Tapout	-1.00	31	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=EX-4dee37b15b964834&tournamentID=nhrl_june25_3lb
June 7, 2025	TurboFIEND	Prelims Rd. 3	Loss	Tapout	-1.00	69	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=EX-eb119828caec4ba7&tournamentID=nhrl_june25_3lb
November 1, 2025	Chaos Upright	Prelims Rd. 1	Win	Judges Decision	1.04	180	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=EX-82b56e1bd9944129&tournamentID=nhrl_nov25_3lb
November 1, 2025	Jet Lag	Prelims Rd. 2	Win	Tapout	1.46	107	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=EX-71be54dc7499400b&tournamentID=nhrl_nov25_3lb
November 1, 2025	Dimachaerus	Round of 32	Win	Judges Decision	1.23	180	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=W-36&tournamentID=nhrl_nov25_3lb
November 1, 2025	Drumder Child	Round of 16	Win	Tapout	1.26	43	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=W-50&tournamentID=nhrl_nov25_3lb
November 1, 2025	Project LiftOff	Quarterfinals	Loss	Judges Decision	-1.02	180	https://brettzone.nhrl.io/brettZone/fightReview.php?gameID=W-57&tournamentID=nhrl_nov25_3lb

* Forfeits before the 2024 season are not counted in a bot's W-L record. Forfeits from 2024 and on are counted in a bot's W-L record.

For more information on how points are calculated for rankings, click here.