G’day again everyone!

It’s been over a week now and I’ve only just found myself coming down from the highest of tabletop gaming highs that is AdeptiCon… I have so much to tell you about all the things I saw and did during one epic week, where tabletop gaming and hobby enthusiasts from all over the world descended upon the city to attend the event at the newly refurbished and expanded Baird Centre in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

However, I’ll start with the most important bit - what it was that drew me there in the first place:

The AMG Star Wars Armada World Championship!

That’s right - Armada Worlds! Which was, by all accounts, the BIGGEST ONE YET in the ten years that Armada has been running. This was also the FINAL Worlds event hosted by AMG, as support ceases on completion of the current tournament season in May this year. It’s possible these two things are related, but it’s still impressive nonetheless.

This year’s crowd saw players from Australia, Canada, Germany, Poland, UK and USA. Even though some of the usual other countries from Europe were not represented, there were still 147 players for day one of the World Championships, with many more players present in the hall if you include the other games happening at the same time (Sector Fleet competitions and casual games take us to around 160 players total on the Friday!). Not bad for a game about to lose support…of note: AMG’s other castaway, X-Wing, also had a huge showing, with somewhere in the realm of 200 players showing up to Worlds! Everyone was amazing, especially the judge team headed up by Dennis (@RulesProblems). Seeing all of the people and content creators I’d only met once or just heard/seen/played online was epic.

The official Armada events during the week were as follows:

Arrival - Tuesday 25th & Wednesday 26th March

“You may start your landing” - General Veers

I departed Halifax in the early AM to arrive in Milwaukee on the Tuesday arvo - well before any real con shenanigans - so I got the lay of the land and had a look around, locating the venue, bars, restaurants, etc. in the area. This was worthwhile, if only to find the one decent coffee shop right next to my hotel (Marriot Fairfield Inn and Suites).

On the Wednesday I checked out the Milwaukee Public Museum in the morning (definitely worth a look!) and then did a thorough walkthrough of the Baird Centre to check out where everything was and to take a peek at the vendors that had opened up. I met up with one of the other Aussies, Sean, and we decided to set up shop in the Grand Ballroom free-play area for a casual practice game and a cheeky beer while loitering around the content creator meet n greet on the top floor.

We then headed off to the Armada Pre-Party at Major Goolsby’s Sports Bar across the road, and it was awesome to meet everyone and say g’day before the following day’s Fleet Action! One of the Wisconsin locals, Big Rob, organised it and we all had a blast! By then, all the registration queues had long died down back at the venue and we went straight through to go collect our con badges and loot with no wait time.

Prep Tourney - Thursday 27th March

“I Don’t Know, Fly Casual” - Han Solo

AdeptiCon proper began on the Thursday and the Armada Prep Tourney was the first main event, with 60 players rolling in with a mixture of casual fleets, back-up plans or their Worlds lists to get more reps in with four solid rounds before the main event.

I opted for a simple CIS 3-ship squadless Mar Tuuk fleet, so I could enjoy pushing some big ships around the table and rolling a lot of dice, saving brain power for the following day.

The Prep Tourney was a lot of fun, meeting new people for some great casual games to get into the ‘Armada Mood’. In the four games, I played David Huber, Justin Preyer (@LaughFuzzball), Dennis Backofen and I even met a new fellow Aussie, Scott Bellamy, and we played the last round over a couple of beers.

Overall, I went 1-3 for 19 TP and 43rd overall, but had a tonne of fun in no-stress tourney. Top spot was taken by Drew Hunnicut (@TxHunniBadger) with an Imperial Moff Jerry Double-ISD squadless fleet going 4-0 and 36 TP… could that be some foreshadowing, I wonder…? 😅

Final standings and lists can be found on T4 here: 2025_ARMADA_WORLDS_PREP

Worlds Day 1 - Friday 28th March

“Not to worry, we’re still flying half a ship!” - General Kenobi

The next day everyone was rolling in early for the first day of the Armada World Championships!

I brought my CIS Mar Tuuk fleet that I had been messing with for the last 11 months or so, with an added surprise of a Rapid Launch Bays (RLB) 4x Hyena bomb! I’ll write some more detailed batreps on these games in a follow-up post, but I will say that I played four exceptionally fun games with some very highly skilled players (and all-round great blokes).

First up was a tough match up against a 2024 Worlds top 8 player from Minnesota, Andy Graber (@Arcwelder), where I barely scraped by with a 42-160 4-7 loss against his Imperial 2-ship and brutal squad ball.

Next game was up against Dan Hrobar (@DanSolo) from Florida (I think, sorry if I got that wrong mate) and his Imperial ISD double-Raiders fleet. I came away with a pretty convincing 400-157 9-2 win after a solid 4x Hyena RLB bombing run and Providence double-arc took down his ISD with somewhere around 31 total damage in one activation and managed to finish the two raiders for a table.

After lunch, my third game was up against Jerzy Frączek from Poland and another Imperial 2-ship fleet with and ISD, Demolisher and a very effective fighter screen. I moved in quick with my providence to cut off his Demo and stop his Gozanti farming two volatile deposits in the corner, delivering another brutal Hyena strike and double-arc shot into Demo, then up to the Gozanti. He scored a lot of objective points on this, so I managed only to scrape a 272-231 6-5 win.

My final game actually took place on the stream table! The Ion Radio team were keen to see if a GAR fleet would make it to day 2, as it wasn’t looking good at that time. So they could get it on camera, Nick Larson (@UnskilledFirstOfficer) was called up to the table and paired up against him for round four was, of course, yours truly! Nick had a GAR Bail Organa fleet with a Venator, two Consulars and a chunky DeltaKin-led Y-Wing squad ball. It was an excellent game playing my Asteroid Tactics, and I almost had a really good shot at his Venator, but it wasn’t enough to really make an impact. He cleaned up my fighter screen early and focused on defending his Venator from the Hyena bomb while it got away. I lost that one 53-215 3-8, which also got Nick across the line into day 2.

Playing on the stream table was a fantastic experience and so well done. If you’d like to have a watch, the link is here on the Ion Radio YouTube Channel.

After that, the Aussie lads cheering from the sidelines had a beer waiting, and I enjoyed the end of my Armada Worlds journey at the end of day 1 going 2-2 for 19 TP overall. The minimum for day 2 ended up at around 25 TP.

Final standings and lists can be found on T4 here: 2025_ARMADA_WORLDS_D1

Worlds Days 2 & 3 - Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th March

So I didn’t quite reach the goal of going 3-1 or the stretch goal of making it to day 2, but that’s completely fine, as I had the best time and there were so many things I wanted to see and do!

In the meantime, while I was off painting minis and checking out other games (more on that later), day 2 continued on with a strong representation from Imperials (19) and Rebels (18), followed by CIS (7) and GAR (4) fleets. Raddus (Blue Fish) was the most common Admiral with six appearances, followed by Ackbar (Red Fish) and Moff Jerry at five each, then Agate and Sloane at four each. It was also impressive to see a scattering of others, such as Commander Sato, Leia Organa, General Grievous and old General Rieekan.

Day 3 was epic and the top 8 battled it out hard for three solid rounds between Jerry, Sloane, Romodi, Ackbar, Raddus and Mar Tuuk. There were some epic plays both on and off stream, with only one winner coming out the other end after a huge game against Raddus - Jay Hughley (@jaypalmany) with the Imperial Moff Jerry Double ISD with NO squads!!! UNREAL.

There’s so much more to unpack on that, but I’ll leave it there for now as others across Discord, YouTube and Podcasts are all punching out their post-match analyses, reports and interviews.

Final standings and lists for day 2 can be found for on T4, here: 2025_ARMADA_WORLDS_D2 and for day 3, here: 2025_ARMADA_WORLDS_D3

All of the Armada Worlds streams can be found on the YouTube channel for Ion Radio HERE.

Conclusion

Once again, I had an absolute blast playing Armada at AdeptiCon and it wouldn’t have been possible without everyone who attended, the amazing judge team, Ion Radio’s epic stream crew, the AdeptiCon organisers and, of course, my lovely partner, Kate, who was my very own cheer squad the whole time!

I have so much more to say about AdeptiCon and all things I got up to, including a full run down of the whole experience from initial announcement in 2024, to bookings, attending, and everything in between! Not to mention all of the side events and the Armada after party…

Cheers and thanks so much for reading!

- Rosco