(List is located at the bottom of the article)

It’s come to my attention that the Armada community is looking for answers. Why Obi-Wan? Isn’t Obi-Wan bad? How on earth did you sneak into the top eight, a hair’s breadth from the World Champion title, with trash like this? And as loathe as I am to be perceived in the public eye, I am hopeful that this experiment inspires others to unshackle themselves from the yoke of Point Defense, of Maarek and Jendon, of smug Lando and fell Moralo, to escape from under the baleful eye of Gial Ackbar himself. Perhaps if you put together some weird shit and get lucky enough, you too can lose on camera to a better player and forfeit your chance at the #1 spot!

My list originated as a reactionary pivot – after Jason Hughley smoked me on round four, day two of Worlds last year with his double ISDs, and a number of players in my area began trying out Expert Shield Techs with Point Defense and Early Warning System for themselves, I had to put Easter Fleet (the Ackbar MC30 + CR90 swarm I’ve ran on and off since 2019) on the shelf and try something new. Squadrons were always an option, and the correct option, but flying a swarm of ships has brought me much greater joy since the release of the Hammerheads. So I pivoted – into an iteration of my Worlds list, though featuring Tarkin, and ran it to solid success at the NOVA Open and the East Coast Championship qualifiers. However, it struggled significantly into Draven builds, as no amount of token generation was sufficient to protect me from Chris Fritz’s piles of Z95s (rest in peace).

Following a series of practice games against Chris trying to figure out what the missing sauce might be against heavy squads, my co-conspirator and Raddus wunderkind Drew Sackett offered a 4 A.M. suggestion:

Ki-Adi-Mundi's words of wisdom

Jason & Drew

And so, we were off to the races.

The trick with making squadless work varies significantly – I couldn’t fly a double-large squadless build off the cuff any more than I expect most players could pivot hard into seven-ship. The most important part of understanding how swarms fight against squadrons, however, is appreciating the exact measurements you need to keep your ships out of the firing range of both speed three squads (about ¼ of the way into range 5) and speed four ships (just beyond range 5), which has availed me incredibly against Lando Calrissian for both Easter Fleet (Ackbar) and the Monarch Fleet (C70s). 

The additional tenet of flying MSU squadless is understanding when to dive in and when to break away – and as skilled as I might be at the timing of this for small ships, this past weekend was a showcase of how awful I am at timing the maneuvers (and lack thereof) on large ships. Keeping smalls pointed at specific angles makes keeping them out of range while still in formation a lot easier, but more so than attempting to angle things correctly for double arcs or to avoid bumping is knowing how to position one’s self so that the “Pass Token” turn does not allow your opponent to negate your approach or allow for a counterattack you can’t recover from (see: my game against Jason Hughley at Worlds ’25). The Consulars, I’ve found, are more capable at negating the Pass Token turn, due to their innate click of yaw at the speed 1 joint at speed 3 and 4, which allows you to make insane inside turns, loops, and dives and force your opponents waiting, hungry squadrons (or front arcs) to make much more uncomfortable calculations.

As for the Obi-Wan versus Tarkin discussion, Obi-Wan’s greatest benefit to me personally is not the additional eight points in upgrades (it rarely mattered!) nor is it the reduction in damage (which, while helpful, can also be addressed just as easily through more careful flying). For me, switching to Obi-Wan meant my Venator would only be activating "Intensify Firepower! and SPHA-Ts on two turns of the six, rather than getting to activate them every turn – which then forced me to more carefully consider when and where to have my flagship exposed to the fight, rather than acting as a battery to trigger Intensify for my much more nimble and evasive Consulars. With Tarkin giving me the ability to SPHAT and IF every turn, I had found during the NOVA Open and the East Coast Championship that I was more prone to flying it aggressively rather than defensively, and then being confused when a careful or more cunning opponent would outmaneuver me, dropping the flagship and leaving my miserably red-diced Consulars to roll blank after blank after blank. Never trust a red die..

The Art of War

The third option is, of course, Anakin, but having flown him extensively in his current form (no comment on original Anakin beyond ‘good riddance’), I think that the large dice pools he encourages rerolling in are a bit beyond my ability to engage effectively – I wish I’d been able to spectate more of Xantos’ games to have a better understanding of the mechanics of THAT seven-activation GAR fleet, and I’ll certainly be experimenting with both Anakin and Coburn in the coming months.

The Milwaukee venue for Worlds is much improved over “Chicago,” aka Schaumburg, a suburb-ish series of hotels and chain restaurants about thirty minutes west of O’Hare and a solid hour from Chicago proper. Better food and sights, a smaller and less chaotic airport, and significantly greater space than the convention center in Schaumburg – all plusses, but I also used Adepticon as a historical excuse to visit my friends in Chicago, which meant this year taking the train down after arriving Wednesday (managing to miss my train back north the following morning, which was a whole ordeal). After Drew crushed me in an exhibition Monster Truck game where Onagers made short work of Republic Victories, he, Robin Keats, and I were able to get a single draft of Star Wars Unlimited in before locking in our lists and passing out for an inevitable grueling three days. Games are good, you guys.

Day 1

(T5 link for day 1 is here.)

Round 1

My first round opponent was Jacob, running a CR90A Raddus which dropped an MC80 Star Cruiser featuring MSU’s favorite upgrade to dance around – Gunnery Teams. Notably, his MC80 only had Nav Team in the Support Team slot, ensuring that a sudden, aggressive reposition was much less likely for the drop. He also ran a solid 100+ point squadron screen, with (fortunately for me) only Lando and a YT2400 for rogues, which in my experience testing against Drew’s Raddus rogeuball makes a massive difference in terms of how effectively I can spread my C70s around where the drop may happen. We played his Infested Fields, and early positioning from speed four C70s forced him to drop the 80 at the start of turn two, outside of medium range of the Chargers. Three C70s (Hondo plus two generics) chased after the fleeing Raddus CR90 while the other C70s and the Venator encircled the MC80, dropping it at the start of round three with a double arc from the Ven finishing it off between SPHA-Ts and Clone Gunners. The remaining three C70s were able to hunt down his flagship, catching it at the start of round six, while his squadrons narrowly finished the Venator off with an especially cruel hit-crit from Wedge to punch through the rear shields, leaving Lando and the YT2400 just enough to kill it.

Round 2

My second round opponent I know all too well – as is the inevitable nature of having played this game with so many people in so many areas the past ten years. Robin Keats, one of my good friends I met during my year in Brooklyn, running the Mothma version of his potent Cracken seven-ship fleet, was able to fully outmaneuver me at the last ECC Qualifier I attended up in New Jersey, and was quick to take first player and choose my Abandoned Mining Facility, which has won him several games in the past against Easter Fleet as well. Fortunately this time, I was a bit less cowardly in the utilization of my flagship, and Robin’s MC30s were forced to break away from the SPHA-T + C70 killbox I created in the middle of the board. We had both scored so many AMF tokens by the end of the game (as I recall, 27 tokens to his 23), but my ships were also able to ram one of his flotillas to death and put enough damage into Jaina’s Light to keep the score at a high 7.

Round 3

Third round of Day 1 was unfortunately time to take my Moralo medicine. All seven of my ships were down on the field before his Quasar dropped, and while I have had some experience flying Moralo during the Summer of Anakin, I had never actually had a match against someone as well-versed in the range of everyone’s favorite Glup Shitto. Neither had I been matched up against Zog before, having as little online presence as possible, but I still greedily attempted to set up a full table and was justly punished by someone who really knows what he is doing with that little guy. Turn two spelled my doom: while the Ven and two token-passing Consulars headed up the midboard, the other four attempted to intercept the Raider and the Quasar running along my board edge “out of” Moralo range. Spoilers – they were not. Zog threw Black Squadron and the TIE Advanced back towards my Venator, to which I foolishly spent my redirect token to reduce the damage, only to have Maarek swoop in and spend the redirect token I would critically need on a future turn. Moralo mulched two more Consulars while his Raider narrowly escaped my grasp on a single hull, and when the Venator attempted to dive in to snipe the Quasar with two last-ditch SPHA-T shots, Moralo capitalized on my lack of otherwise un-Sloanable redirect tokens and was able to put exact damage into my flagship at the end of round six for the 9-2.

Round 4

My fourth opponent of the day was Ian Halterman, who as I understood it received the ticket to Adepticon and to Worlds from another person who won it in a giveaway from Speculation Station, flying an Ackbar Home One with two loaded-up Assault Frigates. Curiously, Assault Frigates are perhaps the best-positioned ship in the game against my list, as they’re just tanky enough and just dodgy enough to negate the advantages six small ships have, but the Electronic Countermeasures protects them better than large ships with ECMs are against the tricks the Venator can pull off. To make matters worse, Home One combined with Intel Officers on both Assault Frigates almost guaranteed that if I staggered my engagement, he would be able  to pick off my flimsy Consulars with very little effort. I picked Ian’s Solar Corona, and he was quick to slow-roll his three combat ships into his left corner, baiting me to dive in as we were both on the cutoff for making Day 2. I was able to eventually drop one of the Assault Frigates, though not without sacrificing one Consular on the approach and the second one after anxiously attempting to navigate it to ‘safety’ turn 6 only to receive three red doubles at close range, netting a whopping eight MOV for a 6-5 my way.

Day 2

(T5 link for day 2 is here.)

Making Day 2 is all Worlds has been about for me since I first qualified for one in 2018. The only Day 2 I’ve ever had the misfortune of missing was Worlds 2024, when I abandoned my MSU roots for Moralo Eval and was justly punished by Mack and Tokra for my hubris, and having never made a second cut I’ve never worried too much about that level of prestige, especially since the Day 3 Team Tournament from the last three years has always been a delight. I had one matchup in particular I was hoping to run across in the arbitrarily generous cut this year, but I would inevitably be denied. After watching Chris Fritz struggle to utilize a parking meter for several minutes before dinner, I attempted to get an Actual Night of Sleep, only to wake up at 3am way too excited for my games. This ended up a recurring theme for me, unfortunately.

Round 1

Going into Day 2, my first matchup was against Bodhi, who I’d first had the pleasure of fighting last year during Day 1 in an Ackbar mirror match, but this year was on what I long considered to be the most difficult matchup for the Consular Swarm: a Mar Tuuk build featuring a Patriot Fist with Sensor Teams and Quad Turbolaser Cannons. Fortunately for Bodhi, he never once needed to utilize his Sensor Teams, as his Patriot Fist naturally rolled red accuracies on both shots, making extremely short work of two Consulars attempting to dive away from the dust field on Abandoned Mining Facility while it and the Providence closed in quickly. The Venator was able to SPHA-T enough damage into Patriot Fist that a lucky shot (and a sacrifice of one more Consular) was able to sink it at the end of turn 6, leaving me and my 15 AMF tokens with a 7 total.

Round 2

Round two was my first of three Feature Match games over the weekend, against another good friend who will soon be abandoning the NOVA team for the West/Worst coast, Matt Stoebner. While the last year he has been running a potent double ISD build not dissimilar from Jason Hughley’s Worlds list, which he was able to take down the Richmond Open with, for Worlds this year Matt was running an Agate Liberty with a smattering of squad aces and CR90s. Picking his Volatile Deposits, Matt spread his forces out across the board attempting to avoid the killboxes he knows my C70s can create easily, while slowrolling the Liberty up to see where I dedicated the bulk of my swarm. Unfortunately, I was able to blitz everyone forward at speed 4 the first two turns, using the Venator on the opposite side of the board from his Liberty to contest or win the asteroid objectives while using the SPHAT to tear through the CR90 and flotilla on that side of the board. Deciding to avoid risking the 10 by engaging my other C70s, Matt instead sped his Liberty towards my board edge to keep it safe from being overrun by red dice and to score the objective a few more times, leaving me with a high 8-3.

Round 3

My third round of the second day put me up against Nick Larson, who I recognized from his work with ARC but have never had the chance to play against before, running a swarm of unique squadrons, a Yavaris, and two CR90s with Rieekan to combat the presumed prevalence of Draven and the Moralo scourge. We played his Rift Ambush, and thanks to foolish positioning on my part he was able to immediately force two of my C70s to ram each other. He sent Yavaris towards a dust field in one of his corners, while the Venator rolled up the middle of the board attempting to draw away some of his dangerous squadrons. Nick did not fall for the bait, though my C70s were able to draw some fire from Dagger and Gold Squadron before diving well out of range and successfully dropping the Nebulon with a series of three-damage side shots. The Venator was able to sink the Rieekan CR90, while the flotillas escaped with Ezra activating squadrons all the while and taking down Radiant VII and the Hondo Consular, leaving me with a narrow 6.

Round 4

My last round opponent was Jacek, of Team Poland, running Ackbar with heavy squads; the first and only opponent I would have bid on throughout the weekend, I chose second player and we played my Most Wanted. Unfortunately, I forgot that second player isn’t supposed to play super aggressively into Ackbar, and proceeded to feed the Assault Frigate my flagship while his MC30 objective ship attempted to flee to the corners. I was narrowly able to finish it with a lucky roll near the end and a series of rams, while the remaining squadrons were able to hunt down two more Consulars, keeping myself now to a narrow 5 loss, just enough to keep me in Day 3 for the first time.

Naturally, making Day 3 with unplayable jank like Obi-Wan was pretty exciting for me, given that my two losses thus far (and my third, still to come!) were most prominently the result of me driving the Venator into positions it had no business attempting to be. Expecting to sleep like a baby and wake fully rested for a frantic repacking, checking out, and 7AM start time, I was instead dismayed to find that I woke up at 1AM this time and could not fall back asleep, instead opting to rewatch my streamed game with Matt and listen to the Armada podcasts that had come out during and after day 2, only to be filled with additional dread from Jackson and Jay’s certainty that Obi-Wan Kenobi was not going to be the Champion. And they were correct! Alas. But misery loves company, and when I arrived to the Baird Center I found that Chris Fritz was ALSO suffering, having becoming violently ill overnight and struggling to maintain his energy. But man, that guy can persist.

Day 3

(T5 link for day 3 is here.)

Round 1

Round one was a matchup against Rhys, who I’ve had the pleasure of playing in both the 2023 and 2025 Worlds, the latter of which he crushed my Ackbar list on stream with a very similar list to what he had brought this year. Onagers are a sure-fire way to lose a Ven-1 quickly, as had been clear from the recent testing of ARC’s Screed during ECC and Worlds prep games with Drew and Eric Burtch, so I attempted to rush him on Asteroid Fields in a much more aggressive play than I was willing to try last year. On his first shot of the game, an obstructed extreme-range shot at one of the generic C70s, Rhys lived up to his reputation of crazy rolls, netting two accuracies and four damage into the Charger’s front. However, three days of Armada is already brain-addling, and adding in the eight-hour-flight, Rhys neglected to use Pryce to turn his remaining blank black dice into a hit-crit, instead opting to Vader Romodi off of his flagship to reroll into the necessary six damage. While I can’t say for sure Romodi’s survival would have changed the overall outcome of the game, as C70s are especially hard to pin down once I know where the Onager will be pointing, the loss of Romodi meant I could comfortably be incredibly aggressive with my Venator. As seen on stream, I dove in with the Ven, throwing a SPHA-T shot into the damaged front of the Onager with two crits off of the XX9 and finishing it off the following turn with multiple C70 shots while the Venator put the rest of its damage turn five and six into the Victory, netting me a 10 over an excellent player and putting me surprisingly far ahead in the eight-man standings.

Round 2

Round two was my only repeat matchup of the weekend, against Ian and his Home One Ackbar, who had also achieved a 10 over the double Cymoon Vader list. Determined not to make the same mistakes I had made in our Day 1 game, I again picked Solar Corona instead of Planetary Ion Cannon – my first mistake. While it hadn’t come into play extensively during our initial game, by the end of this game we estimated that removing wayward accuracies from my C70 shots had cost me about eight damage total due to being unable to change them to hits with Intensify Firepower. He set up similarly to our Day 1 game, running along the board edge and towards the Corona. While I was able to position a few of the C70s to start dropping the shields on his lead Assault Frigate, while moving the Venator up the midboard to potentially jump in with a SPHA-T shot from a relatively safe distance. However, Ian kept his three combat ships in excellent formation, giving me almost no opportunities to move the Venator in that wouldn’t result in it taking two Ackbar shots from the 80 and the rear Assault Frigate. On the last turn of the game, I was forced to activate the Ven and fire SPHAT-s at the lead AF to guarantee the kill, moving it dangerously into medium range of Home One and forcing me to sacrifice the Hondo Consular by obstructing the shot from his second Assault Frigate (or, at the very least, forcing him to spend the Con Fire token to kill my Consular first then Gunnery Team shot at the Venator). This left me at a seven, but with a sinking sense of dread at the inevitable matchup against either Chris or Adam.

Round 3

Adam Newton, on the other hand, I have not had the chance to play against since the first Richmond Open in 2022, where his Ackbar defeated mine 6-5 but kept me in first place due to tournament point disparity. We’ve somehow dodged each other across a number of mutual events, but his Draven list seemed just as mean and just as well-positioned to take me down. With points as they were, I was positioned against Adam for the third round, while Chris faced off against Ian, and we were off to see if Obi-Wan could really stand at the top.

Unfortunately for me, both Adam and Chris are more skilled than I am. We played Adam’s Planetary Ion Cannon; while I debated picking Most Wanted and trying to escape with my Venator in-tact, I was certain that he’d be able to chase it down with his squadrons eventually if he dedicated enough energy to the hunt. I knew I needed to kill either his flagship or his Ahsoka and one or two transports to make up for losing two C70s, and that under no circumstances should my flagship go anywhere near his Assault Frigate, protected as it was by Electronic Countermeasures. But after performing an 'out of the fight' feint with Han and Gold Squadron, losing my Clone Nav Consular and attempting to box in his flagship, I could see the writing on the wall that he was going to escape with a 7, and decided foolishly to turn my Venator in to try to ambush the fleeing Ezra with SPHA-Ts. This has made a lot of people very disappointed and been widely regarded as a bad move. Adam set up the perfect trap for my Venator, forcing my flagship to engage a turn earlier than I’d intended and giving his squadrons exactly enough time to burn its shields down. Then, popping Hondo for the critical Navigate token to slow my roll, I instead put an Engineering token on the Venator in a misguided attempt to keep it alive, while neglecting to speed up the C70s encircling his flag to ensure they could keep pace with it as it ran. Unfortunately, this also proved a critical error, as (despite my flailing attempts to knock the CR90 clean off the board), none of the C70s were going fast enough turn 5 to ram the flagship turn six while my Venator went down in flames.

Conclusion

So what are our takeaways here? Was Obi-Wan the Dark Horse waiting to be exploited? I don’t think so at all. I think that in a swarm fleet like this, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Tarkin are all interchangeable depending on your goals with the list (to swarm, to farm, or to dodge until turn five then dive in for the seven). Obi-Wan works especially well for the way I fly, with no squadron coverage, attempting to bait rogues away from the rest of the fleet knowing that Obi gives me a little wiggle room in terms of how much damage I can suffer each turn before I have to break away or risk being dropped. 

Is it good into this meta? Absolutely not. Heavy non-rogues and Ackbar are both phenomenal against a player who isn’t familiar with when to keep MSU in formation and when to break them apart to force a commitment. The list works best into a list that is leaning more into full Rogues, into screens (as most squadless), and into Imperial Star Destroyers and other larges that aren’t fueled by dice add commanders. The Chargers are more forgiving when it comes to long-range double arcs compared to CR90s, which I’ve never been able to make work outside of flying broadside with the Ackbar swarm. I do think there is a meta where this list can work very well (instead of just me getting lucky), and I was encouraged to see another person running Obi-Wan in an approximation of my list but with the ARCquitens – shout-out to Aiden Chastain, who made Day 2 with Kenobi.

The real takeaway I’m hoping people get from the Worlds run is this – the game is very much alive and very much in a good space for experimentation. Between ARC and Legacy, we’re poised to continue to keep things balanced, tweaking some less-used upgrades and objectives while injecting new content where it’s needed (and long-demanded ships where they’ve been long-demanded). The game lives, and the competitive scene lives, and I am so excited to play in more events throughout the year and come back next year to try again for the title. In the meantime, I’ll continue experimenting, putting together something new with Pins in the Confederacy and cooking up some nonsense with Chris and Doty otherwise. Be on the lookout for that, treat each other with kindness and respect, and throw something weird on the table just to see if it works.

To conclude, I’d like to once again congratulate Chris on a well-deserved ultimate victory, to thank all of my opponents for great games (especially Adam, who in addition to forcing me to be a better player through his infuriating cunning, was also able to reassure me after The Bump before I completely crashed out), to the NOVA testing team and to my family and friends who were harassing everyone on the Twitch chat throughout the games.