Grand Casual Tournament 2025

8th June 2025

Jim

5 mins

Hello all! It’s Jim here from the Coolant Discharge podcast bringing you my perspective on the Fly Casual Grand Casual Tournament at Tezza’s Games this June, in Melton, Victoria, Australia.

I don’t know… Grand Casual!

Marz (marzaums) is the voice and face of the Fly Casual streams, and every time I ask him to come and stream one of my tournaments, he is always selflessly packing his gear to race up and stream to the world some brilliant games of Armada. So when he said he wanted to run an event down in Melbourne, there was no way I wasn’t going to turn up to support it, and I even brought some friends along with me. The whole Coolant Discharge Crew came down - Mundo, Tasadur, and Ninja Boomer, and our mate “The Sean” tagged along for the road trip.

Seven hours in the car and lots of theory crafting lists and crazy new cards later, we arrived in Melton, Victoria for a good few beers, a nights sleep and the next morning we were off for some coffee fuelled Armada!

Tezza’s Games is a fun and thematic little gaming store in Melton and they play heavily into the “Outer Rim” style. None of your fancy T4 tools like you boys have in the Core Worlds to run this tournament! Your name goes onto a Magic card, and after a quick shuffle, your first-round opponent is dealt out, and the scores are recorded on whatever spare bit of paper you can find. 

I loved it as - even though you might have a little idea of how you’re going - without the information close to hand like you do with T4 Tools, your focus is on just playing the game that’s in front of you.

The composition of the day was heavy on the Triangles. Eight Imperial Fleets arrived at the Outer Rim to combat the forces of only three Rebel Fleets and two CIS Fleets. GAR were nowhere to be seen on the day.

I was part of the problem of no GAR, so before we get to the list I did bring, let's have a look at my little journey of indecisiveness.

Make Up Your Mind, Jim

For those that don’t know me, when an Armada tournament comes around, I’m usually the guy TO’ing. I run all the major events in Canberra, so it’s not often I get to be a player, and it always involves travelling interstate to other events. Because I’m flying or driving all that way, I want the list to be competitive, but ultimately I want it to be fun.

I had been tinkering with a TF fleet for the last few months involving a tanky Providence and gambling with taking Jedi Hostage. It had been going well, and I had won more often than not with it in the practice matches. Why I didn’t end up taking the fleet was discussions with the Coolant Discharge boys, where it turned out, Mundo was flying CIS, Ninja Boomer was taking Imperials, and our fearless leader, Tasadur, was firing up his Draven list.

So, a perfect opportunity came up to take a GAR Bail Organa list so all four factions could be represented.

This Bail list lasted one engagement against Tasadur’s Draven list. It…did not go well for poor Bail.

too soon…?

GAR needs a lot of synergies to go well, and Draven can really impact those. It also occurred to me that the mental overhead of playing GAR was higher than most other fleets, and life is…busy…right now, so my brain wasn’t really going to be up for a big seven-hour drive and then three straight games of GAR mental mechanics.

Back to the drawing board, and along comes watching Andor and the return of Admiral Raddus. TIME TO BRING OUT THE FISH!

…or not. I had a practice game with Raddus, and it went really well. I went for an MC75 Profundity into Garels Honor with Ex-racks drop and scored well against Ninja Boomers Victory Fleet. But again, this was a list that was going to need a lot of practice to get the drops right, and there wasn’t really enough time before the event to get that practice in.

My eyes were returning to the CIS fleet, until I was riding into work listening to a little podcast called “Command Stack” - you might have heard of it - where they were discussing the Phoenix Grand Tournament and the winning list - a Super Star Destroyer list by Daniel Allen.

It sounded fun - ridiculously fun. The kind of list where you’re never getting a 6/5 - it’ll be a 7 or 8 minimum, and It’s a gamble as to whether you’re coming out on top. A metric crap tonne of dice from Ravager with bonus accuracies from a Rapid Launch Bay Jonus…well, the list will be below in a moment, but the key decision point was after another test game with Ninja Boomer. I lost after I took out his Interdictor, turned badly to bring his Victory out of my front arc, so I had to kill it slowly, leaving enough time for his other Vic to finish off the SSD.

A 7/4 win to Ninja Boomer, but I had a smile on my face the entire time. Plus, I rarely get to bring the SSD out, and we were driving not flying so the chance of losing or breaking it was very low. Ok then: list decision made!

The name of the list is thanks to Tom Lehrer because….well, just listen to the song ☺(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL4vWJbwmqM)

The list is relatively straightforward. Jerry keeps the SSD turning to keep up with those quick, small ships, or just to avoid running off the board. Gunnery Teams because Ravager and shooting twice out of the impressive front arc (five reds, four blues!), QBTs for the extra blue because it’s you’ll often be slower than the opponent. The combo of HIEs to strip shields and then XX-9s for slamming the hull is great, but the MVP is the Damage Control Officer. HIEs, NK-7s? APTs? DCO says no! (enough acronyms there for a good Canberran)

The runner-up MVP is the new Rapid Launch Bays. There may be only one fighter inside, but the ability to pop Jonus out at range two at the beginning of the SSD turn to allow you to modify a dice into an accuracy is gold-plated gold and came in very useful in most of my games. Daniel Allen, you’ve made something awesome here (in the true sense of the word), and I was looking forward to playing it against some players I don’t get to face very often in Melbourne!

Round One - Haven’t we been here before?

You drive 673 Kilometers (418 Freedom Miles) and you hope to face someone different from your usual gaming crowd, so in typical fashion my first opponent - randomly drawn - was Ninja Boomer.

The same Ninja Boomer I had played my last two practice games against.

You would think I learned from the last two games I played against him…and you would be right…until round three.

Ninja’s list was a Tarkin list (the same one I faced before with both this list and the Raddus drop), with a tank of an Interdictor (G8s, Targeting Scramblers, Interdictor Title Projection Experts, D-Caps, Kitchen Sink), but the true power comes from his Victory Destroyers. 

The first is a Vic II with the Warlord Title, D-Caps, H9s, NK-7s, and a variety of tech to ensure that he’s going to trigger the NK-7s and strip one of your tokens per turn. Until my DCO says no (The DCO earned their pay tenfold in this game).

The second Vic is the killer. A Vic I with Dominator, Expanded Launchers, and Heavy Turbolaser turrets to ensure that brace you spend is ALL you are spending from the FIVE black THREE red and TWO blue dice shot from the front. (Can you guess what killed the SSD in our practice game? This was the culprit, your honour!)

Ninja elected to go second this time (he was first in our practice game) and chose Solar Corona as the objective. Nice for me as he got to deploy everything first so I could position the SSD to target two of his ships and hopefully kill one before the second came in.

Now, Ninja and my games are usually over by turn four or five. We are both traditionally hyper-aggressive in our deployments and movements when playing each other, because things being on fire are fun. This game was no exception. I increased the to speed two on my first move and managed to position the SSD to have Dominator and the Interdictor in my front arc, and be just out of range of Warlord.

Turn two came around, and the guns opened up. It went quite badly for the Interdictor. Intel Officer stripped the brace token, accuracies care of a RLB Jonus drop blocked the re-direct, and the damage that went through was enough to strip the shields (thank you HIEs) and get some damage into the hull. Dominator took a little fire from the Gunnery teams’ shot, but nothing it couldn’t handle. The SSD was then able to move into position to double arc the Interdictor (front/side) with no way of it moving out of position, and Dominator was in the front arc to set up another one-two punch with Intel Officer next turn.

The plan was set.

…and then ignored.

Never allow good planning to get in the way of…something something, what was I saying?

Turn three comes around and Ninja activates the Interdictor first which does a little damage to the SSD, but he knows it’s going to die. SSD activates and the front arc lashes out at the Interdictor doing a tremendous amount of damage. I then say out loud before my re-roll phase “I’m not using Intel Officer because I’m saving it for the Victory”.

The damage to the Interdictor isn’t enough to destroy it outright, however it’s only one or two hull away from dying and I have the side arc which really cannot miss.

However, rules say that as I’ve used the con fire token my next shot must be out the front arc thanks to Gunnery Teams so the Interdictor will have to wait. Shots fire out from Ravager’s forward guns and slam into Dominator doing it a tonne of damage. Lots of accuracies so I stop the brace and re-directs and watch some hull be stripped away. Proud of myself and the utter destruction I am causing I turn my attention to the side guns and look over to my upgrades before the shot to double check what I might need to do to ensure Tarkin is taken out.

And there is the Intel Officer. All prepped and ready to do something. The same Intel Officer I was saving for the Victory to strip its brace. The same Victory I just shot at without using the Intel Officer I had said out loud to remind myself that I was saving to use.

Well done, me.

That was the first mistake that cost me the game (spoiler). I did ask if we could roll it back, but this being a tournament Ninja quite rightly said “yeah, nope” especially as I was about to nuke Tarkin, which I did. However, despite the Interdictor going down, my second mistake was about to be made.

Given I now had some extra work to take down Dominator - which nailed the SSD in the previous game - rather than moving forward to lock it into the front arc, I decided to try to turn to see if I could get a double arc.

The SSD does everything big, even turns. With only a single click, the SSD came hard about much further than I had anticipated or wanted. I managed to position the front arc to have a delightful shot into empty space, leaving the side arc to do the heavy lifting to take out Dominator, which then proceeded to pummel the SSD into dust.

Warlord comes in and uses its D-Caps to start putting the hurt onto the SSD, and at that point it’s pretty much over. Those two Vics pack a huge punch, and while I was able to destroy Dominator, as first player Ninja got that massive front arc shot off into the SSD again, leaving only six hull left for Warlord to finish off. Two little mistakes and I clutched defeat from the jaws of Victory, but Ninja flies that fleet incredibly well and dishes out a huge amount of damage. 

Lessons learned in both SSD manoeuvring and remembering your upgrades as I take my four tournament points and sail into my next match. 

Round Two - Sloane Ranging

I head into this match a little trepidatious. I’ve flown Sloane before to a fourth place tournament win, so I know how badly she can mess up a ship. An SSD without tokens is still an angry pointy triangle, but like most vessels it does not last long. I’m looking at a Quasar, ISD II, Gozanti and no fewer than ten Squadrons waiting in the wings to be all activated in one phase. 

Goodbye fair tokens, or so I thought.

My opponent, who I was told goes by the moniker “Hangry” decided to go second and as it turns out, he was as concerned about my fleet as I was his. Looking at his objectives, the obvious farming choices such as Superior Positions and Fighter Ambush are right out, which left Station Assault.

Now, while this would have left me putting the SSD in a possible turn one firing range of the fleet, I decided to play it a little conservatively and keep the SSD in standard position at the back of my deployment zone. The station was positioned in the middle so contact would happen very quickly if I wanted it to, but I figured I should hold back to try and flak the fighters down before engaging the ISD.

My opponent had other ideas and certainly surprised me as he deployed all of his ships right across the field from me at Speed 3. Looks like he wanted to get into the fight quickly, so all plans for a conservative play went right out the window. As first player I hoped to either kill or severely damage the Quasar in turn two to limit his squad commands and then move onto the ISD which I assumed I would need to start nav’ing to intercept as it was aiming to get around into my flank.

My Gozanti’s moved first to give me an idea where his Quasar and ISD would be positioned, so when he turned into my direction and maintained his fleet formation I took advantage of it. The SSD had a nav command stored for turn one, and immediately accelerated to Speed Two. Leaping ahead I ended my turn in blue dice range of both the Quasar and the ISD in my front arc, and I had first turn.

“You may fire when ready”

To say the least: turn two went well. A Concentrate Fire command was issued, Jonus was released from the hanger to engage both the ISD and the Quasar and Ravager opened up on the enemy carrier. It was destroyed in that one single shot. Two accuracies (one thanks to Jonus) and nine damage brought it down in a single salvo. The con fire command was thrown in to trigger Gunnery teams but it wasn’t needed. 

Then Ravager opened fire on the ISD from the front arc and our plucky Intel Officer was brought into action to ensure the brace was removed as ten damage was rolled against the Star Destroyer.

The SSD then moved forward to lock the Star Destroyer into place, and as it had a squad command its nav chart didn’t allow it to escape the front arc. Four fighters did come in and strip a brace token from Ravager, but as the ISD could not move it was only a matter of time. Turn three saw Ravager destroy the ISD, and the game ended with Jonus swarmed by fighters and taken out, but he had done his duty.

400 plays 16 as I take the 10 points into the final round.

Round Three - The guns are silent

My final opponent was my third Imperial list for the day. Not surprising since out of 13 players: 8 were Imperial (I was absolutely part of the problem), 3 played Rebels and the final two were CIS.

This list also gave me some concerns. Four Arquitens with enhanced armaments, skilled first officer and an Interdictor commanded by General Romodi with Vader on board prepared to give those skilled first officers a thorough performance review. This was a list that was going to prick the SSD to death if I couldn’t nav to keep them in the front arc.

Additionally, my opponent had the bid and went second, his preferred position as his objectives definitely favoured him. However, from those objectives and his five ship fleet I had…a plan.

The objective I chose was Opening Salvo for that little End of Game condition: each player increases his score by half the fleet point cost of each ship still in the playing field with a least one damage card. 

Here was my crazy thinking: I would be positioning as many obstacles as I could over on the far side of the field. As first player I would deploy first, so I placed the SSD on the other side of the table as far away from the obstacles as I could. This would either draw him into combat and allow me to get as much damage in as I could as early as possible, or I could play on the fear of what Ravager does when it reaches out and touches - forcing the opponent into the obstacle field where he now has to dodge not only all the asteroids and debris fields, but his own ships as well. One damage card at the end of the game means I get half the fleet point cost of that ship without needing to engage and he might do it to himself.

…it worked.

When the SSD was deployed, the Interdictor was deployed as far away from it as possible and the other Arquitens in close formation around it.

“insert ominous Jaws theme”

From turn one, Ravager Jerry turned into a straight line towards the bottom left-hand corner and started menacingly approaching the enemy fleet, and my opponent responded in kind by attempting to move further away. An impact occurred in turn one between two Arqs, so trouble had already begun in the formation. 

For the rest of the game I would move the SSD closer and closer to the enemy, speeding up and slowing down thanks to Comms net tokens and to try and throw off the timing of when the first engagement might come.

It never did, but the game ended with a damage card on the Interdictor as it was unable to escape an asteroid in its final turn, and from a single Arq as it wasn’t able to recover from impacting other ships in the fleet.

Both sides never got to fire a shot, but I took a 104-point 7/4 victory for my final match of the tournament.

I DO Know, Fly Casual!

After three rounds of some brilliant gameplay the day was done, and as I mentioned before since there was no T4 so it wasn't easy to know how you were going in comparison to everyone else. The top table had a fairly good idea but we all had to wait until Marz had tallied the results before finding out who won.

Before I say it, I'll preface this with a short bit of background. Our Coolant Discharge fearless leader, Tasadur, is really the patron saint of trash and jank. He will refuse to believe a card is bad until he has played it to death, through a myriad of fleet combinations, deployment options and mission selections. He doesn't rest until he has enough information to be able to make an informed opinion about the viability of something the rest of us have thrown away.

...and even then, if we all still think it's trash he'll keep at it. This is his superpower - perseverance in the fact of overwhelming public opinion, and quite frankly it is one of the most heart-warming things to see and does nothing but bring good cheer to the community.

He took a Draven fleet to this event.

Draven.

The General of Trash and a card that has been almost universally panned in every conversation, podcast or blog.

This is a fleet he has been honing for the better part of...well, more time than any of us would dedicate to it. Months of tinkering and practice games. This was the fleet that convinced me not to take Bail to this event because it so thoroughly trounced the GAR fleet which did have me second guessing Draven's trash-ness, but only in some circumstances.

Tasadur won.

With DRAVEN!

First round: 10 points.

Second round: 10 points!

Third round: 4 points, but it DIDN'T MATTER! He still pulled out the win by one TP over our own Mundo, who came in second and was his third-round opponent.

Now, I won’t steal Tasadur's thunder and go into detail about his lists and the specifics of his game. I'll leave it for Rosco to fire up that interview and let the Master of Jank speak for himself, and you can be sure there will be a Coolant Discharge Podcast with the breakdown coming soon. But it was honestly the best part of this weekend, and my hat is off to both Tasadur and Draven.

As for me, overall, I ended up in third place and was really happy with how I played the SSD. I learned a lot about moving that big ship around and am keen to try out some different lists, including some of my own, which I haven’t played in years.

Overall, I ended up in third place and was really happy with how I played the SSD. I learned a lot about moving that big ship around and am keen to try out some different lists, including some of my own, which I haven’t played in years.

The entire event was fantastic. Marz has always done an outstanding job running the Trans Tasman online event, and this certainly translated to the in-person Grand Casual. Now we’re free of AMG, I hope we’ll see the event return next year, and I’ll be one of the first people to sign up again. The players were fantastic, the prize support from Admiral Tater and Marz’s own supplies were excellent, Tez, the shop owner, was great and really supportive of the day, but most importantly, it was fun. Dice were rolled, plastic ships were pushed around the tables, there was more than one sound of “pew pew pew” being shouted out - all the signs to show that Armada isn’t dead as long as the community keeps it going.

I hope to see some familiar faces from the Grand Casual at the ACT events coming up later this year and at ‘Not Nationals’ Championships over the Australia Day long weekend (late January). 

Cheers to Marz for a great day of Armada, and thanks to Rosco and Barry for inviting me to guest blog here on Aluminum-Falcon. I’ll throw up a cheeky plug for our little podcast - Coolant Discharge (https://yaolester.podbean.com) We’re on Podbean for now but we’re on the cards for getting onto Spotify and the major podcasting outlets soon, and hopefully we’ll have some of our first video content coming as my year starts getting a little less crazy.

Cheers all!

Jim (@jimgriley)

Rosco here: Thanks Jim, solid field report - looking forward to more collaborations soon!!

Tasadur won the tourney with a Draven list? - A DRAVEN LIST!? I will be looking into this. That is all, carry on and stay tuned. 🥃

Bonus content: BEHOLD - Marz’s glorious Da Vinci Code tournament sheet… Truly magical.

“It’s an old code, sir, but it checks out”