Another book in the year with high activity and continued growth. A lot has happened this year, and so the CPA team is excited to release the in-depth statistics of 2025 in this year’s Top Ten Armies of the Year with a new table.

Foreword from Dino:

The best way possible for me to start this post before talking about the successes (or lack thereof) of this year to refer to the winner of the Iceberg Jubilee’s Best Post by Army Legend Aaronstone42, “An Appeal to Heaven: How to Fix the Army Community.” To lay people unfamiliar, as of this year the current administration under Edu14463 and Jojo Teri have marketed this as the “Golden Age of CPA.” A tongue-in-cheek reference to real-life marketing by real-life “golden age” references in this day and age, we also chose to embrace that partially for marketing sake. Obviously, that isn’t something an organization can just jam onto people, and many people would disagree with that notion. That is largely why I mentioned the post written by Aaronstone: Aaronstone made the argument that, in comparison to other golden ages, we [the community] are “not in a golden age, nor are we even close to one” due to discrepancies in our placements.

In large part when I get to write these forewords for these posts, I have some leeway to talk about things more candidly. Other than the fact that modern Top Tens no longer has other types of formulas (for example, late-CPAC incorporated a section in the formula rating tactic quality which was largely subjective and padded the scoring), there is definitely, to paraphrase from Aaronstone’s own words, a drop from the top, to the top three, and so on. The Top Ten has always been at heart an opinion column to assess the state of the community. We want to accurately show the health of the community whilst also showing in a time-capsule how a week has gone by. This does mean recounting sizes at times to avoid armies blatantly exaggerating the extent of their armies, or make erroneous claims of nearly 300 due to help from a private server’s administrators to say lines which immediately fall off a cliff when an actual event is held with that army’s members.

Last year, I made an effort to refer to former Chief Executive Producer Coolguy‘s post, “2024: The Rise of Club Penguin Armies?” which made predictions that sizes of 60+ tapering off as the year settled. When doing the search for this year’s Top Ten, though, this could not be further from the truth. The Rebel Penguin Federation fresh off the Beanie Babies controveresy have been maxing asinine sizes even with recounting in mind like a verified max 88. And let us not forget the sizes of this year’s Legends Cup, the largest finals in possibly four years. Alongside that, many new-stays such as the Void Troops, Scarlet Republic, Shadow Legionaries, and others took up the mantle with the Doritos fizzling out, Winged Hussars closing, and other armies like the Elite Guardians and People’s Imperial Confederation taking a step back. To answer the question originally posed, a golden age is not here literally speaking—we still have a lot of work to do before we get there.

However, I have illustrated that indeed growth is happening. We are on the right trajectory, and the tools to grow are transparent thanks to the Top Ten. We largely don’t condone “gaming” the Top Ten, but this is meant to be an accurate representation of the community in a time-frame, and if that means the Top Ten can serve as a metric to help an army grows, we by all means welcome that. We certainly saw that with the Aliens this year which improved in every field from last year. And obviously, to not ignore the obvious, there are two competitors (of varying importance) to the hegemony of Club Penguin Armies who will look to push boundaries in their own ways. Perhaps there is no golden age, but we all want a golden age. Aaronstone wouldn’t have written that call to arms, after all, if he didn’t assume that.

And so, that is how I want to introduce this year’s Top Ten of the Year. A lot of work went into this, even if largely incomplete. I have been very swamped due to starting college, as well as my three peers, Link3000, Edu, and Jojo being very occupied in our own right. Our goal for the coming year is to introduce sweeping changes to the Top Ten to draw interest back to us. We believe in quality over quantity, and want a help the community eventually segue into a new golden age. I think I have waxed poetic enough. With that all said, we would like to formally introduce the top ten armies of this year:

Click here to see the total for all armies.

Despite a close run with a difference of only 50 points, the Rebel Penguin Federation officially reclaims first place of the year, their first in five years. It’s crazy to imagine that, as RPF has been a juggernaut in tournaments since then and has produced two legends in Link3000 and Elexonck since the Crazzyhead-Cosmo leadership that achieved that ranking. RPF narrowly losing out by a singular point in 2021 by the Ice Warriors and being locked out by Templars and the Army of Club Penguin (the latter two years in a row). This comes in large part in the aftermath of the aforementioned Beanie Babies controversy, which has ushered in the peak of this year’s stretch for the Rebels as they been first place non-stop since October 19th. A lot of reasons could be attributed to this success, one of which I’ve been told is Operation: Centurion organized by the army’s Party Planning Committee—inspired by a past project known as the Holiday Hundred which successfully pushed RPF to numerous sizes of 100+ pre-pandemic.

This year cannot be written without the dynamic of the Doritos, though, which started off the year very hot and was the vocal point of many affairs in the community, including the short but vital war with the Army of Club Penguin. Although their stay at the top was short and ultimately landed them to a seventh place finish, the Doritos had the longest streak of the year even up until recently. When I was writing this post, I wanted to revisit an old Top Ten designation such as “World Power”. I quantified it as an army that is officially classified as a registered, major army who had a week of an average of 35 or more. And as impressive as that six weeks at first from January to early March is, the eleven weeks with world power averaged sizes is even more impressive. RPF eventually did this twofold from June 1st to August 17th, and again from September 14th onward. People forget that maxing above 35 can be fairly easy, especially during tournament season, but to average it means to have your own sizes not drag that down. In future Top Ten of the Years, and in Top Ten of the Season (which we still intend to do for this coming year), I hope to better visualize this, but as always we make our calculations public. This data is fully accessible under the “Size Averages” sheet with the purplish red squares (a key is towards the bottom).

I also want to take a moment to highlight some small-mediums that did well. Whilst Help Force spent some time at small-medium, Water Vikings briefly small-medium when re-opening, and Void Troops splitting time at major and small-medium this year, the Templars seemed to be the biggest army that spent most of its time at small-medium. It is ironic that I say this, because Templars as of this week regained major under the stewardship of Empress Sidie9. However, it would be more correct to judge their whole year as small-medium given a majority of their time this year was in that bracket and their yearly size average being 18.25. The army did fairly well all things considered, with the peak this year likely their war with Void Troops (defining moment of the small-medium community this year despite both technically major during it).

The return of the Dark Warriors is also a welcomed one too. The army is far from its zenith as the mammoth that ran the latter half of 2014, but the army has found a nice niche in the small-medium community as a strong medium army which already has two rings to its name this year. They have the opportunity to win another one too this weekend with the Christmas Chaos Small/Medium Grand Finals. Their placement and size averages fairs a lot better than where it actually landed, and if trends continue into the new year can land itself easily in the conversation of the best small-medium of next year Top Ten wise indisputably (or even return as a major!)

Below are some statistics that can help put this year in perspective:

 2025 in Statistics

Top Overall Scores of the Year

The highest size average this year (minimum: ten entries in our rankings this year) was obtained by the Rebel Penguin Federation last week. A strong way to close out the year, the Rebels engaged in a heavily close semifinals against the Army of Club Penguin seeing a peak of 76 and overall great sizes leading to a peak of 84.83. If we continued this past ten, there would be even more RPF selections. Most of the highest scores came at the end of the year. As always, though, Ice Warriors‘ annual rare event would’ve been the actual peak with 85.50. We exclude this from our official list and recognition due to the Ice Warriors not meeting the necessary sample size. The Doritos of Club Penguin achieved their lone spot due to their anniversary and the Water Vikings scrap the list despite the deductions put on them for their moderator Pr1sm multi-logging. Below is the full list of the top 10 scores of the year:

1. Rebel Penguin Federation (84.83) – December 21st
2. Rebel Penguin Federation (83.5) – December 14th
3. Rebel Penguin Federation (81.36) – November 16th
4. Rebel Penguin Federation (81.13) – November 30th
5. Rebel Penguin Federation (80.57) – October 19th
6. Rebel Penguin Federation (80.51) – November 23rd
7. Rebel Penguin Federation (80.13) – December 7th
8. Water Vikings (79.69) – July 27th
9. Rebel Penguin Federation (79.12) – November 9th
10. Doritos of Club Penguin (78.50) – February 2nd

Chart unavailable due to issues with the sheet.

Top Size Averages of the Year & World Powers

Towering over every other army with a difference of eight between first and second, the Rebel Penguin Federation were statistically the largest consistent army throughout the year (sample size of ten entries). Their 41.32 leads the entire community, with the Army of Club Penguin (33,41) and Doritos of Club Penguin (31.73) in second and third, respectively. The Rebel Penguin Federation was the only army this year to be averaged out to be a world power using the baseline we used earlier. The Aliens, a rising army this year, came out to about fifth on the size average. It was estimated that Aliens benefited Top Ten-wise more so due to event quantity (second all-year with 297 events, close to the RPF’s 317 and far ahead of ACP’s third place 238) rather than pure size, although the army did have some of the highest individual event sizes this year. As for the largest size average for a week, it goes to the Help Force at the start of the year. To check out the highest size averages, a full list of the top 10 of the year is listed below:

1. Help Force (71.00) – December 29th
2. Doritos of Club Penguin (66.50) – February 2nd
3. Rebel Penguin Federation (64.33) – December 21st
4. Water Vikings (55.69) – July 27th
5. Rebel Penguin Federation (54) – December 14th
6. Rebel Penguin Federation (53.36) – November 16th
7. Rebel Penguin Federation (52.57) – October 19th
8. Rebel Penguin Federation (52.13) – December 7th
9. Rebel Penguin Federation (51.56) – November 30th
10. Rebel Penguin Federation (51.12) – November 9th

Additionally, I’ve gone ahead and cobbled together all the World Power weeks of the majors. Remember, for our basis, we went off a weekly size average of 35 (a difficult feat due to other events weighing down big events towards the 20 threshold):

1. Rebel Penguin Federation (40 weeks) – 76.92% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
2. Doritos of Club Penguin (16 weeks) – 55.17% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
3. Army of Club Penguin (14 weeks) – 26.92% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
4. Water Vikings (12 weeks) – 26.08% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
5T. Aliens (6 weeks) – 11.53% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
5T. Help Force (6 weeks) – 11.53% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)
7. Templars (1 week) – 1.92% of Generation’s Lifespan (for year)

Top Maximum Sizes of the Year

The highest maximum size this year (minimum: ten entries in our rankings this year) was obtained by the Doritos of Club Penguin for their anniversary event with 102. Below are the top ten maximum sizes this year:

1. Doritos of Club Penguin (102) – February 8th
2. Rebel Penguin Federation (93) – August 9th
3. Doritos of Club Penguin (92) – May 28th
4T. Rebel Penguin Federation (88) – November 8th
4T. Water Vikings (88) – August 2nd
6. Rebel Penguin Federation (81) – April 6th
7. Rebel Penguin Federation (80) – August 2nd
8. Aliens (79) – August 3rd
9T. Army of Club Penguin (76) – September 27th
9T. Army of Club Penguin (76) – December 21st
9T. Rebel Penguin Federation (76) – December 21st

Longest Streaks at #1

The army that held first place the longest was the Rebel Penguin Federation, holding it from October 12th onward for a streak (as of writing this) of 11 weeks. Even after the month-long multiplier that kept them out of first for almost all of September and early October, the army has bounced back in a very significant way. In fact, when ignoring the multiplier put on their total points, their streak would’ve been 16 weeks (as of writing) with them having the necessary points since September 7th. Even during the Army of Club Penguin‘s anniversary week, without the multiplier the RPF would’ve saw a total points of 62.17 to the ACP’s 58.42. The RPF was close to tying second place as well with Aliens narrowly achieving first for June 22nd-July 28th. Contrastly, RPF also  benefited from WV being striped of some of its first places due to Pr1sm’s multi-logging for July when recounted. Below are the five longest streaks this year:

1. Rebel Penguin Federation (11 weeks) – October 12th – Present
2. Doritos of Club Penguin (7 weeks) – January 13th – March 8th
3. Rebel Penguin Federation (4 weeks) – May 18th – June 28th
4T. Rebel Penguin Federation (3 weeks) – March 30th – April 26th
4T. Rebel Penguin Federation (3 weeks) – June 29th – July 27th

Most Weeks at #1

The army that held first place the most this year was the Rebel Penguin Federation with 28 first-place finishes. This is the most an army has gotten first-place wise since the Templarian reign over 2022. Surprisingly, no army this year was in the top five all year! Not even the RPF due to their multiplier for September 28th-October 4th. Nonetheless, the RPF still had arguably the best Top Ten statistical year since the Templars in 2022. Approximately there were six unique first-place armies, a decrease of three. Less armies cracked into the top three too compared to 2024. Below is a table with all the statistics:

State of AUSIA

In a new segment measuring the state of the AUSIA community throughout the year thanks to the help of Jojo Teri, we estimated that when averaged together, 40.31% of the community hosted an AUSIA event at least once sometime this year. In particular, the week of January 19th-January 25th saw 64.3% of armies that week host an AUSIA event at some point, and an even higher percentage of 71.4% in early June due to Around-the-World Cup II. A few other weeks saw the percentage in the 60s range.

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That wraps up another year in the books. Whilst we are far from a “golden age,” and there has been a decrease in general competition, we have seen many new faces to the board than last year and general activity remains high, especially after the map reforms from the summit. Sizes are also generally increasing from the past couple of years to a new norm not quite at pandemic-levels but more comparable to 2021. The new map with the changes is set to take effect this coming month. As always, this year wouldn’t have been possible without the leaders and troops. The leaders are needed to generate this activity and story, but the troops make these armies alive and keep competition strong!

Club Penguin Armies remains steadfast in our commitment to provide the best top tens in the entire community for the foreseeable future like always. Some ideas we wanted to do this year had to be shelved temporarily, such as the seasonable Top Tens, due to manpower issues. However, Link, Edu, Jojo, and I plan on archiving every Top Ten so we can have even more detailed Top Tens of the Months, Seasons, and Years. As some people notice, the table this year is new. I decided to experiment with creating a new table similar to CBS Sports, something I’ve wanted to do since 2023. It’s far from perfect, really (total events for example is missing a lot for the S/Ms due to poor archiving), but I went ahead and coded this in my own time. We are aware of a specific competitor who is looking to make their Top Tens more detailed, and this is the first step in our answer to that in a series of roll-outs. Competition ultimately fuels innovation, and we will step up to the challenge to maintain that the quality of our Top Tens are both fairly accurate, aesthetically pleasing, and detailed for historic referencing.

One thing that has come up is the potential of bringing back biographies. Whilst I am supportive of that idea, we are working on a shoestring team. Our goal, though, is if things continue to grow, we may consider returning biographies in a more streamlined matter. Waxing poetic about every event when there’s many can be challenging for us, especially since some people sign up for the Committee to do counting, not writing. But if this is something the community wants, we will explore returning biographies in a streamlined matter so people can still find posts from those armies (if applicable) for archival sake.

A massive thanks to Spotty, Moon, Ella, Tulip, Billy Bawl, Pingoboiii, Kiltanon, Lydia, Zooy, Hampter, Rye Bread, Calgo, Ugly, Satchmo, Zenishira, T_T, Joel, Imxge, July, Litt, Lawless, Leah, and others for all contributing to this year as committee members.

From myself, Edu, Jojo, Link, and the rest of the committee, we wish you all a Happy New Year, CPA!

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