About 2 weeks ago, CPA hosted its community-based tournament, Operation: WinterStorm. A large part of the community participated, and several posts have been written, but none of them included the Administrators’ point of view.

Over the past two weeks, there have been several posts announcing the tournament and explaining how it works, as well as recaps of each day. I will go over the things that took place during the tournament, but at the same time looking at them more in depth.

Before the Beginning

Initially, the Administration thought of having Operation: WinterStorm as an army-based tournament, similar to the Summer Blitz but for both Major and Small Medium armies. It would take place near the end of January till the middle of February, lasting for 2-4 weeks. Its rules were almost the same as the ones that were eventually used for OP: WS. It would serve as a map beta to test the new features of the map, economy and adjacent land rules, as well as the Gary Bot and the map code itself. Several armies did not like the idea, though, so it was not implemented.

After some thinking, it was adapted to become a community-based tournament, as having a beta test was crucial to deal with possible bugs, and have a fully ready map for the armies. Thus, on January 13, Club Penguin Armies announced OP: WS, which was set to begin on January 24. It was a bold action, as it was a unique tournament style that had not happened before. People were competing in teams instead of with their own armies. Some armies stuck together while others were split into teams.

The Teams

There was another post specifically explaining how the Teams worked, as it was a new concept that needed much explaining. Along with the post, on January 20, the Teams signups opened for the community. Community members were able to choose one of the four teams: Black, Blue, Green, Red if they wished to participate in the tournament. Over its course, about 220 people joined the teams participating in the tournament. We had a small debate on which colours to include, or if we should have five teams instead of four. Having a Yellow team was also considered, but eventually we went with four teams. We did not choose yellow as there are more armies with black/ blue/ green/ red colours as their primary colours.

Upon joining a team, people could submit their name to become candidates in the internal team elections. One day before the tournament began, the elections took place based on who was interested. People in each team followed different ways to get more popularity and attempt to get elected. Some teams also had more candidate choices than others. For example, both the Green team and the Red had 4, Black had 6, but faced huge issues with its leadership, and Blue had 11. You can see who became a leader in which team in the Meet the Leaders post. Ironically, two of the three Red leaders were theoretically “on leave” during the tournament.

Setting up the tournament

Since the entire thing was based around CPA, as it was CPA’s community participating, the channels had to be made in the CPA server. Thus, many tournament channels popped up, with people getting access to them depending on their roles. WinterStorm announcements, where various organisation announcements regarding the entire tournament and its settings took place, and team selection channels were public for all army community members, regardless of their participation.

The press releases channel was a new addition, a place for teams to share their propaganda. Red Team dominated that channel, despite not winning the tourney. After that, each team had 3 channels: one where the team leaders could post their announcements, one where the team members could chat and the last one where team leaders could lead events. Upon request, non leader team members could lead too. Each team member had access to their team’s channels. There was also a secret chat for the leaders of each team where they could talk about their plans and use purchase/use items in secret. Last but not least, each team had a voice chat to coordinate with its members.

There was also the invasions channel, along with the respective channel in the Club Penguin Army Judges server, where teams scheduled their events, and the channels where the results were announced.

Notice that the Blue and Red leaders requested an extra channel to be added regarding tactics suggestions.

Team black

Initially, I expected this team to do well, but Team Black was the first and only team to get eliminated. It was also the first team who used a nuke. Upon being invaded by Red, they decided to nuke their land, Summit. The team consisted of people from multiple armies, which potentially made it tougher for them to work together. There were people from the Teutons, Romans, Dark Warriors and others.

Interestingly, one of their first actions was to design a uniform for their team. They held a contest, with the uniform in the picture below getting the most votes and being used for the tournament.

The team was very excited and hyped initially. After defeats came early, after bad communication between the members, the team fell into despair and chaos. The damage was getting bigger, through a domino effect and it took a few leadership changes before the team stabilised. The team eventually became mainly DW based, but it was too late to turn the tide. They were able to defeat the Reds once and survived a bit longer, but their loss was inevitable.

The team barely used the leading chat, leading and hyping events in the general chat instead. They were probably the most chaotic team. Initially targeted by both Red and Blue, with their conflict with Red becoming more intense each day. Shoutout to their propaganda attempts in the press release channel and Clade‘s drawings.

Team Blue

Team Blue was initially the most active team and the most hyped one as well. It was who I thought would end up winning the tournament, as soon as it started. They were among the first teams to reach sizes of 20+ in invasions as well, alongside Green. The team was led by people from the Water Vikings, but made up of ones from around the community.

For that reason, it felt more like WV. Their announcements had a more chaotic nature and so did their press releases, which were several. They were more strategic, allowing people to vote for their preferred event times. They also pinged a lot for each event, probably angering some people who complained about pings.

The team initially went after freeland and team Black. Later on, they focused on the Greens who had already scheduled invasions against them and let the Blacks alone. Near the end of the tournament, they were also targeted by the Reds and had to fight an unofficial 2v1 war. This team was the one that had invaded the most freeland, which was a very strategic move.

They led their events through the leading channel, with other people apart from the leaders leading too. They maintained an active general chat and created a nice culture within their team.

Team Red

Team Red was probably the underdog of the tournament, as well as the most wholesome and competitive team at the same time. The team was composed of people from many armies and armyless community members. Its leadership was mostly made from retired people as well. Another interesting composition, which I wondered how it would work. Initially, I expected team Red to do the worst, given that no one was volunteering to become a leader and it had the fewest members early on. This team really shows that even without a strong member base, with good leadership, an army can rise and do wonders, ending up behind the powerhouse Green.

This team probably produced the most propaganda, also having the CPA Artist trio in it. In the recap posts, the propaganda included mainly consists of Red propaganda. It was the team that recruited many people into CPA. Even people who had not been in the community before, which gave them an edge, compared to other teams. They even recruited through the mainchat and tried to troopsteal whenever it was possible. They were initially targeted by Black, but managed to generate much hype and fully destroy them.

Like team Blue, they had also allowed their members to vote on the timings sometimes. They fully focused on team Black, managing to defeat them. After that, they allied with Green to turn against Blue. They also made a pact with them to end the tourney with the same number of servers, which would force a tiebreaker battle between them to determine the winner, but that did not end up happening.

They also led through the dedicated channel, while creating a competitive and dedicated culture in their main chat.
To give you an idea of the Red propaganda quality, I have added Lirri‘s magazine.

Team Green

Perhaps the most tactical team. In the beginning, I expected it to finish second behind team Blue. They were the team that scheduled their first invasion the latest, having only one freeland invasion on the second day. They were completely tactical, calculating their every move, so I loved occasionally showing up to their secret leaders’ chat – (here’s your answer, Roxy). The team had a document where people put their timezones so the leaders knew when to schedule invasions. They also asked for team suggestions on tactics and moves, allowing members to interfere too. They also used the leading chat for its purpose, but sometimes also led in the general.

Since the team was led by people from the Army of Club Penguin and included several members from the Rebel Penguin Federation, and other armies as well, it had more of a major army vibe. Shoutout to Nefenom for writing event posts for each invasion, like the one you see below.

Being strategic, the team only fought team Blue. It never invaded a different team apart from them. They also never used economy items, apart from one time when they used a ship, unlike all the other teams, which were bombing each other, ending up with 11k coins.

Various interesting Events

It is interesting that the teams were trying to find ways to spy on the others. There were also some occasions where people accidentally leaked plans. Teams were trying to figure out how many people each team had, so each one of them was trying a different way to figure out the numbers.

Teams Blue and Black both had to use an item to invade a land, with Blue using a ship once and Black a plane.

There were a total of 60 attempted scheduled invasions, some of them ending up being invalidated. The invalidations happened either because of a broken rule or because the team no longer held an adjacent land.

It was funny seeing the chaos in some teams, especially when things did not go their way. For example, when nukes were purchased on bombed land, for team Blue, they could not use them because of that.

There was a day when a Red leader accidentally pinged the whole Red team inside the secret leaders’ thread. I had to remove about 50 people who were not supposed to be there, one by one.

Interestingly, during the days of chaos in the Black team, there were arguments taking place within the team, both in its leader and general chats, which caused the team to get into a worse position than it was.

There were a total of 8 bombings and 5 nukings, with one being Red nuking their own land, in an attempt to apply scorched earth tactics. This caused the map to look very scarred.

The continent’s ‘capital’, Tundra, was never invaded despite being a Hotspot server and generating 1000 coins instead of 100 in the final 2 days. It remained Red owned from the beginning till the end.

Just about 60 hours before the end of the tournament, the 3 teams, Blue, Green, Red, were almost tied when it came to the land they owned. The winner was decided on the last day.

Summary

This tournament showed that the community can have fun in more unusual ways. The tourney helped a large part of the community get engaged with activities while having fun. It also helped new members of the community become more familiar with army battles. Despite army leaders not liking the idea initially, changing its format was a good idea and it paid off. There was a point where leaders who had voted no started calling their armies to join them in the team they had selected, in an attempt to get more members.

The Operation provided a space that did not affect the armies’ relations and allowed the participants to go all out, without fearing repercussions from other armies or future revenge from their enemies’ allies. It included a large part of the community, people from all active armies, while having over 40 invasions in just 7 days! To put into perspective, that’s more than the ones in WWIX in fewer days. It also seems that most of the participants enjoyed this experience.

While there were more things going on during Operation: Winterstorm, it would probably require 25k words instead of 2.5k to write about all of it. Also, some things are left to be remembered only by the people who were there for it.

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Along with the 2025 POTY Live Broadcast, this marks another creative community event in 2026. Tune in to witness more of them throughout the year! Did you take part in the Operation? If yes, did you enjoy it? Would you like to see more team-based activities? 

I would like to thank everyone who participated in it, judged its battles, and designed the graphics for it.

JojoTeri
Chief Executive Producer

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