Kia ora, Christchurch. You showed up.
Last weekend at Armageddon Expo, we set up a screen, stuck a few QR codes up on the wall, and invited the crowd to find out what happens when you turn real careers into a competitive card game. The answer? Over 2,300 battles, 300,000 points scored, and one very dominant Vibe Merchant named Uncle Bev.
Skill Slam is a live auto-battler where you take a quick quiz, get sorted into a Career Faction based on your answers, and go head-to-head against other players — stat vs stat, streaks on the line, faction glory at stake. No app download needed. Just your phone, a big screen, and the eternal question: could a plumber beat a software engineer in a fair fight?
Turns out, yes!
We've pulled together the stats from the weekend and laid them out below — because your choices mattered, your battles were real, and some of you went absurdly hard.
The Numbers
Here's what Christchurch did across two days at Armageddon 2026.
Who Signed Up
The most popular factions by player count tell an interesting story about what Christchurch is drawn to.
Dream Lab pulled the biggest crowd — Christchurch's Armageddon audience skews creative, entrepreneurial, and design-minded. No surprises at a pop culture expo. But the Vibe Merchants punched way above their weight in points despite being only the 4th biggest faction. Quality over quantity.
The Legends
We had a prize on the line across both days — a brand new pair of Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones for whoever topped the combined leaderboard. Some players left a mark. Here are the ones who made us stop and stare.
The Faction War
Every point you earned didn't just go to your leaderboard — it went to your faction. All weekend, the nine Career Factions were locked in a slow-burning war for supremacy. Here's how it ended.
Final Faction Standings
That Quiz You Took? That Was Just the Warmup.
The 6-question quiz that sorted you into your faction was a compressed, gamified version of something much bigger.
It's called FutureMix AI, and it's the real deal.
FutureMix is an AI-powered career exploration experience built by Nexties. Where SkillSlam gave you a faction in 60 seconds, FutureMix goes deeper — it builds a personal map of your strengths, interests, and values, then shows you study paths and career directions that actually fit you.
Think of it this way:
- SkillSlam told you what kind of work lights you up
- FutureMix shows you exactly where that could take you
If you were sorted into Dream Lab, FutureMix might surface graphic design degrees, UX bootcamps, architecture diplomas, or startup programmes you didn't know existed. If you landed in DarkMode, it'll connect you to software engineering, cybersecurity, data science, and AI pathways across New Zealand.
Every faction maps to real careers. Every career maps to real courses. And Nexties has them all.
Explore Your Faction's Careers
Want to see where your faction could take you? Each link below takes you to real courses on Nexties that match your SkillSlam faction.
What's Next
Christchurch was just the beginning.
SkillSlam is coming to Armageddon Wellington over Easter weekend — and it's going to be bigger, louder, and even more competitive. New players, new rivalries, new faction battles.
Think your faction can hold onto the crown? Think you can dethrone Uncle Bev? There's only one way to find out.
In the meantime:
→ Try FutureMix AI — the full-depth conversation version of the quiz that sorted you into your faction. It's free, it's private, and it goes way deeper.
→ Explore courses on Nexties — browse degrees, diplomas, certificates, and short courses across every field. Like Netflix, but for your future.
Thanks for playing, Christchurch. You brought the energy, the streaks, the upsets, and multitude of character names ranging from Raven to Gigafart.
Wellington — you're next.
— The Nexties team
