Armada

Invictus 95 Ti Ski

Last year, Armada's Invictus series gave the freeride-oriented brand a burly, directional, and hard-charging fresher-upper, and it's gone a step or three further this year with the introduction of four different Invictus models. The 95 Ti is the face-melting middle child, with a junkyard's worth of metal tucked away inside, enough laminates and reinforcements to supply a small city with building materials, and a flat tail and nearly full-length camber for a serious point-it-and-go feel.

At 95mm underfoot, the Invictus is obviously not meant to surf through deep pow. It can handle its own in freshies, thanks to the moderate tip rise of the AR Nose Rocker profile and a tip that's slight softer than the tail, but the ski is more at home in cut-up storm leftovers and a few inches of heavy snow than on full-blown pow days. The Hybrid Double Zone Core is the basis for the Invictus' damp and stable feel, but it's the array of reinforcements that really make it bomb. Armada built it with two full layers of Titanal for impressive dampness and stability, and sandwiched those between two fiberglass laminate matrices, which keep the ski stiff when it's on edge, so you don't have to fight torsional twisting when you're railing through chop on edge.

Cap constructions are light, but since weight isn't the priority here, Armada built the Invictus with full AR50 sidewalls, which direct power down into the edges rather than allowing the ski to twist when you're trying to charge. There are also carbon Kevlar stringers for some extra pop and stability, because no Armada ski would be complete without the ability to boost off terrain features, after all.