Review of Anima:Tactics

What is it?
It’s a skirmish level wargame. The company is pitching it as follows “Based on the upcoming Anima: Beyond Fantasy roleplaying game setting, Anima: Tactics is a no-holds barred, skirmish-level 28mm miniatures combat game that pits heroic characters against each other in the struggle between Light and Dark.” ... but then they would...

What's available?

1. Light Starter Box
2. Dark Starter Box
3. 6 Character blisters (1 Light, 1 Dark and 4 Unaligned)

Packing and Presentation
You only need look at the starter kits to see that the various companies involved are onto a winner. Both boxed sets are little gems of production skill. Ranging from the cover artwork which is pure anime to the art work and effort put into the character cards and counters/tokens. Inside the box the minis are well padded with foam and each box contains;

1. Two Figures together with their cards
2. A card of counter and state markers
3. A summary card detailing orders and the cost of basic actions etc…
4. Several clear blue action counters
5. The rulebook and one D10

Each blister contains;

1. The figure with their character and advantage cards
2. A card of counter and state markers
3. Several clear blue action counters

The Miniatures
The figures themselves are beautifully sculpted and really do capture the essence of their concept art. The sculpts run the full gamut from one piece, minimal detail such as Dereck Shezard (arguably the best playable character in this release) to the exquisitely detailed, multi part, marriage wrecking pieces like Shinigami Ayl. The casts are clean, crisp with little to no preparation required before painting. I would say though that the minis are enhanced by even the flimsiest effort at scenic basing.

As hinted above I did have a bit of trouble putting together Shinigami Ayl from the Dark faction box. My wife advised patience but on two occasions she had to restrain me from using my own council or as I like to call it ... a hammer. The problem I had was with the tail. You have to position it to allow for the scythe to pass through it at the front while still keeping it attached to her, eh… "lower-back". I eventually gave up the thing as a bad plan and repositioned it. This however should not put you off as I'm legendary for being all thumbs.

My only other complaint is the lack of facial definition on 2 of the other figures. Not a massive problem but it makes painting slightly more difficult for people starting out.

Factions and Organisations
I can hear what you're thinking now my friends. "Darren me old chum, well sculpted minis are nice but I'd like to organise them into some sort of rival "gangs" so we can get up to scamppery"

In this initial release force organisation is base around factions and organisations. There are three main factions (alignments) light, dark and unaligned. The starting point for most players will be the light and/or dark sets which can then be added to with unaligned characters. There are 10 figures available, 3 for light and dark and 4 for unaligned. This means of course, should the fancy take you, you can create and unaligned force from the blisters (frankly those minis are cooler...)

The other method is to choose to form a party based on one of 8 organisations. For this type of party you may freely mix characters of different factions as long as their associated with the same organisation. It doesn't sound that special but it enables you to have some interesting attack and support options using the mix of light/dark characters.

So far I’ve only played via factions up to a level (points) of 250. This pans out to between 3-5 characters with pretty much all available advantages (items) being used too. Do not however underestimate the benefits of a “one on one” character game with multiple advantages per side. 20 mins of frantic name calling and recrimination… top stuff. I would also like to point out that I’ve won over half of the games against Son’ so this appears to be my game… finally!!..

Game Play
"Wow Darren it is easy to organise a force but, forgive me for asking, what exactly do I do now. I have the well painted troupe of little feckers but I need some type of guidelines or “rules” to… you know… kick my opponents head around the room”

Each turn in AnimaTactics is broken into three phases
Recovery: replenish your action counters etc…
Maintenance: pay upkeep on any abilities or remove the appropriate effect counters if you choose not to.
Action: perform any actions you can afford to with your pool of counters

As the first two are relatively straight forward I’ll keep to the third. Actions as you can imagine are anything you can do at all in the game. Each character has a number of action points to spend per turn and these are tracked using the clear blue tokens. Actions are further broken into 3 categories;

Free Move: All characters may make a move of 2 inches at no cost. While this sounds like a waste of time think back to your own gaming past and how many times you were just short of cover, out of range etc… it’s handier than you think.

Basic: Anything you would normally do in a game. Walk, run, fight together with the more unusual sounding such as counter attack, escape and seek. Each has a cost in terms of action points. The actions listed in the rulebook are fairly comprehensive and quite clearly written. In my own games it has taken a while to get used to it. We seemed to be hording our action points so the first 247 turns revolved around every character moving 2” and then scanning the horizon for trouble. You grow out of that fairly quickly.

Abilities/Spells: The amazing power and attacks seen in the movies/books are detailed on each characters card. They are played in a similar way to basic actions and are therefore straightforward to use. Many come with upkeep costs and lasting effects. They also have the best sounding names such as Excisun Aeris, Seals of the Dragon and Hundred Fists. Seriously… they could be used to name characters in the Exalted RPG

Characters stats are detailed on its character card which covers all the normal bases. Move rate, attacks, defence, armour etc... together with its action pool and level cost. Each of the characters special abilities is listed out with its cost and effect. I kind of approve of this trend as it stop pen-and-pencil wargaming which is tediously slow.

The effects of damage, abilities, spells and differing states of psychology and tracked using teeny-tiny counters which are placed onto you characters card. This does provide a quick glance method of seeing what’s what … just don’t sneeze. While de rigeur in gaming at the mo, so to speak, this can lead to your character card resembling any of the late nineties PC-RPG games where you have a lot of mysterious and unfathomable combinations of symbols plastered over you character card.

The advised gaming area is 48"x48" but Son’ and I have had a couple of fairly fast and furious games on 24”x24”. Terrain is dealt with simply and, as far as I can see, more logically than most other games of comparable scale.

The last few pages in the rulebook details playing the game on any board/map with a grid overlay. One is provided on the Anima website but it’s not a huge leap to using a hex based map such as those with Battletech or indeed Battlelore. Handy for those with space constraints in there gaming venue or those who wish to get up close and personal quickly.

How does it stand up to other skirmish games?
“I dunno Dazza… there’s a lot of skirmish games out there...”

1. Infinity: This Spanish gem, my current fav, does suffer from lack of unit/character cards so is a bit slower than AT due to book-keeping. AT is a different “scale” of game with about the same effort involved as a starter box match but AT is more comparable with this game than any of the others in terms of minis/game play.
2. Warmachine/Hordes: While there is a bit more book keeping involved in AT it’s done via the miniscule counters so the game play is as fast. As with infinity the games are different scales so try to think of AT as a collection of Solos with high points costs and special abilities taken directly from your favourite manga.
3. Rezolution: as a unit based skirmish game Rezolution is a bit grander in size but does suffer from its size. If you want speed go for AT
4. Confrontation: what AT looses on mini sculpts and design aesthetic it more than makes up in ease of game play and clarity of rules…
5. GW: Mordhiem/Necromunda: AT… hands down…
6. GW:LOTR: Assuming you use only heroes Lord of the Rings is actually a faster game with about the same book-keeping effort as AT. I would prefer AT over LotR for the minis though.

Overall
I certainly view AnimaTactics as the little game that could and hopefully will. While this is the initial release setting up for the full rulebook and minis towards the latter half of this year they seem to have got it right. Its ease of play combined with the miniatures themselves has, for me, pushed it into second place on my own listing. That said its arrival has cause serious problems with my painting plans…

Getting down to brass tacks, at £14 for a starter set of 2 minis, and an average of £7 per blister it could easily be said that they’re GW scale prices. It would be the one thing that would put me off the game if you needed more than 2-5 minis per side… but you don’t so for an outlay of £28 to £35 (1 box and 2-3 blisters) you’re ready to roll. If you really want to get into it I wouldn’t sweat the cost as it can be spread over a couple of months allowing you to at least get the damned things painted.

If anyone is interested in demos please let the crew at BLG know and we’ll arrange something.