Empire Agent (female)

Okay, okay; I did paint more minis for Anima Tactics than I hinted at near the beginning of June.

It has been a productive month for me, with 4 Anima Tactics minis, and 4 Freebooter's Fate minis painted (see here for my Freebooter's stuff), taking me to 34 minis for the year so far - I only painted 24 in the 12 months of 2012, so far so good then in terms of my productivity.

This is my second Agent, and means I am up to 155-175 Levels of Empire depending on how the Agent is configured. It looks to me that the Empire Agent can be made a very solid unit, with Armor 5 a very attractive option (I think my go to set-up will be to recover 3 Actions per Turn; +1 Attack and Damage; +3 armor for Armor 5).

With this mini I am up to 4 Empire units so far, and I am hoping to add Lilith as a Leader model making a potential 250 Levels, which in turn will be fairly easy to round out to 300 Levels with a Wanderer or an appropriate 50 Level Empire unit added.

For Advantage Cards, while it might me tempting to add Supernatural Armor, I think that is too costly to justify, so probably a simple Elemental Weapon to make an okay close combat unit. If taking a risk that I am fighting someone without decent anti-Armor, maybe Raphael's Gift to 'tank' the Empire Agent up a little.

Running Totals
Anima Tactics Minis: 135 (added: nothing new arrived yet, but one or two on order)
Anima Tactics Minis Painted: 26 (a few more are in the dreaded queue)
Painted Minis Percentage: 19.3% (percentage of AT minis owned that are painted)

Church Party

Click on me

Hot on the heels of my Wissenschaft Party post, here is my other (so far) 5 unit Organization Party.

This collection of Church units comprises 220 Levels, or 225 if Lostaroth Marchosias is used as an Optional Leader.

Right now the only real option I have to expand this to 300 Levels with what I have already is a combination of Wanderer and Summons, or to take an Advantage Card to boost Sarah Reindhold's Summoner Level to 2 and take a couple of Summons (I currently have 3 combinations of 75 Levels of Summons).

Therefore there is probably a greater need to fill out those 75-80 Levels for Church more than Wissenschaft right now.

Wissenschaft Party

If you click I will grow

I plan to post Organization Party pictures every so often, when I get five or more painted for a specific Organization, and then maybe every two to three models hereafter.

First up is Wissenschaft. These models amount to 240 Levels, or 245 if Valis Ul Del Vilfain is used as an Optional Leader. I think games tend to be played at multiples of 100 Levels since many Party-building benefits kick in at those thresholds. So with these 5 units, I would be looking to add either a 55 Level Wanderer (Bella and Aqua are a good fit since as a Team they count as just a single Wanderer choice), or 55 Levels of Summons (maybe Lesser Hamadria and Elhaym, Maiden of Light). As my collection grows, there will be more options to bolster their ranks.

Alessa Raincross

Click on me to embiggen

This one was *mostly* finished around a week ago after a period of on-off 'work in progress', but when looking closely I realized I had initially missed the lacing on her crop top, so that was rectified a few days ago. Considering I did not expect to do much Anima Tactics this month, this is my third for July!

Alessa Raincross is a Wissenschaft Crow and former bounty hunter who was caught in an explosion when she hunted the assassin Vayl. Her legs were replaced with technological prosthetics and subsequently she joined the ranks of Wissenschaft.

There are a few gun-toting female characters in Anima Tactics (others that come to mind are XII, Cordelia and Kira, both also Wissenschaft; Valentine from Empire), so I am happy to get one done as a contrast to the regular 'huge swords'!

Game-wise Alessa Raincross is very much focused around her Ranged Attacks. In addition, like most non-Gear Wissenschaft units she can have 2 Advantage Cards attached. Assuming use of the Lost Loggia Organizational Advantage, then she can be loaded up to make a very effective sniper type based on he Stealth Action.Therefore the Nue Advantage Card could be useful to make Alessa harder to find when using Stealth; or perhaps Covert Operation to allow Alessa to gain Advanced Deployment. Finally anything that stacks with Attack or Damage is inevitably useful given her focus on Ranged Attacks.

With my Wissenschaft shaping up, a couple more would be nice before I switch focus to the Gears.

Running Totals
Anima Tactics Minis: 135 (added: nothing new since the last update!)
Anima Tactics Minis Painted: 25 (a few more are in the dreaded queue)
Painted Minis Percentage: 18.5% (percentage of AT minis owned that are painted)

Pages

Just a quick reminder about the Organization page tabs at the top of the blog.

These will continue to be updated with links and brief info about that Organization's completed minis (or about Summons or Wanderers). In time I may add some more info there once I work out what I think is most interesting or useful. So hopefully they will be worth revisiting from time to time.

Erika

Click embiggen this image

Considering I thought I would not get many Anima Tactics minis finished this month (even having finished Hamadria when I posted that though), this is my second for July, and I have a third 95% done. So more than I initially thought then!

Erika is a teenager who wields incredible destructive power through her hammer, Mjolnir, and is the youngest member of the Empress' Hand.

I love this mini; it is such a fun pose that I think it is one of the best in the range, and since I rate the bulk of the Anima Tactics range very highly, in turn that makes this one of my favourite mini concepts ever.

I really do love this sculpt.

That said, I wish they had either opted to cast in resin, or had chosen to sculpt a grip onto the hammer so the haft could have been easily replaced with brass rod - as it is I do not think that will stand up to too much handling, and so it may only be used sparingly as a gaming piece. I am not even sure it will keep the mini in position even without handling as the metal is pretty soft. That said, it is a brilliant model in my opinion.

Game-wise Erika has some of the usual traits of Empire units including Armor; high-ish Damage value. These are complemented by a fairly decent Speed value and some pretty unusual Actions, including Action Point removal; small radius area of effect; one-shot Taunt which induces Berserk - useful for disrupting units that work outside of base to base or use non-damaging Actions.

Did I mention that I love this mini by the way?

Erika has the colour scheme seen on my other Empire units (Janus Faith; Odin Goldsmith), and I think it should look effective in contrast to Wissenschaft and Church Parties. There will be a second Empire scheme for the likes of Samiel, Iosara etc., but I am still trying to work that out since I have a few Organizations with predominant use of black.

Running Totals
Anima Tactics Minis: 135 (added: Bridget Setsuna; Kujaku Hime; Raziel Archetypum; Type 009 Deathhead; another Al-Djinn; and another Shinobi)
Anima Tactics Minis Painted: 24 (with another almost done)
Painted Minis Percentage: 17.77% (percentage of AT minis owned that are painted)

Hamadria

You may have spotted Hamadria in the battle report preview images I posted and she was finished quite quickly for that game.

Although very quickly painted, and certainly not my best work, I am reasonably happy with the end result, how this Summon has turned out.

A Hamadria appears to be some kind of nature spirit, but far less destructive than the Wrath of Nature. Using here the other day has changed my mind about Sarah Reindhold; the two worked well together as effectively a 55 Level pair of units, with overlapping healing Actions. When I used Sarah Reindhold with Elhaym, Maiden of Light as her Summon I thought it was an expensive combination, but this combination worked well with their stacking healing actions synergising very well. add to that that Hadria has a cheap basic ranged Attack to throw into the mix, and she is a very effective, if fragile, unit.

As a Summon Hamadria cannot have Advantage Cards attached to her, so no specific strategy there.

After posting about the upcoming battle report I thought it could be a while before I finish any more Anima Tactics, but I finished one mini today and almost finished another, so I am on a bit of a roll.

I really, really need to paint up some Dark Summons soon, but honestly I do think that painting what I feel like seems the best way to go for now instead of frustrating myself and losing all interest from trying to do a specific mini.

Running Totals
Anima Tactics Minis: 129 (added: Hamadria!)
Anima Tactics Minis Painted: 23
Painted Minis Percentage: 17.8% (percentage of AT minis owned that are painted)

Upcoming Battle Report

A quick update as things may be slower on the Anima Tactician for the next couple of months than they have been as I try and get some Freebooter's Fate and Pulp City minis finished.

We played another game a couple of days ago, and this time we specifically took some pictures of the action as it unfolded. I *think* I have enough to put together a battle report so watch this space for that in the next week or two.

The battle report will use Comic Life as with my Pulp City battle reports, but presentation will be slightly different than those, with a bit of a different spin I expect.

I have also finished another Anima Tactics mini (eagle eyed readers may spot the new mini in the picture above!), which featured in the game, and I should get that one photographed in the next few days.