Agents Unbound

"At midnight, all the agents and superhuman crew go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do."

With apologies to Bob Dylan for appropriating the above quote, I am glad Agents have been getting some attention with the recent rules revisions being previewed, especially since painting my first Church Agent, I now have finished an Agent for all of the current Organizations that have them.

I fully expect all Organization Agents, as well as Shinobi, to get eventually reworked profile options, and I do think the new approach has made Agents a far more viable and useful unit option. While some may think t'their' beloved build has lost out somehow, on balance I do think it makes sense to revise how Agents work in the game, and their revisions seem to lean towards viable support-type units, which seems fitting since they are the foot-soldiers of the various Organizations in Anima Tactics.

The Next 10 (7)

It has taken me around three and half months, but after finishing my first Church Agent here is the seventh instalment of the 'Next 10'.

In the time since the last batch of 10 units, there have been no new releases for the game, so I am staying ahead of that, although I do wish the delayed releases would become available soon - 'new stuff' helps motivate me to paint 'old stuff' sometimes.

With 4 units finished recently, Azur is most represented in this batch. I was glad to get 3 more Agents done, but most of all I was very happy to get Arias Vayu painted as it added another much-needed Light Summon, and was a unit I was putting off tackling.

Unfortunately no larger models were completed in this batch, which is something I think I need to make a concerted effort with in the near future, maybe with a couple of Gears. I still need more Samael and Empire units too.

Looking forward, I think a realistic target for 2015 is probably 30 Anima Tactics units, meaning 2-3 per month. If I can have the next Next 10 done before the end of March, then that would put me ahead, so we shall see where I actually end up.

Church Agent (male)

Unit number 70 - done!

These Agents are the special forces available to the Church's highest circles of power. Many are trained from childhood to hunt down and destroy supernatural threats to humanity, while others use their divine gifts to further the work of the Church.

I started this mini along with another Church Agent and a couple of non-Anima Tactics minis at the same time, to take advantage of the fact that all were using red as a predominant colour. What that meant was that in a few days I managed to paint 3 minis, and so I have inched further forward with my Anima Tactics painting total. This mini was started once previously, and stripped of paint when I was unhappy with my progress. There is some pitting at the back of the mini I am unhappy with, but that will stay as it is, as I just do not want to strip and repaint it again. More importantly, it is my first Church unit completed (since Alis Testarossa) in almost 6 months!

As mentioned in a recent post (click for link), it looks like Agents may get a change to their rules, so I am very interested to see what will happen with Church Agents. once all the Agents cards have been revealed, I will probably get a set printed via Artscow until such time official cards are printed.

As the year draws to a close, I don't think there is any hope of achieving my target of 36 Anima Tactics units this year. However, I may get a couple more painted possibly, and if I can match the same total next year and the year after, the project will remain steadily on course. That may need me to paint 'smarter', doing what I have done with Deimon and Luther Delacroix and painting a couple of units in tandem for speed,

Running Totals
Anima Tactics Units: 164 (added: nothing and still no sign of that pre-order from months ago...)
Anima Tactics Units Painted: 70 (66 different units)
Painted Units Percentage: 42.7% (percentage of AT minis owned and painted)
Anima Tactics Range: 152 discrete units (including 2 LE minis; including September as he *still* is due for presumed release)
Percentage of Whole Range Painted: 43.4%
Year to Date Target: 29 of 36 units (3 per month target; 81%)

Agent Rules Redux

A few days after posting my painted Azur Agent and commenting about the unit's rules, there has been a preview of a new approach to Agents. Ruitori revealed the first example cards, with the first revealed update is the Azur Agent, now followed by the Empire Agent.

I like and prefer the new simpler approach as it is more pick up and play friendly, while hopefully offering a decent set of rules for each incarnation of Agent. My feeling was that to mitigate the risks of min-maxing from a wide array of choices of the old style, the Agents probably ended up being not up to par for their Levels. While the old style offered a wide menu of choice, ultimately it stifled the likelihood of fielding an Agent as there were always better options at the same cost in existing named units.

What this means is that stuff like Ash Slaves (an Al-Djinn Action) remains to be seen how it will be affected, but I do hope this cleaner more defined approach is adopted for the Agents.