Agent Rules Redux II

After posting the card images for revised Empire and Azur Agents rules developed by Anima Studios, there have since been revisions to Church Agents and Samael Agents.

Things are still unclear about how these rules interact with Al-Djinn for example, but I do hope Anima Studios proceeds with the revisions for Wissenschaft Agents and Shinobi (and maybe even Gear Mk. Trithemius) despite the recent Cipher Studios announcement.

Anyway, here are the Church Agent and Samael Agent revised rules in case you have missed them elsewhere.

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.

Unit Types

For interested readers who are not too familiar with the Anima Tactics game but would like to learn a little more, I have written a series of posts under the tag 'Abilities & Rules'. This is another in that series, this time looking at categories and other labels that are applied to units and discussing and describing them a little.

Categories
Many categories do not have a specific rule associated with them (although some like Agent, Summoner, Summon, and Undead do), but they do indicate the type of unit that a model is.

• Mystic: The Magic users; they don't have the durability of Warriors, but many offer Ranged Attacks and/or buffs or debuffs.
• Prowler: The sneaky guys; often fairly low level cost, and many have the Stealth ability. Many use Subterfuge as the basis for their Actions, which means that unless they are equal or higher level they cannot affect Intangible targets.
• Warrior: The Party's fighters, either at range or close up.Some of them are the 'tanks' of the force, able to soak up Attacks. Their Actions are often Ki based, which has an effect when it comes to targeting Intangible Units.
• Leader: Usually combined with other categories; Parties are limited to 1 Leader per 250 Levels. Leaders are typically powerful units, often with Party-buffs or other unique abilities beyond the scope of most other Units. Some Leaders are Optional Leaders, who have the choice of being fielded as a Leader or non-Leader Unit (costing more and with better abilities as a Leader).

Other Categories
These are categories of classifiers/descriptors that are in addition to the main categories above.

• Agent: The foot soldiers of the various Organizations, Agents can usually only be fielded in Organization Parties, and not Faction Parties (Light or Dark), except for Shinobi which can be used in either. Agents have customisable ability options and each Agent can be taken more than once per Party depending on game size.
• Arbiter: Characters able to influence their subordinates more than most Leaders. They have free extra Actions for their Party to benefit from.
• Controller: Characters able to guide and enhance Undead and stop them going out of control.
• Summoner: Mystics able to Summon otherworldly beings to the mortal world.
• Gear: Gears are either Technomagical Powered Armour or Technomagical Golems primarily used by Wissenschaft. They offer decent Armor and Life Points, but offset durability by being fairly easy to hit, and they usually cannot have Advantage Cards.
• Summon: Supernatural creatures only able to manifest in the physical world when invoked by a Summoner. They can be powerful and offer unusual abilities, but their tether to the material world is limited.
• Undead: Necrotechnological constructs; Undead are not able to have Advantage Cards and are subject to certain special rules. Undead units are a mix of cheap troops and more expensive specialists. Non-unique Undead may be taken multiple times relative to game size, but unlike Agents are not limited to Organization (usually Black Sun) Parties.

In the picture:

• Gear Mk. Trithemius: Mystic; Gear
• Sarah Reindhold: Mystic; Summoner (Light)
• XII: Leader; Warrior
• The Colonel: Warrior; Arbiter (if part of Team Les Jaeger)
• Kingsley Warlock: Warrior; Mystic; Warrior; Controller
• Hamadria: Mystic; Summon (Light)
• Empire Agent: Warrior; Agent
• Styx: Prowler; Undead
• Kagemaru: Mystic; Prowler; Optional Leader; Summoner (Dark)

Additional Organization Advantages

The core Anima Tactics rulebook lists 3 Organizational Advantages per Organization. Interestingly, the Spanish and English versions of the books have a different listing for Wissenschaft. Black Sun were covered in their own mini booklet with 2 Organizational Advantages.

From the Spanish 'HELS' tournaments, there appears official corroboration of additional Organizational Advantages. These have not yet been placed in an officially endorsed or presented publication, but they do nonetheless appear official (this link is through to a source of the English language translation).

The additional Organizational Advantages are:

• Black Sun: Corporate Espionage
• Wissenschaft: Manipulation for English rules/Project Gear for Spanish rules
• Empire: Empire Tactica
• Azur Alliance: Death Squad 
• Church: Miracles
• Samael: Forbidden Lore

Given that there is no news about any imminent expansion book, and that Anima Tactics has not had the same attention as its stable-mate Helldorado, I hope that when the Addendum that was mentioned as forthcoming addresses these additional Organization Advantages in a more 'official' format.

Arbiters

Figure 1

Arbiters are an unusual class of units. Initially limited to Azur, since last year other Organization Parties have access to Arbiter benefits through Mijhail Mashen'ka.

Arbiters offer a small extra resource to their Parties. Each Turn they receive 3 Order Points, and each Arbiter has 3 or 4 Orders to choose from. Each Order uses between 1 and 3 Order Points, and each Arbiter has a different suite of orders they can use, although some Orders are common to two or more of them.

Orders may be a small extra 2 inch move (Motum), or a free hand to hand Attack (Opugnis; very useful for units with hard-hitting Basic Attacks). All Arbiters so far have one or both of these Orders available to them.

Figure 1: In a Party including Team Les Jaeger, The Colonel becomes an Arbiter. The Colonel uses Opugnis on Maximo Ligori who has already Activated earlier in this Turn; Maximo Ligori can now make a free Attack on Sho. 

Orders are used when the Arbiter Activates, so it is important think ahead to get the best out of them; in the example above it would be more helpful if The Colonel was better positioned to Attack or Charge Sho or Janus Faith; but then again, that kind of planning ahead is true of any good strategy game isn't it?

Initiative

Figure 1: The Colonel adds to the Party's Initiative roll

A simple ability, Initiative adds to the die roll for Deployment, and then in each Turn to the Initiative roll (goes without saying, but I said it anyway!).

Multiple instances of Initiative stack, so it is an ability which can weigh the odds of winning the Initiative roll in a player's favour. While I don't suggest picking a Party to win just one roll each Turn, when faced with some choices of unit, it may be a factor to weigh up.

Figure 1: For example, The Colonel has Initiative. If playing him, then the Tactical Advantage Plot Advantage Card is worth consideration as it also adds +1 to your Initiative roll. Doubling up the bonus means that the odds significantly shift in your favour (around 64% of winning/74% chance of not losing - assuming no extra dice etc. - if my maths serves me well), which can be useful tactically and psychologically (will your opponent burn a Gnosis point for the increased chance to win the roll?). Again, it is not the be all end all strategy, but something to think about.

Azur have the most easily-combined options for Initiative, followed by Church, Empire and Wissenschaft; In terms of synergies for Party-building, I would suggest that Azur have the better options, which helps compensate their relative fragility.

Stealth

Figure 1

Stealth is an Action common to many Prowlers in Anima Tactics, and allows them to become Hidden, therefore staying out of danger until they are hopefully ready to attack. Basically it is hard to attack Hidden units until they reveal themselves.

A lot of models with Stealth, particularly among Azur Prowlers, also have powerful Actions contingent on them being Hidden.

However, this is where things become tricky for the player managing units with Stealth. For a start, Stealth requires Upkeep, meaning that assuming a move plus Hidden-based Attack plus Upkeep, will mean that the Prowler probably has no AP left for Dodges etc. after they have Attacked. There are exceptions like Kagemaru whose AP limit is 5 and who can maintain Hidden if using basic Attack or Charge.

In addition, these units are usually quite fragile with low to middling Life Points and usually no Armor. Therefore, when they Attack from Hidden, they need to time it right  to minimize risk afterwards. This is compounded by the fact that when a model Attacks from Hidden, the Hidden status is usually lost; therefore resuming Hidden through Stealth means paying the full AP costs, and requires the unit to be outside enemy Control Zones.

Figure 1: If The Type-004: Hellhound wants to Seek (try and find Hidden models in its Control Zone), it would only be able to find Kyler since Juliette Kaim is out of LOS. The Hellhound is a better choice than Arkham to Seek as it gets a bonus for being a Prowler.

If both Kyler and Juliette Kaim wanted to use Stealth, only Juliette could so because she is out of LOS.

The game management around Stealth is one of the things that I like about Anima Tactics; each Organization favours certain troop types, which in turn creates certain play-styles. Azur certainly has a dominant Stealth-based play style among its earlier models, although as their line-up has been expanded that has changed.

Summoning

Genma can have up to 3 Summons

One of my favourite aspects of the Anima Tactics game is Summoning. For those not too familiar with the game, some creatures can be Summoned temporarily to the battlefield.

The advantage of doing so is their (Summons) relative cost is less than it may otherwise be, with the trade-offs being they are time-bound for how long they will appear, and that they have to be Summoned - both of which can be mitigated (more later).

Summoning
A Summoner has a Summoner Level (usually 1-3), which limits the number of Summons it can call on during the game.

The Container Advantage Card increases Summoner Level by one.

Each Summon has a cost, in Action Points (AP) that the Summoner spends as an Action to bring them into play.

Valis Ul Del Vilfain can Summon for free if she is contact with an enemy.

Belith reduces the cost of one her Summons by one.

Covel reduces the cost of his Summons by one to a minimum of one. 

When a Summon arrives, it is placed within the Summoner's Control Zone (CZ's are usually 8 inches) has its normal recovery value in AP (usually 2-3 AP).

Covel's CZ is 12 inches for Summoning.

Summons arrive with Bind Points (usually 1-2).

The Familiar Advantage Card allows one Summon to appear with an additional Bind Point.

Stability
At the start of each Upkeep Phase (so at the start of the Turn following the Turn when the creature is Summoned), the Summon loses 1 Bind Point.

Genma can add Bind Points to friendly Summons and remove then from enemy Summons.

If a Summon has no more Bind Points and is in the Summoner's CZ, the Summoner can make a Stability Roll to see if it stays, otherwise it is removed.

The Seal of Bones Advantage Card adds +1 to Stability Rolls.

Summon Death
A Summon that is 'killed' causes a Shock check (but not Summons lost to Stability Rolls).

Covel as Optional Leader is effectively immune to Shock checks.

Flight

Figure 1: Elhaym, Maiden of Light wishes to engage Damaris!

Flight is an Innate Ability that modifies how a unit may move.

Basically it allows a unit to ignore movement penalties for terrain and move through/over other models without impediment. It also means they cannot be Intercepted when Charging except by other Flying units!

Figure 1: Elhaym, Maiden of Light wants to Attack Damaris. She has 4 AP left, so she could Charge (ignoring the Hellhound as she moves over it) using her Flight, or could Move (1 AP; again ignoring the Hellhound) then use Wings of Withdrawal to Attack and hopefully move again. Ether way the Hellhound cannot Intercept, since it does not have Flight.

States

Figure 1: All these units use the States rules

States are one of the game mechanics I like most about Anima Tactics. For my tastes, States and Summons are two of the pivotal game-play features that evoke the Japanese console rpgs that I used to love and that are definite influences on Anima Tactics.

So what are States? In many games they would be called Status Effects or something similar, and in keeping with the buff/debuff nature common to that kind of game-play, In Anima Tactics States are either Positive, or Negative, or in the case of Berserk, both!

The things that the designers have done very well in my opinion, is that Levels of States can be stacked so they endure over a few Turns, which is very much in keeping with Japanese console rpgs (at least those I played in the 1990's!). The Level of a State is effectively its duration in Turns, and the bonus or penalty provided is constant through that duration.

States that can affect units in Anima Tactics are:

• Haste (+): Faster AP recovery
• Shield (+): Adds Armor
• Protection (+): Adds to Resistance
• Healing (+): Recover Life Points (LP)
• Poison (-): Lose LP when Activating 
• Blind (-): Combat penalties
• Doom (-): A chance of removing the victim from play!
• Slow (-): Slower AP recovery
• Seal (-): Stops most special abilities being used
• Paralyzed (-): May not use Actions
• Berserker (+ -): Must attack, and has bonuses to Attack and Damage

Figure 1: Lostaroth Marchosias can grant himself Berserk as a Reaction. Elhaym, Maiden of Light and Hamadria can both grant Healing - useful to stack the benefits from both in a single Turn. Ahriman, Lord of Darkness may inflict Seal with a successful Attack.

If Ahriman, Lord of Darkness inflicted 5 or more Damage to Lostaroth Marchosias and Lostaroth then fails his Resistance roll, then Lostaroth would not be able to use his Liberation ability (granting Berserker Level 2) until the Seal has run its course.

Guidance Points

All of these Undead are within Kingsley Warlock's Control Zone

Controllers in Black Sun Parties have Guidance Points which allow them to do a couple of things:

• Maintain or regain Control of Uncontrollable units within their Control Zone (see below) 
• Recover extra Action Points for Undead units, subject to those units' limits (Influence)

Undead units run the risk of going out of control (the Uncontrollable rule). For many Undead, the chance to become Uncontrollable is quite high. Uncontrollable units pose a risk to any non-Undead units nearby, friend or foe, activating similarly to Berserk models.

The key then is striking a  balance between the number of Controllers and Undead in your Party. So far the typical number of Guidance Points per Controller is 2, with a couple of exceptions (Promethea and Luther Delacroix both have higher than usual Guidance Points values).

So while Undead are relatively cheap units to fill out a Party, one vital element looks to me to be in making sure your Party has enough Guidance Points available, or off-setting Uncontrollable where possible (Styx can effectively avoid Uncontrollable for example; Type-005's and Type-020's have limited upgrades that allow a single choice of those units to ignore Uncontrollable). Of course, it also means clustering units to an extent to ensure coverage of Guidance Points since Control Zones are typically 8 inches from a model.

Figure 1: Kingsley Warlock has 2 Guidance Points; when choosing the Party, if one of the Type-005's is upgraded to a Type-006: Commander, then he could use those Guidance Points to ensure the Type-020: Verrier does not become Uncontrollable, leaving one Guidance Point to boost AP.

If, when choosing the Party, the Type-020: Verrier is upgraded to a Type-021: Queen, then the Type-005's would ignore Uncontrollable as would Styx, as they would be of lower Level. This would allow Kingsley Warlock to use 2 Guidance Points to boost the AP of Undead (basically an extra AP for 2 units).

Styx cannot benefit from extra AP from Kingsley Warlock as only Promethea may spend Guidance Points on Styx. With his Uncontrollable value of 1+, he should always pass the roll unless a modifier applies.

Undead Units

Undead units

Undead units operate differently to many other models in the game. In general terms they are Immune to Poison and Healing States and cannot take Advantage Cards. They are a mix of capability from the cheap (in Levels) Type-005 and Type-004: Hellhound, to more powerful and costly units such as Type-012: Hunter, Raziel Archetypum or Raziel Nk-X. Most are non-unique (with notable exceptions such as Styx).

They are also subject to the Uncontrollable rule which I will look at a bit in a future post.

One aspect of Undead is that as they are generally quite inexpensive to include in a Party, then it is easily possible to outnumber your opponent numerically, which in itself can be an advantage when pulling out Activations and/or Dodges.

It is clear that Black Sun (as the primary purveyors of Undead, as necromantic weapons) are still evolving as an Organization, so it will be interesting to see if any more non-unique Undead units appear, as right now they have 7 different non-unique options.

Intangible

Figure 1: Kira is going to need some help!

Intangible is a pretty nifty Innate Ability, and one that I had overlooked until I painted Ahriman, Lord of Darkness.

At first I focused on the fact that it allows the model to avoid the penalties of moving through Abrupt Terrain (Difficult Terrain in many other games). But there is something even cooler; basically it limits models Attacking an Intangible target to those with Magic or Ki Attacks or Special Effects, or of needing to be of higher Level. Basically this particularly hamstrings Prowlers, which means that Azur and Wissenschaft more than most Organizations have units that are adversely affected, since their Actions are often based on Subterfuge, and many Prowlers are not of especially high Level.

Figure 1: Kira is in trouble because her Actions are based on Subterfuge (not Ki or Magic), and her level is less than Ahriman, Lord of Darkness' Atman value of 60 (Atman is the Level equivalency that Summons use for Level vs Level comparisons).

Figure 2: Will Ahriman, Lord of Darkness Charge Juliette Kaim?

Intangible also adds to range of Charges where that range would be reduced by Abrupt Terrain, such as steep hills. Especially useful as the game does not strictly allow pre-measuring.

Figure 2: Ahriman, Lord of Darkness wants to Charge Juliette Kaim, even though she is on a steep hill (Abrupt Terrain), which may mean he could be out of Charge range if he did not have the Intangible Innate Ability. It does not prevent Maximo Ligori from trying to intercept the Charge of course.

Intangible can clearly be turned to a player's advantage of course, and one extra option is to use the Ceridwen Equipment Advantage Card, which allows the bearer to benefit from Intangible by using an Action. I really dismissed the card at first, but in hindsight against certain Party types it could be a very useful option.

Critical Mastery

Figure 1: Sho smacks down Faust Orbatos?

This Innate Ability is a nice and simple one to explain to anyone who has not played the game; Critical Mastery effectively doubles the chance of achieving a Critical Hit (which Empire can improve further with the Combat Mastery Organizational Advantage).

A model scoring a Critical Hit hits even if the target Dodges successfully, and inflicts a minimum of 1 Life Point of Damage regardless of Armor. So for a unit like Ignis, Fire Demon for example, this particularly offsets the Summon's low Attack value.

Now comes a quick lesson! Anima Tactics allows a little degree of manipulation of probabilities through buffs to Attributes such as Attack, but more importantly through use of Gnosis. Players have a small pool of Gnosis to use each Turn. A Gnosis die adds an extra die to a roll, choosing the best result. Alongside Critical Mastery and using a Gnosis die means a 36% chance of a Critical Hit. For Empire Parties using Combat Mastery, that probability rises to 51%. So even the most well-defended (through high Defense and/or Armor plus Dodging) target can be hit with a strong degree of confidence in those circumstances!

Figure 1: Sho is Attacking Faust Orbatos, and Sho's Party is benefiting from Combat Mastery; Faust has not yet Activated, and so has enough AP to Dodge. Sho knows Faust may Dodge, and that his target has very good Armor, so he decides to use Gnosis (Attacker declares first before the target declares use of Dodge and any Gnosis).
If Faust does not Dodge, Sho has a 64% chance of hitting, a 51% chance of causing a Critical Hit, and a 19% chance of causing his maximum Damage in this situation which would be 6 Life Points. Perhaps more importantly, it pressures Faust to either Dodge (using a precious AP) or risk a good chance of taking some Damage.

Damage Resistance

Damage Resistance is a quality that crops up in the rules for a number of units. It is not an 'Innate Ability', therefore is unaffected by the Seal State.

In essence Damage Resistance is a rule to model that slow or cumbersome units will find it hard to evade blows. Thus some Undead units have the rule (especially the more common rank and file types), or big lumbering things like Wrath of Nature.

Damage Resistance offer a mixed bag, with generally more downsides than up, but even then, it is something that can be factored into play-style. Damage Resistance prevents a unit using Dodge, which while at first sounds like a handicap, however could arguably worked with if playing a more attritional and aggressive style. On the plus side, a DR unit never loses Action Points from Falls or Crashes; however those may be less common threats depending on terrain available and usual opponents faced.

The key thing then to me is simply that it in fact eases decision making; you don't have to worry about an Action Point being pulled out for a Dodge, thus scuppering your opportunity to pull off an uber-Action, or worse still worrying about taking the hit and the consequences thereof. Nope; hit happens, you see what the effects are, then move on. Like I say, well-suited to a more aggressive and attritional play style.