just heard of this interesting game, how do i start?

By shadow?, in Anima: Tactics

I was looking for a new board/card game, and i came across this one. It sounds interesting. It got a better score on board game geek than the regular anima card game. I'm not very big on collectable card games (dont know if this is one). i heard you need one light starter and one dark starter for a game, or something and its very recomended to by another figure or two when starting. So is this a collectable, if so should i play the regular version? If not which products should i buy to start? Also i don't know if this has anything to do with this but i am a HUGE fan of japanese anime.

Alrighty, so this game is only sort of collectible... firstly its a Miniature game not a card game, it uses cards which come with each of the miniatures to keep track of the stats and abilities of the various characters. The two starters basically contain a pair of figures thier cards a die and a couple of other bits and pieces. If you find a friend to play against getting the two starters and just having a go will teach you the very basic version of the game.

In the past I would have said grab the starter sets have a look over the rules and another figure based on its faction Light/Dark that looks cool to you and go from there but there are a few other options. First you can get the basic rules from FFG' main Anima Tactics sub-website this will give you a basic intro to what the major rules for the game are. Then you can also buy the Hard-cover rulebook which will expand on those rules and also give you information and stats on 70 characters (out of the 90+ currently availible).

A lot of people then put together thier initial army straight from that book before expanding outward from there.

While some (such as me) see Anima as a collectible Miniature game, it's not specifically designed that way such as Hero-clicks or other games where the figures are pre-painted or numbered x out of y. Mostly you are just meant to buy the figures that you like or wish to use in your army, the problem is that most of the figures look really cool and yes they do cash in on that Anime feeling.

Whether or not you start into this game on your own or not you can look and see if their are any Free Agent (People who run demonstrations) in your local area. This way you will be able to learn the game from another and probably meet others to play against.

If you head on over to these forums cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/index.php you can ask around for who is the closest Free agent to you and there is also a player locator thread as well as spoilers on new characters and lots of other things.

Hope this helps.

- Raith

Apologies for the small-necro, I didn't think it was worth starting a new thread :)

Potentially looking to start playing with the wife and some other friends around here.

Raith said:

In the past I would have said grab the starter sets have a look over the rules and another figure based on its faction Light/Dark that looks cool to you and go from there but there are a few other options.

A common suggestion seems to get a starter box + one more mini, to have a group of three for the first battles. However, I've seen it mentioned a few times that the balance between the Light & Dark starter sets isn't the best. Is this the case and, if so, what are the best alternatives to kick-off with?

Examples:

  • Light Starter Set + 1 mini
  • 3 Dark Minis (any suggestions?)
  • An Organization Starter Set + 1 mini

Thanks in advance :)

Replying to my own post for any future comers.. After a fair bit of digging we bought the Light Starter Box with a few extra miniatures; with the aim to create a Church and Empire force.

So we have incoming:

Church

Empire

Wanderer

and if we were going to do Samael I guess we'd do something like:

Samael

Feedback welcome as always :)