I have decided to join today because i want some feedback from other people who play this game. I am student going for a math and statistics degree and in my spare time i use statistics to make sense of table top games (such as this one). I have been playing anima for half a year now as the azur alliance. This is not my first table top game, i also play W40k and have been for going on 7 years now on top of playing D&D (3.5, screw 4.0) for 11 years (i will not include all the games i play here) so you know my credentials are in order. Now the issue i keep running into is that the azur alliance is just not good enough, their characters do not do enough damage or if they do they are to expensive or will die when matched against anyone else. They have some good things like deadmoon and Alastor are cool, Reindhold can be fun and maximo and hardo are interesting but overall the azur alliance when compared to other teams just sucks. Samael has dinah,ophiel,konosuke and other amazing characters as well as better advantages. The empire is just broken in every aspect, the church is almost as bad as the empire and wissenschaft has cordelia (lets just say nothing more about that). In short, after doing out the probability and playing many games i just can see the azur alliance being any good. I have heard that they are working on it and some characters will be released to off set this (i am looking at you Aizen) but when i look at the other people being released they are just as good so nothing is going to change. What do you guys think, anyone have anything to save the Azur alliance or are they just a cool fluffly team but in the game they are terrible.

For my players the Azur Alliance is probably the hardest team to beat with a number of tournaments and events I have organised over the last three years going down to Azur forces. Its really all about team selection and tactics when you ask questions like this you might want to post what sort of force you field as pretty much any Anima Organization has a couple of differing methods of use.

There are basically two Azur methods, sneak attacks and overwhelming actions.

With Sneak Attacks you prime your Azur force to include a lot of assassin characters like Harod, Jerome and Kyler, in a large force you can even include several Agents. The idea is to deploy as much of your force as allowed via infiltration and advanced deployment, then have any left start hidden. You need a few eavy hitters to be able to wade in while you send in your fast moving back-stabbers to target your evemies models in small group gaining massive damage before falling away and hiding once more before repeating. I find the Lords of the Abyss a great core to build around for this tactic as Deadmoon and Hel can benefit from Dark of the Moon and so your opponent can't target them while they move acros the board and into position, it also breaks Line of Sight for Jerome if he needs to recloak.

In an Overwhelming Actions team your looking at the Arbiters, these characters can get your other team members to perform actions without having to spend any of thier own AP, this means you have the ability to dodge and attack more often than your opponent and the more attacks your opponent must defend against the less AP he has to use for his own plan. Even though a free attack might only be a basic attack you chip away at a persons LP and they will die. Free Movement is also a handy thing to have. For this tactic the best core force is Les Jaeger in a smaller fight as the Colonel counts as an Arbiter for his team while in a larger fight Arkeid is probably the most tactically flexible Arbiter.

Now there is a third option and thats to combine the two above methods, take a mostly sneak team and put an arbitrator in and you can have some truely devastating combinations.

- Raith

I have every model from the main book for the azur alliance, i have tried those tactics you have said many times but more often then not the other groups have simply better models then my own. As said i have done out the probability of such attacks and it never looks good for the azur alliance as they just dont have enough to make them that good. They can be ok but never amazing like some armies *cough* dinah/konosuke *cough*. They do not even have the amazing one trick pony of cordillia + cover = win. They can do interesting things but if they do nice damage they do not have the the defense or health to back it up and with other teams being able to heal very easily the azur alliance just falls to easily. In regards to what you said, the stealth is good for getting the first attack but remeber that other teams can move and hide as well. For overwhelming you are just simply playing the game, move and attack, thats the point of the game.

Azur Alliance is easily the most difficult Organization to play due to their glass cannon nature. While a lot what you perceived as "broken" really isn't, the Azur Alliance is much more fragile then other Organizations.

That said, the following two lists I find are tournament worthy and should be a challenge to even the best teams other Organizations offer.

Alastor, The Colonel, Kirsten, Reinhold, Kyler, Ligori.

Plot: Les Jaeger team card. Organization Advantage: Absolute Control

Arkeid, Adolf, Frey and Freya, Ligori, Claude/Alius (to your preference).

Plot: Puppet Master team card. Organization Advantage: Absolute Control

I choose Absolute Control for both lists because it allows Arbiters (and The Colonel) to spam some of their basic Orders at longer range.

For example, in the first list. it is possible to have Kyler generate a huge number of attacks in a turn (2 from Alastor, 2(4 if you spend AP) from The Colonel, and Kyler himself can either attack twice normally, or 3-4 times with Dancing Mad. The Sheer volume of attacks will fell most non-DR characters, or at the very least run them out of AP.

If you want more damage per swing, Ligori is capable of one-shotting a majority of the characters in Anima. Add in the fact Alastor + The Colonel can generate more attacks for him, and very few people will look forward to seeing Ligori on the table at all.

In the second list, Frey and Freya serve as "assassin" missles, and if your opponent fails to kill them in 1 activation (quite possible if you stick Clocks on them) you swap places with Ligori using Arkeid's ability.

Arkeid also offers some "free" dodge orders and the ability to Shield some of your characters, increasing the durability of the fragile Azur Alliance.

P.S. I highly recommend going to the Official Anima forums for tactical advice, the community is usually quite happy to help.

cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/