Second play: Success!

By StormKnight, in Anima: Tactics

(Well, technically sorta the third play, but that's not the point)

After a disastrous first set of plays last month, we finally gave Anima Tactics another try. This time, our starter characters were supplemented by stand-in minis for Alis Testarossa and Jiang Pao on the side of light, and Harod and Feng Yi on the dark side.

We played on the D&D minis map of the 'King's Road' (we prefer grid based games, and printing the official map out there is a bit daunting - plus its too big!) The scenario involved the Light side trying to rescue an agent of the Church who had been captured by the Dark side; effectively a 'capture the flag' game with only one flag. The Dark side would win if the Light failed to rescue the prisoner in the 10 turn time limit.

This was a lot of fun. More characters drastically boosts the possibilities; while the mechanics are quick, we spent a good bit of time debating moves, as spending actions could be very tricky!

Alis and Evangeline had great synergy, with Alis making hit and run attacks and darting back to be healed by Evangeline. Harod went down early when Evangeline used Vision to reveal him; then Jiang Pao went down almost immediately after to even things out. Feng Yi and Kronnen spent a few turns in a standoff in the center of the board; then Feng held off for a turn to build up her full five actions to try to unleash all her attacks - and was struck down in one blow by Kronnen's Scarlet Heartbeat. Cheshire's deadly blade avenged her a few turns later, finally hammering through Kronnen's armor. Poor Baal was nearly useless due to the dice being against her; Kronnen resisted her spells 4 times, needing an 8 or more in each case, and later Alis continued the trend of being immune to her magic!

The Light side finally rescued the prisoner at the last moment on turn 10, with Alis rushing him back with Baal and Cheshire in hot pursuit - possibly leaving Evangeline trapped instead :) A very exciting finish!

Congratulations!

Adding more figures is really what lets Tactics shine as a system. I am glad it worked out well, playing on a board is by no means strange its just a different playstyle and the game was designed to function in that manner.

The Mission sounds like it was a lot of fun, I am going to be designing a senario shortly that will take place in a dungeon and probably use the grid to change things up for my own players.

- Raith
(Vedros anima est mea!)