Anima tactics: a dead game from another time

That’s right, another one time article showing off miniatures that you can no longer obtain, from a company that is no longer in business. Cipher studios- producers of Anima tactics and Hell Dorado- met an untimely end sometime around 2016 according to lostminiswiki. This was a line of miniatures that I was never involved with when it was still alive, I merely observed it from afar, thinking “wow, aren’t those cool”. Well after the game- which was quite well received as far as I can tell- had died I picked up a few miniatures off ebay. The rulebook for the game was full of lovely anime-esque art, which the models couldn’t quite match on the whole. The models that did look good were great though, and it’s no surprise that most of those models fall into the category of “big armoured man”.

For gaming purposes models were split among factions and sub factions, with the major three being light, neutral and dark. I won’t attempt to explain any further as I never played the game and likely never will, but I think we can all appreciate great sculpts like Lostaroth Marchosias (Vagrant Story anyone?), the high arbiters, Raziel and Macbeth. On the not-so-great side of things we have Luzbell, Hiro and Dead moon, who range from stiffly posed, to comically out of proportion.

Nowadays the only major miniatures line that bears the same aesthetic is the infinity range, which actually began three years before anima tactics. Infinity had its own problems, but as far as I can tell, the line has seen frequent resculpts to bring problem models into line with the modern quality standards. I’ll be doing an article in the future on the infinity line and you’ll see what I’m talking about.