Hey there boys and girls! Today I am going to finish my examination of the standard Anima Tactics Scenarios with a look at the Control Scenario.

The rules for control are simple. You gain one control point for every friendly model not engaged in hand to hand combat  that ends the turn within 8″ of the center point of the board. At the end of the game each control point is worth 10 points. It’s easy to see how these points can stack up quickly, so the main thrust of your game needs to be making sure you don’t wind up behind in points.

As always I am going to talk about two approaches to playing the scenario, the aggressive approach and the defensive approach.

The aggressive approach is all about making sure that the center point is a kill fest for players trying to play the points game. What control points you pick up are there to settle tie breakers, but your objective is to quickly eliminate your opponent’s characters when they come into the small control zone. To this end you need scads of damage output.

Black Sun is especially effective at this tactic. Using their cheap type 005′s and Type 009′s along with the powerhouse Raziels, they can easily overwhelm an opponent who is drawn to the center of the board by the scenario with offensive power. Exploding and out of control undead are excellent means to ensuring that the center of the board is a meat grinder of gory death for any opposing characters to brave. Throw in Clover or NK-X in larger games to take down more resistant targets and you have a recipe for zombie doom that many will balk at.

The defensive route is all about holding the center, and is probably the first thing you thought about when reading the scenario’s rules. The defensive route can be difficult to pull off given the offensive nature of the game, but here are some things to remember when playing this way.

You only get points for characters that are not engaged in hand to hand combat in the center. This means that slam and characters with throw are your best friend. Target models that have already activated and throw them out of combat with your models and hopefully out of the control area. Combining throws is a pretty good way to eliminate characters as well as gain control points, so you can find yourself ahead pretty quickly if you get a few good combos in. You can also use movement restriction abilities like paralyze or a well timed slow to keep your opponent from gaining the upper hand in the center. This makes Wissenschaft especially dangerous at this play style. A combination of high speed to get quickly into the zone and plenty of throw attacks and escape abilities makes Wissenschaft especially difficult to pin down once they’ve taken up residence in the center. Just look out for aoe attacks and characters with high attack values that can quickly kill multiple characters in close formations.

For Wissenschaft Hiro and Lorenzo are my go to boys, but having some extra armor available in the form of Grimmorium Verum can be very useful in soaking up those offensive strikes before you toss your opponent’s out of the center like an angry bouncer.

That concludes my look at the standard scenarios, next time I’ll have something special in store for you

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