My Samael Tactics

While I'm primarily a Church player, sometimes I just want to try something different or try new tactics to beat difficult opponents for my Church forces. For this reason I use my wife's Samael force for playing a lot. Working with this I've found a group almost as effective as my main Church force (and for a long time was more effective till it taught me a different way of playing Church). I like to call this team and the tactics I use with it “Samael Toolbox”.

Statistically there are two unifiers to Samael forces. First they all have ranged attacks, but the ranged attacks largely aren't as powerful as the ones that groups like Wissenschaft get so it can be very hard to compete with Ranged. If you're watching my Battle Reports this week you'll see my “Samael Shooty” team losing to Wissenschaft. Second, they get average stats with no exceptional weaknesses or strengths. It doesn't seem like much does it? But it is enough that in the European Anima Tactics tournaments recently held in Spain 4 of the top 5 teams were all Samael teams.

All the organization teams and even the side aligned teams have glaring weaknesses in addition to their strengths. So this is the philosophy behind my “Toolbox” team. Bring something to exploit every common team's weakness while leaving no singular weakness exposed to your opponent. I learned this while playing Church which is a team of specialists. A big part of winning is being able to match up each of your figures to the proper opponent.
I have an Anti-Armor character then I want him going up against the most armored enemy figure. Note that a VERY hard hitting character like Dark Cheshire or Konosuke can be as effective as an anti-armor character. However, I consider wanderers like Kujaku Hime that are anti-armor to be a strong consideration for inclusion in a Samael list. You need to be able to counter the Stealth units that Wissenschaft, Azur, and Dark teams are going to bring to the table and Samael has both Janiel and Momiji to do this. You can counter Empire tanks with powerful debuffing units like Bael who can Seal and Paralyze the low resistance warriors. In addition to powerful debuffs you have some strong buffing abilities from Dinah and Aoi. Church's strong supporting Mystics can be countered by Momiji or tactically using Ranged attacks.

This is the list I've been using:

Org. Advantage: Innate Mystics

Dinah w/Presence
Konosuke w/Rafael's Gift
Dark Cheshire w/Dragon's Blood or Supernatural Armor or Supernatural Weapon
Janiel w/Destiny
Momiji w/Covert Operations
Bael w/Control Bound

290 Points of Characters w/ 40 Advantage points.

Of course I'm always fine-tuning my team lists. I'm trying out Aoi instead of Janiel since I rarely need Janiel's anti-stealth abilities with Momiji there. I'm also going to try out Nahimana instead of Dark Cheshire to see if her tanking abilities are better than Chesire's kamakazi attacks of destruction. If you have thoughts on this list, be sure to let us know!