More from Anima Tactics week

With my crazy work schedule last week I didn't get to repost as much as I wanted to. Like the review of the Black Sun ruleset I did for Warmonger, or the interview I did with Cipher Dave.

Most importantly if you like painting contests where you can win Anima Tactics stuff as prizes... then you need to enter this one:

To Create or to Steal my Questions

So this week I'm going to be conducting an interview with one of the guys at Cipher Studios for Warmongergameday's Anima Tactics week. But I want to be lazy and not have to think up a ton of questions on my own. So I started a thread on Warmonger's forums asking for interview questions. Feel free to either make a post there or leave a comment here with interesting questions you'd like to see answered and I'll consider using them.

But you have to be quick, by this Friday it will most likely be too late.

Anima forums are down, long live the Anima forums!

The most popular Anima Tactics forums by Edge Entertainment are once again down. A second major crash in two consecutive weeks. Doubtless some of the increased blog traffic I'm seeing right now is a result of it.

So I'd like to remind everyone that there are two other official Anima Tactics forums. The Cipher Studios forums and the Fantasy Flight Games forums.

In addition I would recommend stopping by the Warmonger gameday Anima Tactics forums as a lot more is going on there.

In other news to compete with the news below my post, my 1 year old son got a hold of our (my wife's and mine) work in progress tray for miniatures and shook it out all over the dining room floor. All but one miniature I had assembled was broken (Jerome was saved). Even pinned joints came flying apart. Several models already in various states of being painted (Claude Valmore, Arkeid) came apart. But even at the worst at least there are no infectious diseases involved.

Maybe if I'm lucky enough to get laid off this month I'll have time to get caught back up :(

Sodapop miniatures

So something I haven't spoken of enough yet is Sodapop miniatures who was sharing a booth with Cipher Studios at Sakuracon. Their miniatures are cast by Cipher Studios but they have a seperate online store from them at their website and at coolminiornot. Their sculpts in my opinion are top notch and on par with Anima Tactics, though their style is a lot more comical. I'll be keeping an eye on sodapop miniatures in the future.

Also, to all you gamers out there: They do have a game in the works which is aiming for a 2011 release. Right now they're just building the miniatures line for collectors. Keep coming back to this blog because I got a photo of a nice new painted miniature that hasn't been released to the public yet. I was asked to hold off on showing it for a couple weeks, so come back again to get a sneak peek of one of their awesome new figures that is coming up!

How I got to Sakuracon!

So some people have wondered, why did you get to go to Sakuracon and see all this fun stuff and get all these spoilers? The answer is simple and comes in two parts. First I'm in Seattle at the right time (I live there, eh?) and second I'm part of Cipher Studios Free Agent program.

I really have to strongly recommend this program (or others like it for other games). If you really like a game then you want more people to play against or with. But people aren't like to try a game they haven't seen or played before. This is where demo-ers come in. It is easy to get people playing a game if they see it and enjoy it.

Black Ol' Sun, Won't you come...

So I got the chance to pull Dave Freeman, a.k.a Cipher Dave aside and shoot a video where he could present the new Anima Tactics organization "Black Sun" to us.



In addition I got to take pictures of models from the example starter set and of the cards for the first several new Black Sun releases.

Sakauracon 2010

I just got back from my first day at Sakuracon where I volunteered at the Cipher Studios exhibit booth.



Sakuracon is just non-serious fun. People in costumes everywhere. All the controversial Japanese pop culture I grew up with is everywhere. Anime, Manga, music, women in Kimonos chasing after guys with Samurai Swords. Fun! Even the Cipher Studios booth I was at had its own Booth Babe to show off the new exciting line of Sodapop collectible miniatures. Miniatures gaming is always nice to look at!



But for this first day I'm not just roaming around. I'm focused on introducing more people to the Anima Tactics game. But as a bonus, I get to see a number of sneak peeks of things that have never been seen before!

I love this dynamic looking model. Her abilities fit with it too. Her innate ability Mjolnir causes her opponent to be thrown and lose an action point whenever she scores a critical hit against them. She also has a 3 action point ability "Ka-Boom" which causes ALL enemies in her control zone to lose 1 action point at an effect of 15. That is one powerful hammer girl!

I got to see a bunch of new minis which I will write about soon.

Decyphering Cipher Studios

Cipher Studios is the manufacturer for miniature game lines Anima Tactics, Hell Dorado, and AE WW2. They really are a Cypher as first of all I thought they were still in the Seattle area but found they had relocated down to the Oregon/Washington border. Luckily I was invited to come tour the facilities by Cipher President Kai picture to the right. Otherwise, nobody would ever find the place as their facilities are completely hidden and unadvertised. Rabid stalker fans and Ninjas have their work totally cut out for themselves.

The Quality Proces Analyst in me liked the small, isolated seclusion of the facility. They clearly get a lot of work (and play) done without wasting space. Small warehouses mean that they're moving product rather than wasting rent storing product. Nice workspaces organized by process rather than "territory". Lean, but could use a little more 5S. :D

Okay, sorry for the distraction. You wanted to read something more about games right? I got a few spoilers including sneak peeks at the rule book which is now out and I snuck a look at some of the miniatures in process. Looks like Samael is getting a certain "Amazon" Jayan combat monster. Wissenschaft also has a nice combat monster they'll be seeing before too long as well.
Also, I got to see all the terrain pictured in the new rulebook. I hope their upcoming battle report was played on it because it looks totally awesome and was a big center of attention for our traveling party visiting the company. What is pictured is only one piece of a full tables worth of large terrain tiles that can be mixed and matched to make a fun table to play on. Hopefully one of these days at convention or if I'm lucky on another visit I'll get the opportunity to play a challenge game against them on it. Maybe if we're lucky Cipher will do some battle report games on their terrain as well.

Anyways to all at Cipher Studios thanks for the Christmas visit as all of us had a great time. Keep up the great work!

Move Complete - End Turn

So not only have I been working... I've been moving. With a family moving becomes a horrendous affair. Plus so many delicate minis and terrain that I don't have proper packaging for. Luckily we're only moving about 15 minutes drive so we've made a number of trips for delicate stuff we didn't feel good about packaging. Today is our last day of moving and then I look forward to being able to have fun again and enjoy our new place!

We've got a nice garage in the new place that we're going to use for storage, as an art shop, and for gaming. We'll have a gaming table out there so we can keep games of Arkham Horror or Runebound out without having to put it away from the kids every night.

Speaking of which, I had a very nice Christmas haul. Runebound Frozen Wastes expansion, Runebound Scepter of Kyros expansion, Anima Tactics Momiji, and a visit to Cipher Studios. Once we're a little more settled in you can expect to see some youtube reviews of things and a nice blog entry with pictures about our visit to Cipher Studios.

Until then look forward to a normal resumption of blogging come January!