Radiant (Part 2)

My Force

In the last part I covered the basics of what I had to bear in mind when undergoing the decision to use a Radiant Knight for my second Cadre.
This opens a lot of doors into grabbing miniatures outside my factions that I either like the sounds of on the table or simply really just want to paint.

Last time I left off with a list of models, some of which are actually either old Collector's models which have rules or the super sweet "Darkspace" models. The latter  part of this could be a list in itself.

• Candy Knight - 16pts
• Darkspace Candy - 9pts
• Darkspace Zineda - 13pts
• Darkspace Fiametta - 10pts
• Total - 48pts

This would be an awesome little Cadre for a small game simply adding a boost or two, I'd probably go for a couple of Esper condensers to power these girls up.

Candy the Leader

Before we delve into the list I really want to build, we better look at Candy herself, along with Cola to see what they bring to the table.
Being a force of Uniques synergy is going to be at a premium and not totally necessary, but definitely worth bearing in mind if we have to decide between two different models.

Corporate Sponsor is Candy's Cadre Ability. Allowing everyone to have their own Heal 3 for (2)(1) , this plays well into the lone wolf style play the Unique's may have to employ but also the fact it takes creation and essence esper is worth noting.
Candy representing three Esper affinities means in game I will want cards from that side of the wheel but if with mulligans and discards I can attempt to concentrate on only two this shall make the force hopefully more consistent even if my activation order is messed around with.

Candy has a great Melee and Shooting attack with a guard that can hold off overpowered, along with Recover which can improve with held Esper she should be able to deal with most fights.

Her other big thing is Caffeinated Cure-All an AoE which gives Recover 2, further keeping the Uniques alive but also can be pressed in a whole manner of situations, +1 attack skill, +1 defense skill  and +1 armour. This is a big game, either pressing a little to tweak a situation the way it needs to go or fully powering up many already strong models.

Cola, Candy's cute and cheeky companion is a great Cypher to have about.
The typical Channel and Master abilities will always be good as dealing with less models means you do want to ever waste actions, Esper is key.
Oh, and look one of his unique abilities helps with just that. Enough To Share place and AoE that gives out Held Esper.
According to boosts and terrain I can see having Cola in my queue early on just to set up the troops ready before they go on.

My Choices

One of the main reasons I am personally going to be taking Candy as a leader is that I want to do a Relic Knight lead Cerci Speed Circuit force but not be sat in a mirror match with one of my regular opponents too often.

This means that the choices in my cadre are going to lean towards the green side of things.
Hopefully this helps me create a Cadre that can sculpt better card hands through out the game.

That list again but removing all not Radiant or Cerci models.

Uniques for Candy:

• Candy Heart,
• Cordelia Clean,
• Ayu Beat (collector’s model),
• Suicide Queen (on foot, collector’s model),
• Darkspace Candy,
• Rin Farrah,
• Betty,
• Lug,

To start with I'm going to look at building a 70 point force. It is worth nothing that for the purposes of hiring Knights count as Uniques and this would mean that Candy could take another Knight with her at this size game.

Now this could prove to be a strong strategy but I aim to refrain from this, first off I really want Candy as the clear leader and secondly I feel I should be able to squeeze more into the list by not fielding two knights.

With Candy already chosen and costing 16 points we have 54 left to play with. Hopefully with enough models around the 10 point mark we can have a total of seven models including Cola.

To start I want

Betty and Lug

These two do not have to be fielded together but I think Linked will prove to be very outnumbered if I end up being outnumbered.

Lug is one of favourite models in the entire range and this is a painting project, however Lug is also really hand at being a blunt instrument to smash things with.

(2)(1) for Damage 6 is a cheap and consistent attack via Lug Smash this with a press that although leans into Chaos is only costing 2 more Esper and getting a huge 8 damage.

Not only does Link mess around with activation orders and your opponent when they think they know what is going on, Knockback on Lug's Clamp attack will also help mess these things up too.

Finally, a ton of wounds and a Guard with Backlash means that Lug can tussle with some of the tougher models out there.

Betty also uses a lot of Creation esper keeping what I want in my hand a little bit more clear.

Her Rivet Gun using 4 of said esper will be able to dish out 6 damage with shooting which can be handy finishing things off or backing up the Uniques who are diving in and out of melee.

Her other abilities like pushing Lug about and the fact she deal more damage due to him about are a good reason to take both. Lug also armours up Betty if she gets in close.

21 points well spent.

Next

Suicide Queen (Unique)

Thematically I can see Suicide Queen in this form following Candy into battle before she starts really taking her own lead with the Hell's Belles and company.

Again, another fantastic model to paint up which can also prove as some practice for the Questing Knight at a later date.

Game wise of the bat it helps for my list that again we have another 10 point model but it doesn't help that she is fairly reliant on Chaos esper. However knowing that Lug will occasionally want it makes this not so much of an issue and with the Held esper Cola can dish out this could help any problems too.

After all Suicide Queen can hold four esper which is a lot for just a Unique.

She isn't greedy with amount she needs anyway, Roll of the Dice a fairly random shooting attack only needs 2 to start with and Ace in the Hole her overcharged attack is only (3)(1) before pressing and still gets you Damage 6.

Juke her guard needs a bit more and although she uses Gun Kata I just hope she can avoid trouble a bit.

Lastly, Speed Trap the Knight versions Cadre ability appears as an AoE Debuff here and may also prove handy creating positions to pounce on the enemy or hold them off of Objectives with it stopping their follow up moves.

Wanting some more Held Esper really brings my eyes to

Cordelia Clean

It's costly at (4)(1)(1) but Spark of Life allows Cordelia to hound out lots of held esper as if she was a one shot of Cola's AoE, a very nice early turn play and great if Ms Clean decides to go "tag team style" on the enemy.

Team wise her Vacuum could really be a vicious move to allow someone like Lug to get the charge but because it is Pull 6(to 8), Line it can drag a lot of the enemy out of position or possibly more importantly into the firing lines of my models.

Cordelia's main attack Trash Day is solid, Damage 6 again which is a number that seems to appear a lot but with Line will at the very least make my opponents think twice about how they are keeping their models as if they don't hitting multiple things with this will be an amazing win for me.

Cordelia is a little more expensive than the other things I have selected so far at 13 points, but with her 7-4 Fly movement and the fact she has Channel Esper you can see why she is not cheap. Self sufficient but can be a great team player. A solid choice and again an awesome miniature.

Lastly with 10 points left to spend I can't quite afford Rin Farrah so is up between the two other Candy's I have available.

Game wise although technically the same person as the Knight you can field them together legally because their names are different. Maybe it's just a super fan who got their name changed?

My choice

Candy Heart

over Darkspace Candy for a few reasons. To start as painting project I think I will hold off the cosplay models for another time, maybe to do the silly 50 point list previously mentioned.

Game wise although Hyakuretsu Kyaku "Hundred Rending Legs" Chun Li's classic kick is a cheap Damage 5 with Rapidfire that if done with enough Presses could prove deadly it still requires more Esper than Heart's Sweet Slice.

The cosplay variant has a psychic attack which is a fire ball for up to Damage 6 but Heart has a gun than can do the same.

The big pull to Heart over Darkspace is simply that a Redirect tends to be better than a Guard, on top of this Heart is an Initiate for both Creation and Esper where as Chun Li is not.

Finally Heart being 8 points rather than 9 finishes this list at 68 points and gives me a lot more choice for boosts.

So there we have it 68 points. 7 Models and a decent amount of power.

Now to get painting and hopefully return with toys to show for a Part 3.

-Ben (@psientologist)

Radiant (Part 1)

Prismatic

Prismatic units are very interesting, fulfilling what other games would have as a kind of mercenary role though split into two sides for full thematic flavour.

Personally I am yet to have Amelial join the ranks of my Noh Empire into battle but I am sure that will happen one day.

Prismatic knights though are much more of an interesting addition into Relic Knights as they make for a very different style of Cadre creation as opposed to the typical six factions, something quite different to many other games.

In this blog I am going to be speaking about the second Cadre I am going to be concentrating on, a Radiant force.

Radiant Relic Knight

When Relic Knights got into the final days of it’s kickstarter the Prismatic Knights were revealed as end bosses and I instantly fell in love with both.

To this day I would say that Harbonath the Void Reaper is one of the nicest models, ever, regardless of game, scale or genre it is a masterpiece.

As I work on the Noh Empire in my Knight’s Tale I think Harbonath will be my treat at the end and hey, I didn’t just back for the bad guys.

Cerci Speed Circuit is my second main faction and now I have a regular opponent with that faction also (Aaron) I thought that maybe it would be better if I spiced things up a bit and took the light side of the Esper wheel on from a different direction.

Candy, the Relic Knight of Radiance

This is what you need to lead a radiant force as she is what will change the hiring restrictions, but before I get to that, a few seconds about the model.

It’s big and beautiful. I stated before that I was in love with it during the kickstarter, Candy’s happy face as she rode a huge mecha with a giant soda pop cannon was enough to get me excited but I was further happy once I built the kit and looked at it in detail face to face.

Mine is going to have to be painted red. As soon as I started to build the kit the main body of the knight had clear inspiration to me, if not then it’s a fantastic coincidence as it seems to resemble a ship from my favourite anime series Cowboy Bebop, Spike’s fighter, the Swordfish.

And how appropriate the Swordfish II as it actually is called is meant to be a remodelled racer, originally designed for high-speed racing now converted into a fighter craft. Almost exactly how I imagine Candy’s Knight.

Mechanics of the Cadre

Prismatic Knights give you a very different way of building a list, just to recap for those unaware, typically a cadre has a Knight (Questing or Relic) of a certain “Esper affiliation” with Cerci for example the Knights are of Creation/Green and this simply means that the units which follow them must also be affiliated to that. So either Green themselves or Radiant which includes creation as one of it’s esper types.

This is simple and is pretty much how and war band, army, crew is built up in other games.

Prismatic Knights however being either Radiant (Creation/Law/Essence) or Void (Chaos/Entropy/Corruption) you would think that maybe they just get to pick from those groups.

You would be right but being these Knights are powerful would the game be balanced allowing a cadre of “All Stars”, probably not, this is where the fix comes in.

If it wasn’t already obvious, Candy being a Radiant Knight can hire and Radiant units, currently of which there are only Uniques but if there were minions or minion squads for Radiant Candy could field them too.

Creation, Essence and Law make up the Radiant side of the Esper circle and what Candy can pick from that is any Uniques from those factions.

Candy cannot take Hell’s Belles for instance as they are minions, but Betty and Lug for example are Uniques and so are more than welcome.

What this does is make for an “All Star Light” style team where you can field from Cerci, Shattered Sword and even the Doctrine but do not get full access to all of their toys.

So where do I start with this force, what do I pick?

Well here is a list of all the current units Candy can take into battle and join me in part 2 where I start talking about which units I am looking to field and why.

Uniques for Candy:

• Candy Heart,
• Cordelia Clean,
• Ayu Beat (collector’s model),
• Suicide Queen (on foot, collector’s model),
• Darkspace Candy,
• Darkspace Zineda,
• Darkspace Fiametta
• Navarre Hauer,
• Rin Farrah,
• Asger Faust,
• Prefects,
• Hasami,
• Betty,
• Lug,
• Isabeau Durand,
• Austrician the Ogre,
• Fiamata,
• Master Wu,
• Togan and Cecilia

-Ben (@psientologist)

A (Relic) Knight's Tale - Aaron's Tale (Part 1)

Esper

One of the many things that makes Relic knights stand out from other games it's it's main in-game resource; Esper.
For my first blog, I am (hopefully) going to explain a little bit about it and it's importance in the game.

Let's start by breaking down what Esper is.
"Esper is the primal energy that binds everything in the universe. It is everywhere and it infuses everything."
Esper is a type of energy which is required to provide power for actions and abilities models wish to use in the game.

Esper is made up of 6 types, and each is affiliated with a particular colour and faction in game. They are as follows;

• Law (Blue) - Shattered Sword
• Essence (Yellow) - Doctrine
• Creation (Green) - Cerci Speed Circuit
• Chaos (Orange) - Star Nebula Corsairs
• Corruption (Purple) - Black Diamond
• Entropy (Red) - Noh Empire

Each of these Esper Types also belongs to one of two groups:

• Creation, Essence and Law form the Radiant Group.
• Entropy, Chaos and Corruption form the Void Group.

These groups also represent factions which can be used in game, essentially mercenaries which may be played either independently, or hired by other factions which belong to their group.
Models from each faction will tend to use primarily (though certainly not exclusively) Esper of the type affiliated with it's faction, and also commonly of the other Esper types in that Esper Group.

The Esper Deck

Esper is represented in game by a deck, consisting of 42 cards.
They are broken down as follows:

• 36 Standard cards
• 3 Void cards 
• 3 Wild cards

Standard cards will have a large icon and a small icon printed on them.
Each icon will relate to an Esper type, the larger being that particular card's Primary Esper Type, the smaller being the Secondary Esper Type. A primary symbol is worth two points of that Esper type, whilst a secondary symbol is worth a single point of Esper.
There are six cards with a primary symbol for each Esper type, 3 of which will carry secondary Esper of the next colour clockwise in the colour wheel, and 3 of which will carry secondary Esper of the type denoted by the colour anti- clockwise on the colour wheel. For example;
Of the 6 cards with Creation (Green) as their primary Esper type, 3 will show Essence (Yellow) as the secondary type, and 3 will show Law (Blue) as their secondary type.
Void cards show no Esper type and have a black, solar eclipse type symbol on them. They have no Esper type and no value, they are basically useless in game.

Wild Cards show a ring of 6 icons, one for each Esper type. When played, the owner may choose which Esper type will be used, but a wild card only ever generates 1 point of Esper. As you may be able to guess, wild cards are useful, though not overpowering, being worth only as much as a secondary Esper.
Here ends my blog post for this month, hope for those of you who didn't know anything about the game this explanation has helped you to understand it a little better. Next month I will go into more detail about how Esper is actually used in the game. See you next time!

- Aaron (@forestreveries)

A (Relic) Knight's Tale - Ben's Tale (part 1)

Battle Box Battles

Apologies if you were expecting to read and see Aaron's beautiful Cerci Thursday, but due to unforeseen circumstances that has been pushed back.

Instead, please enjoy the first part of my (Ben's) tale which has been bought forwards.

Thank you.

Perfect Start

As discussed in the introduction article I described how the Battle boxes for Relic Knights are a perfect way of starting the game.

Not only do they give you everything you need to get gaming but they are all fairly close in total points cost which makes for a nice way to start learning.

To give an example the three factions that myself and my two most local Relic Knights playing friends are have;

Myself with Noh Empire consisting of:

• High Priestess Zineda (a Questing Knight)

• Spite (Zineda's Cypher)

• 1 Render (a minion)

• 2 Berzerkers (a minion squad)

Jan with Black Diamond:

• Leopold Magnus (a Questing Knight)

• Static (Leopold's Cypher)

• M8-Blitz Auto-Tank (a minion)

• 5 Diamond Corps (a minion squad)

and Aaron:

• Marie Claude (a Questing Knight)

• Esmee (Marie's Cypher)

• 1 Royal Wrecker (a minion)

• 2 Pit Crew (a minion squad)

Now where as these aren't all even points cost wise you can see that each box contains the same lay out of things to try.

Questing Knight

Questing Knight's may not be as flashy as their bigger brothers (and sisters) the Relic Knight's but they are still very powerful, your most complex model but also aren't too intimidating being typically 30mm or 40mm models.

Each of them still get you to see the concept of Initiates and Masters of the elements of the Esper wheel.

These abilities being shared among models means you and your opponent may not be in the same faction but either share powers or at least have things that are so similar that it cuts down the time of having to figure what they do by at least half.

The Cadre abilities each have are also powerful and as a side note the Battle Boxes themselves seem to contain Cadre's that bear them in mind and work fairly well to take some advantage of them.

However not only are they cool but they are a huge incentive to have a dig through the beautiful large rulebook and see how your cadre you already own can act differently just with a change of leader.

Last but not least, the models themselves are great.

Zineda for myself is a beautiful sculpt and although ironically the smallest model (bar her Cypher) in the set she has the most presence on the board.

That's before you start tearing people apart with her.

Cypher

As you still get a Questing Knight, you get a Cypher a very interesting piece in each cadre that at first look might seem kind of irrelevant.

It's a very different concept for a model that I haven't see much like it in other games.

Cyphers at first to me were going to be the equivalent to Totem's in Malifaux.

Now where there are similarities in the background side of things and the typical scale of the model in game they are fairly different.

Yes, like a Totem will typically do a Cypher aids your force and your leader but a Cypher does a few other things and it's bond to the Knight is far more clear.

The simple ability of handing over the held Esper to your Knight is not one to forget, your Knight and Cypher constantly wanting to keep an eye on each other to become very powerful.

At first my group and I didn't really take the time putting them in the ready queue though.

They don't hit things directly and they cannot be hit.

However this is usually more good than bad. Many have very powerful AOE effects which help your Cadre do what it's aiming to do and take it to the next level.

Also the Esper actions they have are incredibly powerful. Thief is always annoying for your opponent and being able to also hand out even more is not something to sniff at.

After a few game what I also started to respect about Cyphers was that Esper actions were not using cards, this meant I could craft a better hand for who was next in the Ready queue.

That however will deserve a blog of it's own.

Minion and Minion Squad

Minions are going to make up the majority of most typical cadres, each battle box, however does contain a single minion and squad which is a great way to see how the units work, including simple things such as coherency or how they take damage using only a single stat card.

The battle box minions also show really what the small cadre in a box is about.

Circe has two ladies who fix things and a huge Exo-suit that fixes things but can also smash face.

Black Diamond has a squad of soldiers with guns or a single tank.

My Noh, they actually show a couple of angles, a tag team of crazy warriors or a tough ranged expert.

Overall the battle boxes contain a nice mixture of units to get started.

Using Battle Boxes against each other

Now as a tool for learning these boxes do contain a fantastic array of things to try and get to grips with the game, but are they balanced to fight each other, are they really enough?

If I had to answer yes or no the answer would be. "No."

Now that might seem negative, but I don't have to answer with a single word and I am glad because really, it's more of a "Yes with a few caveats.

First of all, I have already said, but the boxes themselves don't contain the exact same amount of points.

Really though from my experiences with many other games two-player starter sets where the company has actually picked who fight who aren't really that even, so it isn't a surprise that two random picks of six would be either.

There are two ways to save this. One is to try out Boost Tokens early and allow the player with less to take some or both players can round their lists up, more on that in a bit.

The other way is, just don't bother. If you are only just getting your Relic Knights miniatures out on the table for the first time it really is  not an issue that one of you has a single point more than the other. That isn't going to be the difference between a win or a loss when you might just pick up the rules slower than the opposition and in fact, if it is your first game surely learning is what matters, not winning.

Bar people who are completely new to Wargaming, getting a win in their first game isn't or at least shouldn't be the exciting part. I myself would possibly be more turned off if I found that I easily crushed my teacher at a game I had never touched, where is the challenge?

The other part of the "No" comes with the balance.

Not to say that at such a small game Relic Knights is broken, but you can feel the difference once you start playing at 50 points, even a rounded 35 over 28 or such.

There are a couple of reasons here.

The major one is the missions, some of these at a super low point game become either pointless or irrelevant.

"Destroy three enemy units" for example, may as well read "just attempt to table your opponent" as in a battle box that is all they have.

Again two fixes of similar style for this, first is, just reflip or disallow some missions, the other again is just don't care as you are probably playing games at this size more of a learning tool about the mechanics of the game rather than a strategical affair about domination.

The other issue of balance is the Questing Knights themselves.

In 35 or less points having only ready queue slots means that sometimes it is worth just letting them go every other turn and some can be very dominant when they have little to fight.

With more access to units it is easier to overcome this, at higher point when the queue has more slots this becomes less of an issue.

Again, it is not impossible to beat a player who has their Knight go every other activation but it will dominate the game.

This however actually might be exciting and does do a good job of showing what a lot of the Knights are about.

Conclusion

In the end Battle boxes are the way to go and if you, like me are only really just starting to get into the game or are considering it, they are perfectly fine to use against each other but like every single other miniatures game, don't hang your entire judgement of the game on the one small experience and prepared to be sucked in and want much more.

Hope you enjoyed this, my start into painting the Noh Empire and the next few Tales that are on their way.

Cheers.

-Ben (@psientologist)

A (Relic) Knight's Tale - An Introduction

Prologue 

A (Relic) Knight's Tale is the cheesy name of a recent idea of mine.

After waiting patiently Relic Knight's is out and not only am I glad it's here, I am also glad to tell you that the game itself is great and there are some fantastic miniatures for you to see and hopefully get yourself.

The simple idea is, combine:

• The old school stylings of "A Tale of X Gamers"
• Relic Knights
• A amalgamation of people's experiences getting into this brand new game.

For those unfamiliar, "A Tale of Gamers" has been a series that has been repeated in all different shapes and forms, the gist is that a group of gamers start a new force for a game, having a set budget each month and making sure to get these things painted by the end.

Usually this will include some gaming, records of the gamer's thoughts and ideas about what they're collected, why, what they need next and so on.

Previously I have done #ToMB (Tale of Malifaux Bloggers) so anyone who followed that should have a good idea.

The idea of the blog running alongside the collecting and painting is to show to others who haven't yet started themselves how easy it is, how cool the models are and how interesting the game is to learn.

Hopefully, expanding into some new players joining the Darkspace Calamity.

How's it going down?

Every month the team I have bought together will have the task of painting not to a money budget but a box set or sets.

As a "spoiler" the first month will have each player starting off with a Battle box.

These are the best start to collecting Relic Knights and as I may have covered in my introduction piece, if you and a friend grab one each, get them built and a table out, you're ready to go.

Not only do these have a nice selection of models and there's a set for each faction in the game, they all come with an Esper Deck, Dashboard, Tokens and even a rulebook.

With a Battlebox being the obvious start our group has had a little more time considering it's quite close to Christmas and this will be the biggest task in one go.

Following month's will see us add support in smaller boxes, uniques, squads and even the huge Relic Knights themselves.

Accompanying the photos of pretty models everyone will also have a post to make discussing whatever is on their mind, what they're finding interesting, what they are enjoying and much more.

A nice insight into Relic Knights from multiple different perspectives.

OK, so when is it going down?

It's Monday now and this will be the day for a blog each week.

Not just that, but there will also be another blog every Thursday also.

This means you (the readers) will hopefully get Eight interesting articles with pretty pictures from a whole bunch of different angles every month.

The length of the tale itself is yet to be decided, but at the least I can see us going three months and possibly four.

Tell me more!

Where as I am not going to reveal the full team of Knights contributing to the tale, I can tell you that other than including myself the first article with pretty painting (coming this Thursday) will be from Aaron Bailey.

Aaron has been working on Cerci Speed Circuit, the speed racing ladies of Relic Knights and his stuff looks fantastic.

For those that may be asking "what happens when the Tale ends?", do not worry, this is just the beginning as I intend to work on Relic Knights all through 2015 and beyond.

I hope that I can also run some other exciting things via the blog (a Relic Knights painting competition perhaps) and will probably have a lot of things I want to show the Internet and say.

Again, if you are completely confused at what Relic Knights even is check this link for my Introduction to Relic Knights

Finally, for usual readers of this blog, Relic Knights is not taking over and kicking Malifaux out.

These two fantastic skirmish games will be here hand in hand for the foreseeable future.

-Ben (@psientologist)

Relic Knights: An Introduction

Darkspace Calamity

Relic Knights: Darkspace Calamity may be a game you would have heard myself or others on the internet banging on about.

The game itself was funded via Kickstarter back in 2012 and for most of those who didn't back it you may've heard complaints about delays and not much else.

Well the game is finally here, it's been in everyone's hands for a month or two now (maybe more in the US) and it is a game I dived in big time with.

Two years to wait has been a long time, but I was excited about the game back then and I am again now and seeing I am buzzing about it, I thought I might as well blog about it a little.

It was probably worth the wait.

What is Relic Knights?

Relic Knights is a 30mm scale miniatures game at what I would still describe as a Skirmish level.

The scale of game is somewhere between Malifaux and Warmachine, to elaborate it has four recommended point levels; these change some things other than how much you can field.

At 35 and 50 (the smaller levels), the game is played on a 3*3 and for me I feel 50 will be the standard.

This however could be wrong.

At 50, you can field one Knight, your leader (more about them later).

My first game was 35 points and we had five units each.

I say units because what makes the game lean a little bit more towards Warmachine scale is that there are some squads, some of which are up to five models.

The other factor that makes it closer to Warmachine in scale is larger models on 80mm bases.

Thematically Relic Knights is running hard with an Anime/Manga gimmick.

All the things you may expect from Japanese animation, giant robots, well-endowed women, cute animals and just over the top mayhem.

The theme is not just aesthetic but also runs throughout the game mechanics and the feel of play.

Factions

There are six distinct groups in Relic Knights for which you make your cadre (the equivalent to crew) from, these groups play into the story and the core mechanics of the game.

Each faction has a Relic Knight, some number of Questing Knights, Uniques, Minions and Squads.

A Knight in this universe is one who is a strong wielder of Esper (essentially magic an energy which binds the universe) they are united with a Cypher a being of pure Esper which in Malifaux terms is something akin to a Totem, representing the Knight and their desires.

The difference between Relic and Questing Knights is that the latter is searching for a Relic, where as the former has found it.

A Relic though is not a dusty cup or rusty sword, but a big bloody mech.

The main factions are:

• Cerci Speed Circuit, these mostly ladies are from a planet which is entirely a race track, the leader Princess Malya rides a giant robot with a body similar to a jet bike or just a jet ski. The choices you can pick for Cerci range from Pit Crew and robotic things that would help, to the Hell's Belles a gang of ladies jetting about.
• Shattered Sword, are essentially a Knightly order. These tend to be armoured people in a variety of sizes, very clean and ornate. If you have played or watched the anime Tales of Vesperia, they remind me a lot of the knights in that.
• Black Diamond are next, these soldiers are a military style mercenary force, for Mass Effect fans think Cerberus and you are not far off. One Shot their Relic Knight has very real war looking mech with a cannon, the troops range from soldiers, miniature tanks to battle suit men and a giant robot, oh and some ninja assassins.
• Noh Empire are huge Oni like red Ogre type dudes who like to enslave people and are generally quite nasty. The males are hulking Red beasts occasionally bringing beasts into battle whilst the females are serpent themed purple Amazonian sized killers. Big and in your face.
• Star Nebula Corsairs, these are space Pirates, with everything from a ship themed Relic to even cannons, they also include some people who have left their respected factions and taken the life of a pirate.
• The Doctrine round off the factions at six, these are a wizardry based group, Harry Potter types along with a few different things such as a Little Red Riding Hood look-a-like with giant wolf or Librarians who are bulky statuesque looking guys. Oh and the Relic, is a giant robot tiger thing!

Flynn from Tales of Vesperia

What I instantly thought of when seeing Shattered Sword.

The stories are far larger and more interesting than I have described but hopefully they give you a feel of what the groups are like.

The colour of each faction ties into the Esper mechanics and themes which I will delve into more later, but to round off there are also 2 more Relic Knights (and Uniques too) that are Radiant and Void.

The poster girl of Sodapop Candy and her Cypher Cola are Radiant, this represents the lighter side of the battle and can lead a group from either Doctrine, Shattered Sword or Cerci.

Cola in Miniature and Plush form.

Harbonath the Void Reaper is the Void knight and can lead the other three groups, Noh, Black Diamond or the Corsairs. As you may tell, he is not a nice bloke.

Rules and Concepts

To start I will list what breaks Relic Knights away from most other miniatures games and then go into a bit more detail later;

• Relic Knights uses no dice
• Relic Knights has no traditional rounds
• Relic Knights has no ranges for weapons, only movement and AOE
• Relic Knights has no deployment zones

Crazy right? Now we all know about diceless games (Malifaux, Infamy) but to me those other bullet points are quite different to anything I have ever played.

No Dice

Relic Knights uses a deck of cards, unlike Malifaux or Infamy this is not based off a playing card deck but one specific to the game called the Esper Deck.

The Esper Deck is the main resource of the game, it is 42 cards consisting of different coloured pairs and 3 Void and 3 Wild cards.

Each standard card has one large Esper icon and one small esper icon, the wild has all six shown and the void has a black hole, it's worthless.

As I mentioned before each faction has Esper affiliation, Blue is Law, Orange for Chaos, Purple Corruption, Yellow Essence, Red as Entropy and Green for Creation.

Each game starts with five cards in your hand, more are drawn when you take or are targeted by actions and the coloured symbols are used to power them.

The above examples are some actions from a Paragon of the Shattered Sword.

That first "type" symbol is a fist and represents melee, to initiate the Lance Charge the Paragon needs to pay the Esper cost.

Looking at your hand you can see whether or not you can pay, the standard cards allow you to have 1 esper of the small logo or 2 esper of the large type, the player discards any cards needing to pay for the action, if extra Esper is used (for example a large blue and large green) it is lost.

Typically, if you are playing one faction you will need more of your colour but it isn't always the case.

If we finish looking at the Lance Charge, you can see what to the Malifaux players out there look quite like Triggers.

Relic Knights has what it calls "presses".

Once the target is determined and the attack paid for each player draws cards equal to their skill level or defence level against that skill.

The attacker can then pay for any number of Presses they would like with the cards they now have.

The Paragon for example has a Melee attack of 3, we paid 2 cards, drew 3 so now have 6 to look at and see what we can do.

If we can make 2 more blue our Damage will be more, more Green allows us to charge further (understandably lance wielding knights do this a lot), if we can do both and it feels worth it we can.

Then, if the target has any Block or Deflect actions, they may for them.

Blocks can out right cancel the opponents attack and deflect well can deflect the attack on to something else (what this will be is described in the action).

If you are getting smacked about and have no Blocks/Deflects the card draw is still handy as next turn you will be more prepared to hit back or do whatever you like.

Combat is very fast paced in this game and you constantly are thinking either what you need your hand to do or what you hope to draw.

The one final element with Esper is Held Esper.

There are a few ways of gaining held Esper, the Knights and Cyphers tend to play with this a lot more but the typical way a unit, minion or unique will do this is "refocusing"

Rather than attacking the gain a Held Esper and draw five extra cards.

Held Epser gets noted on the card next to where you track wounds, a typical minion can hold about 2 where as a Knight usually holds around 6.

What the Held Esper does is it can be used to count as 2 of any colour to pay for any action.

This gives the image of the Dragon Ball Z style powering up a move before releasing it's full strength or a burst of power allowing them to deflect a huge attack.

Where as the Lance Charge may've seen cheap to pay for, Sebastian Cross the Shattered Sword's Relic Knight would have to pay 5 Blue and 3 Green for his largest attack and 8 blue and 6 green if he wanted to unleash it's full effect with all the presses.

Bearing in mind he will have 8 cards (3 of which are drawn later) to do this. Without Held Esper you would need to be extremely lucky.

That is 10 Damage that cannot be prevented and ignores 2 points of armour though!

Again, the combat is fast and simple, quite intuitive, and a lot of fun.

No Rounds

A turn in Relic Knights consists of you activating a model/squad, it moving, doing an action and then doing a follow up move (or forgoing all that to Refocus).

A clean up step, then on to your opponent to do the same.

Back and forth, over and over again until the game is concluded.

I feel though, this may be mind boggling to some, it was a little to me so I shall elaborate.

The above diagram shows the Dashboard.

The right is your Esper deck and discard pile, to the bottom left of that is your dead models stat cards and a space to keep tokens.

The bit we are concentrating on is the Active Slot, Linked Slot, Ready Queue and Idle Section.

At the beginning of the game you take the tracker cards of your cadre and place them into the Ready Queue slots, the rest will be Idle.

The Ready Queue is just that, a queue with the left most card being the first unit to get their turn.

In your turn the entire queue shifts left, the Active Slot is the unit you are using, either as I said before moving, taking an action and doing a follow up (yes two moves, lots of bouncing about) or refocusing.

Once they are done, they go into the Idle pile and a new card fills the gap in the Queue.

Two things to note here, first is that the queue size is different according to game size, 3 slots is for the standard 50.

The second more interesting thing is that because the model you just used falls into Idle first it can jump straight back into the queue.

In the above example it means Betty (the person in the Active Slot) could go to the back of the queue and Rollo (the dog in Idle) could just chill for longer.

This information is open though, so your opponent and you will always be planning knowing that "oh that's going next" and "I can activate this before that gets it's go".

The Linked Slot is filled if the card going into Active has a thing it is Linked to.

In this example, Betty the mechanic has her big robot Lug.

Lug. Apologies about the super glue mess.

This is dragged straight out of Idle and get to take it's turn straight after Betty before the opponent.

In Malifaux terms, this is companion or accomplice.

The clean up step as well as sorting the Ready Queue out allow the player to mulligan or at minimum drawing or discarding down to five cards and also to check victory points.

To a degree the game is a race, objectives score big VPs, Primary five and Secondary three, as well as killing too.

It benefits the player who has planned well and also the player who can be flexible and change things on the fly if needed.

I will chat about objectives later.

No Ranges

This bit is fairly simple to explain, Relic Knights does not have ranges on weapons.
Shooting or Psychic attacks can hit what they can see and base to base is combat. It is that simple.

Overall this saves time checking melee ranges, how far people shoot and trying to move safe, you are either seen or not, your are either in combat or not.
Thematically shooting having no maximum is fitting, laser guns, people firing off energy bolts, these things would be able to go "far enough".

Melee ranges arguably make less sense but it stops a lot of confusions or odd situations like models walking in-between people's engagements. That and having some attacks have "Charge" which moves them in a straight line, adds a lot of flavour when needed.

As I said AOE (area of effect) are 30mm tokens that have a 3-inch aura/bubble around them, but unless otherwise stated are placed where the model can see.

The only major need for the tape measure is your movement and deployment.

Movement in Relic Knights is fairly fast and has models bouncing about the table like an in flight fight from an anime.
Each model gets two move values, one before and after their action.
You can move shoot hide.
You can move fight move on.
You can move back grab something, head back on.
It gives a lot of tactical flexibility and is refreshingly different in such a simple way.

Zineda employs Psychic attacks across the battlefield.

No Deployment Zones

As I said, keep your tape measures by.

Deployment is very similar to "blind deployment" in other skirmish games; your models will be spread about the table if you like.

Simply players take turns placing 3 objective markers, the restriction being they can't be within 9" of each other. They can be close, far apart, as near to opponents, this in itself is strategic as different placements will be good depending on your objectives, your force, your opponents and terrain.

After objectives an additional thing called Boost Markers are then placed taking turns, these have no restriction on where they go, but to explain Boosts simply, they are power ups or like Mysterious Objectives in 40k. Some are things like ammo dumps and med kits while others are traps and mines.

Lastly, the models get placed also taking turns, 9" is the restriction again but this time the nearest thing to a Deployment zone is made.

Not 9" within your objectives but at least 9" away from an enemy objective or marker.

The deployment is strategic. I can see it becoming manic too as a lot of things will be able to attack in the first turn if deployed right.

This could be argued as good, because unlike many tabletop wargames Relic Knights does not suffer from the first turn of getting into position and not much else.

In the first few games, deployment will catch people out for sure, but soon they will learn, not only how to not get caught out but how their list should want to deploy, how the other factions like to do their thing and so on.

The Models

Relic Knights is a 30mm scale game, as I said before this does go from soldiers up to giant robots who need 80mm base.

Photos do not do the size justice. 

Kasaro To doesn't even fit into the 80mm base.

Originally, when Relic Knights were just some cool miniatures that Sodapop made and not a full game, they were made from both Restic and metal pieces.

Excluding some limited edition pieces all the Relic Knights models are made from Restic, a few which had minor re-sculpts to make them safer.

I'll cut to the chase, Restic is not my preferred material to work with and I know mostly everyone agrees.

Plastics are very costly for companies to do and tend to be avoided due to great investment the moulds cost.

Resin in the "Forgeworld style" is also usually held back for special pieces or boutique miniature ranges, mostly for cash reasons but occasionally time.

Metal is a thing of the past for most. Some companies stick to it as the detailing is great, but weight and cost is restrictive.

Restic is an obvious choice for Relic Knights and though I might not be that happy with it, it does mostly pay off.

The larger models such as the Relic Knights themselves or from my experience the entire Noh Empire it works very well, mold lines are everywhere and restic always takes a little longer to clean, but bar that the bigger kits are actually fantastic.

A joy to build as most the large kits have very obvious different shaped pegs and matching holes, allowing models to be dry fit really easily before hand.

The issues become a little more apparent with smaller models, I have heard the poses and variation some of the "human sized" squads isn't quite there, for me it has been fine but cleaning is that much more difficult.

The other large issue is detailing quite soft, some faces look almost blank.

Aww, Mr Tomn is so cute.

This issue was one that early plastic Malifaux sculpts seemed to have when they kicked off with their Ten Thunders, these are still great to paint but just involve a little more skill and imagination to take full advantage of. I am quite sure it will be the same for Relic Knights.

The only other small issue is sausage finger syndrome and that some pieces attached to sprues are so by their pegs, with the shape and hole format this is kind of moronic.

Overall though, as far as Restic goes it is far from a lot of the nightmares that are out there and is quite possibly top of it's class.

Mamaro To. One of my favourite miniatures.

Intro Outro

I hope that this fairly hefty introduction has been enlightening.

I will leave this with a few pictures of the models and a note that, don't worry I've not quit Malifaux for Relic Knights but that I hope people will enjoy the occasional post about it here in the future.

I may do some more for Guildball and Infamy once they hit our tabletops.

Lastly, expect a quick round up of my very first game coming soon.

Thanks to Liam Hall @MunkyKungFu

You can all see the crazy scales things can go to.

The Black Diamond have a mix of human, to Relic Knight,

and the huge robot, Diamondback.

They also paint up very well, thanks to @gorillawizard

for showing off his beautiful work.

Thanks for reading

-Ben (@psientologist)