Review: Relicblade

What's going on everyone! As a gamer I love all sorts of games, from board to RPG to Miniatures Skirmish games. With that being said, I got in contact with the SOLE creator for the awesome game on kickstarter right now called Relicblade by Metal King Studios.

After getting in contact with him I was honored to able to obtain a demo copy of the rules and cards that I could print out and use with my own minis for a review/trial of the game!

So here we go fellow gamer geeks, Sit back, grab your cup of holding and read on to see what's inside, how it works and some pics of it as well.

As a disclaimer, I feel I need to mention before hand that these are printed here at home but his kickstarter offers professionally printed copies of the book and rules as well as custom mini's that come with the game. Minis that HE sculpted himself. If that's not impressive I don't know what is!


First off, I'd like to start with a little piece from the rulebook to give you an idea of the world. Every great battle has a story. Relicblade is no exception! :D



"The land is cruel and savage, littered with the bones of heroes and monsters. An evil haunts the ancient ruins of sundered empires. Overcome by despair and dread, beleaguered survivors live in scattered walled cities.

Brave souls and darkened hearts hear the siren’s song of powerful ancient relics. Their forces venture into the wilds seeking these mysterious relics and clashing on the crossed paths of salvation and supremacy.

Will you, seeker, take command of those bold heroes on their righteous quest for hope? Or will you harness the unbound fury of the Pig Men; whose craven lust for destruction is only matched by their love of snacks?


Whatever your choice, dear seeker, choose quickly. For is it not written."
© Metal King Studios - Sean Sutter

Now, With that in mind, You can imagine that this game would be awesome, and, well, IT IS! First off, it takes a skirmish style and makes it EASY for anyone to learn and play. None of those tedious rules that come with some other games. This one is straight forward and again, SIMPLE to learn.

Just because it's simple doesn't mean it's lame or easy to win though. The simplicity of it is the key to the game being great. See, not only can you play it right out of the book with the custom minis available for it but you can also use your own minis. 

Because the game is a skirmish style you also have options for movement. If you'd like, you can measure out every movement to it's exact, OR you can use a grid system to keep it even more simple. The attacks are also a nice and simple approach. EVERYTHING is actually nice and simple.

You see, characters all have their own AD number which is the number of "Action Dice" they get in a pool to spend each turn/round. So if your character has a movement of 3, you simply spend 1 AD to move up to 3 inches away. If you want to climb that wall to get to your enemy, You can also attempt to do so! There are of course difficulties involved though. ;)

Ranged combat is very simple as well, You use an AD to do the attack you'd like (which has range and other info on the character cards so you never have to remember any of it), you take your action die and roll it hoping to get a roll equal to or greater than the difficulty specified. If you succeed, you hit them as long as you have line of sight to them. 

Then they tally up the damage and roll a "Challenge Die" which is pretty much their defense die. They add this number to their armor number and they block that much of the damage with the rest(if any) getting through.

On to my opinion of this game:


The art: Beautiful! It has a bit of a comic feel to it which I love! The Rule book is dripping with awesome art as well. From the cover to the back, it's amazing. 

The Gameplay: Like I mentioned above, VERY simplistic. Now, don't get me wrong here, there is still a TON of strategy involved. It's fast paced, action packed and I don't know how he did it while keeping it simple but in depth!

The minis: WOW... Just WOW!

The premise: Ok, so we all know there are TONS of miniatures games out there, from board to RPG and everything in between. To me, this one doesn't fall short. It's adaptive for narrative play, simple for skirmishing and brilliant in general. This one has to be one of the best I've come across in a long time. Not only does it have an awesome story set in an awesome world but it's ALL MADE BY ONE MAN!

 So in closing, I HIGHLY recommend you check this one out, If you like fantasy, minis, skirmish games, art or gaming in general, this is for you.

The best part? It's so immersive yet simple that you can EASILY teach your significant other or even your 10 year old how to play with NO problems. Like any game, it takes a bit to learn but I have to tell you, one game in and we knew how to play the ENTIRE game!


CLICK HERE TO CHECK IT OUT!


Please note that I'm not mentioning EVERYTHING about the game. I'm doing this for a reason, you need to check this one out. It's amazing.

As always, Thank you for reading and take care!
-Tim