[COMMERCIAL] Relicblade: adventure battle game

[Belgian]

Hi, this looks cool! Any chance you could put the cards up on drivethrurpg or wargamesvault for POD printing? That way us UK types could print out the pdf of the rules, but still have those nice cards professionally printed...

Would certainly recommend this!

[MetalKingStudio]

@Evil Doctor and Dr. Zombie, I'm looking into it now. I set up a publisher account and just need to work my way though the system to make sure its the right move. It looks legit, though. Thanks for the tip!

[Cherno]

The game and miniatures look very good. Professional stuff for sure. A tip from me: Fantasy Flight Games sells card sleeves in various sizes and colors, these are excellent for protecting your home-printed cards and make them easy to handle (and proof against spilled drinks and greasy fingers!).

I hope coop / Dungeon Master-style rules will be considered in the future

Edit: In the first post, the link to www.relicblade.com doesn't work.

[MetalKingStudio]

@Cherno Good catch on the broken link. I think the system is ripe for coop dungeon delving with some rad loot decks. I definitely hope to expand in that direction at some point!

[Reed]

Now that the broken link is fixed, I have to say that your web is truly fantastic ! Love the design, and your article about terrain is inspiring.

[Whitwort Stormbringer]

This looks excellent, and I'm really interested in getting started.  I'm in a bit of a crunch as the holidays approach, but will be keeping an eye on this and hopefully grabbing the full set in the near future!

[affun]

Yeah, I went ahead at threw money at the .pdf.
I've gotten a bit of flu today, so I'll have a cozy read through of it while sipping some tea.  

Edit: ... Which I have now done (Or quickly skimmed)! Here's some impressions:

First off: The game looks solid! Production values are amazing, and the 'feel' of the rulebook hits the mark (or actually, way above and beyond what I expected.). The aesthetics are somewhere between Heroquest, D&D and those small illustrations from 3rd edition warhammer fantasy, which I very much am a sucker for. There's some great art-skills at display here.

Mechanically, I can't say that much because I obviously haven't played it yet. On my read through, I will say that the rules seem solid. Crunchy enough to make sense a for very small scale skirmish, while still being intuitive and easy to understand. There's multiple decision-points during each characters activation, which should engage the player in a nice way. I've been looking for ruleset to do exactly this kind of Heroic Fantasy/Adventure combat for a while now. Suffice to say: The mechanics seem robust and fun, and the writing is easy to read.
Also a huge bonus for the rules being explicitly written to work with terrain.

The illustrations and pictures are really making me want to produce some cool 2'x2' battlefields to duke it out over!

The focus on the cards does mean that there isn't a generic profile building tool, which is understandable: That's a big undertaking, and not necessarily within the rulesets' design-goals. Force-building is then done with the specific profiles, with the option to add on upgrades: Reminiscent of the way Malifaux does its Crewe building. Within these 'pre'-made profiles, there's a lot of scope for variation, so it really shouldn't be a problem fitting in the miniatures you want to - The archetypes provided in wave 1 should allow for most types: There's a knight, cleric and druid, as well as various 'Pigs' - Pigs being easily substituted for Orcs, for example. And when more cards get released, these possibilities will only expand. I am in particular looking forward to seeing a wizard of some sort. Wizards being one of my two 'bigs', the other being knights which are sufficiently catered for already

Another minor quibble is that the .pdf seemed to not load properly on a mac's Image Viewer, so I had to download acrobat reader. That might be due to my software being outdated, and its no big thing, but I thought I'd mention it.

Overall - Very Exciting stuff! I look forward to following this game, and where it goes. And at a mere 4 dollars for the basic rules .pdf, that's a steal. It's great when something comes along that you didn't realise you really wanted. This is very much one of those things.
Not sure when I'll have a chance to actually play it, but I'll pipe in when I do.

Cheers!

[Dr. Zombie]

Yeah, I went ahead at threw money at the .pdf.
I've gotten a bit of flu today, so I'll have a cozy read through of it while sipping some tea. 

I volunteer for some play testing.

[affun]

I volunteer for some play testing.

Thats a deal  I just have to get through a move, then we can figure something out!

[Comsquare]

Yeah, I went ahead at threw money at the .pdf.
I've gotten a bit of flu today, so I'll have a cozy read through of it while sipping some tea.  

Edit: ... Which I have now done (Or quickly skimmed)! Here's some impressions:

First off: The game looks solid! Production values are amazing, and the 'feel' of the rulebook hits the mark (or actually, way above and beyond what I expected.). The aesthetics are somewhere between Heroquest, D&D and those small illustrations from 3rd edition warhammer fantasy, which I very much am a sucker for. There's some great art-skills at display here.

Mechanically, I can't say that much because I obviously haven't played it. On my read through, I will say that the rules seem solid. Crunchy enough to make sense for very small scale skirmish. There's multiple decision-points, which should engage the player in a nice way. I've been looking for ruleset to do exactly this kind of Heroic Fantasy/Adventure combat for a while now. Suffice to say: The mechanics seem robust and fun, and the writing is easy to read.
Also a huge bonus for the rules being explicitly written to work with terrain.

The illustrations and pictures are really making me want to produce some cool 2'x2' battlefields to duke it out over!

The focus on the cards does mean that there isn't a generic profile building tool, which is understandable: Thats a big undertaking, and not necessarily within the rulesets design-goals. Force-building is then done with the specific profiles, with the option to add on upgrades: Reminiscent of the way Malifaux does its Crewe building. Within there 'pre'-made profiles, there's a lot of scope for variation, so it really shouldn't be a problem fitting in the miniatures you want to - The archetypes provided in wave 1 should allow for most types: There's a knight, cleric and druid, as well as various 'Pigs' - Pigs being easily substituted for Orcs, for example. And when more cards get released, these possibilities will only expand. I am in particular looking forward to seeing a wizard of some sort. Wizards being one of my two 'bigs', the other being knights which are sufficiently catered for already

Another minor quibble is that the .pdf seemed to not load properly on a mac's Image Viewer, so I had to download acrobat reader. That might be due to my software being outdated, and its no big thing, but I thought I'd mention it.

Overall - Very Exciting stuff! I look forward to following this game, and where it goes. And at a mere 4 dollars for the basic rules .pdf, that's a steal. It's great when something comes along that you didn't realise you really wanted. This is very much one of those things.
Not sure when I'll have a chance to actually play it, but I'll pipe in when I do.

Cheers!

Can't add that much more to your review, it really sums up my impresion of the rules as well

Very well written, easy to understand, with some good rules-examples, really love it so far.
Had a talk to Sean and new cards are planned for the beginning of next year, which should give you some more charakters to play.

Hope to get a game done today, fingers crossed I have the time to 

[Dr. Zombie]

Tried the game today with affun. And I loved it! We managed two games in about two hours. I can see a lot of potential in this.

[Comsquare]

Tried the game today with affun. And I loved it! We managed two games in about two hours. I can see a lot of potential in this.

Cool 
How many points did you use, 100?

Am about to play right now as well 

[Dr. Zombie]

We played one game with 50 points to get the hang of the rules and one with 100.

[Comsquare]

We played one game with 50 points to get the hang of the rules and one with 100.

I played my first game yesterday with 100 points as well and really enjoyed it 
Great game with a lot potential, will definitively keep playing it.

[Elbows]

Get your stuff painted Comsquare and give us a nice n' proper battle report!