Relic Knights - Zineda (Noh) vs Leopold Magnus (Black Diamond)

I've mused before about the importance of having other game systems to rotate through as a way of relieving gaming fatigue. The upside of this approach is that you always have something to play - if you're bored/frustrated/burned out with what you've been playing, just switch it up!

The downside to this approach is that you can end up with systems you don't play very often and models that collect dust. I've tried to cull my model collection down to the games and armies that I'm most excited to paint and play. Even then, there are only so many hours to devote to gaming so some games are going to get more attention than others.

So when one of my gaming buddies brought up the prospect of dusting off the Relic Knights stuff we all bought, I happily agreed. Join me after the break for a recap of the game (this system defies the traditional battle report structure something fierce,) and impressions from my second full game of Relic Knights.

Cadres: (50 points, 1 Knight, 3 Queue Slots, 8 VP to win)
Noh Empire:
Units:
High Priestess Zineda & Spite
Render
Kyojin Berserkers (2)
Beastmaster
Hounds of Nozuki (4)

Boosts:
Darkfield
Esper Condenser*
Esper Condenser*

*Note: I was unaware that the Esper Condenser had been errata'd to cost 2, so I would have only had one this game. Noted for the future!

Black Diamond:
Units:
Leopold Magnus & Static
Black Dragons (3)
Suspect 7 (3)
Diamondback
Sofia Drake

Boosts:
None

VP Conditions:
Noh Empire:
Primary - Espionage
Secondary - Carnage

Black Diamond:
Primary - Espionage
Secondary - Siege

Set Up and Deployment:
The Noh won the flip off to determine Hero/Villan, so (somehow) they were the Heroes in this fight. Black Diamond deployed first, with Noh getting the first activation.

Initial Deployment

Quick notes about terrain: the red squares were size 5 buildings, the walls were size 1, the forests were size 3, blocking, and broken ground, and the brown rocky areas as well as the broken building sections were size 3 broken ground.

Relic Knights is a tricky game to try and timeline (as there are no rounds/turns to break it up,) so I'm just going to give an early game, mid game, late game breakdown. The specific sequence of events may be a bit off, but the gist of everything should be right.

Early Game:
The Beastmaster and Hounds end up burning their early activations Refocusing, then Magnus blasts the Render into the forest for a chunk of damage. Zineda zaps Magnus for moderate damage while Suspect 7(s?) spread out to work on Black Diamond's Faction VP Condition.

The Hounds end up piling onto Magnus, doing a solid chunk of damage. Sofia advances on the Hounds and kills two of them and Links with the Black Dragons to allow them a chance to move up towards the Berserkers.

The Render manages to set up a Line shot that catches Sofia and Magnus, doing damage to both. Meanwhile Suspect 7 continues to work on transporting cargo across the table. Zineda finishes off Magnus, generating 3 VP for Knight Slayer and creating a slave token for Noh's Faction VP Condition.

Mid Game:
The Diamondback lays into the Beastmaster, half killing it. The Hounds grab the slave token and truck it back towards the Noh's Primary Objective, but they drop it when Sofia kills another Hound (and leaves the remaining one with just one damage box.) The Black Dragons link to punch the Beserkers, doing a good chunk of damage to one of them.

Zineda tags the Black Dragons with Entropy Snare, killing one and debuffing the rest. She also retrieves and deposits the slave token, generating 2 VP for Noh's Faction VP Condition. The Diamondback finishes off the Beastmaster (+1 Black Dragon VP for Unit Killer,) while the Beserkers kill the two remaining Black Dragons (+1 Noh VP for Unit Killer.)

While all that chaos is going on Suspect 7 finishes transporting cargo, earning Black Diamond 2 VP for their Faction VP Condition.

Late Game:
VP totals are close and approaching the win threshold, so both players are fighting to try and get kills to finish the game. The Render manages to kill one of the Suspect 7 unit with a line shot on a nearby objective, but he is then rewarded with a plasma axe from the Diamondback (+1 Black Dragon VP for Unit Killer.)

The last Hound is killed soon thereafter (+1 Black Dragon VP for Unit Killer,) which leaves Zineda to try and close out the game. Many transferred attacks and ninja dodges later, Zineda finishes off the Suspect 7 unit, completing Noh's Secondary Condition and winning the game!

Final Outcome: 8 VP (Noh) - 6 VP (Black Diamond)

Post Game Thoughts:
This being our second full game of Relic Knights, I'm still mostly trying to come to grips with the system. Mechanically it's fairly straightforward (though there are a lot of keywords and such to keep straight,) but there's a surprising amount of depth in how you can approach the game. Two core concepts - hand and queue management - are easy enough to grasp but feel like they have a lot of nuance that require practice to really utilize well (especially queue management.)

Even though this is only our second game, we played pretty much everything correctly. There was a bit of a snafu in the middle where we didn't realize how retrieving/depositing condition tokens works (this being our first time really interacting with them,) and as a result both of us took longer than was probably necessary to achieve our faction VP Conditions. We've got it straight now though, and it really emphasizes the value of having a fast unit like the Hounds or one that can spread out like Suspect 7. That seems nice because it promotes list diversity above and beyond just bringing beaters.

Another thing worth noting is that, even with us having to check the rulebook semi-often for little details (god bless the pocket rulebook), the whole game took around two hours including deployment. The game naturally flows pretty quickly, and (based on my staggering sample size of two games) seems to consistently winnow itself down to a pretty natural conclusion. This is a godsend after so many years of playing 4+ hour games of Warmachine and Malifaux; which can be fun, but is also often totally draining.

I feel like we're kind of in our infancy of playing this game. Right now we're very much into the "smash models together" phase, which is how most people play any game at first. I feel like there's room for more aggressive, decisive scenario play in some situations, and the rules have a lot of nuances/shenanigans that we're getting comfortable with. For instance: since objectives count as friendly units for the purposes of abilities, they're fantastic Redirect targets if you don't need to keep yours around for anything. Learning little things like that - which we've taken for granted after years of playing Malifaux and Warmachine - is fun, but it is also a bit of a rough learning experience as we pummel each other with our discoveries.

As is evident from the deployment image, the biggest downside (IMO) that Relic Knights has out of the gate is that it is crazy space intensive: you have a lot of cards and tokens to keep track of, and a lot of them are important. Add to that reference materials for the Esper type actions you have access to, scenario scoring references, and damage trackers for objectives and boosts, and you have a lot of stuff out on the table. Playing on a 3' x 3' board helps since you can use a 4' x 4' board and give yourself a border to work with, but even then I still feel a little overwhelmed with all the stuff in front of me at the start of the game.

I definitely have some reservations - this game has it's share of things that seem overpowered - but I'm hoping that those things will either pan out to not be that bad, have ways to mitigate them, or that any really nasty issues will be addressed in errata. Soda Pop Miniatures seems pretty comfortable issuing erratas if they're necessary, so hopefully they'll stay on it and keep any really egregious things in check as the game chugs along.

Overall, I'm really looking forward to playing more Relic Knights. Its a fast, fun game that is very distinct from either of the two "main" games I have so it's a welcome change of pace. The game also feels like it has a surprising amount of depth (maybe not as much as some other games, but it's definitely more than I was expecting) and I'm very interested in seeing how well the game holds up with more playtime. Now that I've winnowed my factions down to one (Noh 4 lyfe) I can really focus in on working with those specific models and all the things they can do, and that should be very fun to experiment with.