Relic: Nemesis & Relic: Halls of Terra Review

Relic is a prime example of the “Munchkining” that many hobby games publishers engage in following the lead of Steve Jackson Games’ most lucrative and ubiquitous property. It’s when said publishers take existing designs and sort of retrofit them with other licenses or settings. In this case, Fantasy Flight Games Munchkined the venerable Talisman, a classic Games Workshop title that has seen great success at the firm with its 4th edition. Relic transplants more or less the entire Talisman design into a Warhammer 40k setting, complete with copious illustrations to make any fan salivate and just a couple of revisions that seem minor at first, but actually turn out to make Relic – dare I say it – a better game than Talisman.

But Relic has sort of turned out to be one of those also-ran titles, not really gaining any kind of serious critical traction and not really catching fire in terms of discussion or circulation since its release in 2013. This could be why Fantasy Flight has been a little more judicious about expanding it in comparison to the regularly scheduled add-ons for Talisman. To date as of this writing, there are just two expansions – Nemesis and The Halls of Terra – but both are actually among the better examples of post-release support that the company has produced to date.

The key is that both offer substantial changes to the existing mechanics in ways that do not upset the classic Talisman-descended mix of ultra-simple adventure gameplay, character diversity, upgrades and development, and a narrative that embraces a gleeful randomness as well as a measured progression. In short, they don’t change anything but what they add only make Relic an even better game.

Nemesis redresses one of the issues that Talisman fans had with Relic by implementing a simple suite of player versus player rules. This is not one of those dreadful “more cards” expansions that FFG has unfortunately become known for and in fact the Threat decks only get a handful of cards each. The rules for players fighting players are more or less exactly what players of the game expect, but there are a couple of compelling twists.

One is that there is now a new “Apostate” status, as opposed to the default “Devotee” one that everyone starts with. You get this by taking on forbidden Wargear or even relics, which then makes you an attackable target for Devotee players. There are rewards for attacking Apostates or Devotees depending on which type of skill challenge you engage the other in. It’s simple, direct and it makes the game more violent – especially once players start earning relics and making their way to the middle and inner regions.

Even better, however, is the new Enemies of the Imperium mode. This mode adds four new characters (including cool choices like a Tyranid Hivelord and a Dark Eldar Dire Avenger) that effectively act as adversaries for the regular player characters. They win differently, attempting to earn Infamy points by hunting down the players and performing certain tasks. The mechanics necessary to get these baddies working requires that they almost play a kind of parallel game, drawing Imperium cards rather than Threat cards and playing cards from character-specific decks instead of resolving on-board adventure text. There are some neat effects that the Nemesis player or players can pull off, including adding and moving specific Threat cards around the board.

I really like Nemesis. The new characters are good (an Eversor Assassin and an IG soldier) and the Enemies of the Imperium mode in particular creates a different tone for the game. In a way, it reminds me somewhat of how the Reaper works in Talisman, except that the Reaper analogues are fully fledged characters out to get you. It tends to work best, I think, in a three player configuration with one Nemesis. Relic is still a sometimes too-long game with four or more players, but you can play with two Nemesis characters with higher player counts.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Talisman were the add-on boards, including the woefully forgotten Timescape. These new regions offered different settings and usually alternate routes to developing characters and finding loot. The Halls of Terra expansion adds a very cool new board to Relic’s tabletop representation of the Antian system and as the title suggests, it’s our own Sol System including Holy Terra (Earth), Luna (the Moon), Mars and Titan. A whole new deck of orange Threat cards augment the existing red, blue and yellow ones.

Now, here’s the thing. Adventuring in the Sol System, which you reach by paying a two influence toll at one of the original board’s corners, is very different from anything in either Talisman or Relic. The concept is that the enemies, encounters and events found there are more political in nature and your characters go there to petition the High Lords of Terra and the government for support. Of course, this being 40k, it’s all still very grim and dark, full of spikey stuff and danger. The primary goal of getting back to where mankind once belonged is to get your character involved with various factions from the lore. There are benefits to earning these affiliation tokens through specific missions, board text and Threat cards, not the least of which are very powerful Champion cards that you can earn for each group.

I love that Halls of Terra mixes things up by giving characters an option to adventure in a different way than the usual “flip a card, fight a monster” way. I also really like how the affiliations almost feel like an evolution of the classic Talisman alignment system, but made more layered and impactful. The downside is definitely that these affiliations and their benefits are almost completely entrenched on this extra board. There is very little that impacts or is affected by affiliation on the main board, save any permanent advancements such as the Champion status.

With that said, it also makes venturing into Sol System entirely optional and that is the correct design decision. I like having the option, particularly when playing certain characters, to wallow in political corruption and cronyism rather than having my face punched in by Orks. I also especially enjoy the Black Crusade scenario, which is kind of a co-op setup that finds the players tasked with keeping the Sol System from falling into corruption. Corruption cards are placed on spaces in Sol when certain types of enemies are drawn from the Threat decks, and if every space is filled, everyone loses. Players can go to Sol and take the corruption cards, but if a player becomes completely corrupted all of their cards contribute toward humanity’s final downfall.

Ultimately, the mechanics of Halls of Terra aren’t really that much different than the core game. You will still flip cards and roll dice at them, even though the context is “political” instead of “combat”. But I’m OK with that, because it keeps things systematic and simple. This kind of game shouldn’t be any more complicated than it is, which is to say that it isn’t very to begin with.

The usual lot of expansion material is present including another Nemesis character (an Iron Warrior Warpsmith, for which you need the previous expansion). You also get a couple of standard characters including, to my delight, a slow-but-sturdy Space Marine Terminator. There’s plenty in the box to warrant its price, and it’s definitely recommended if you already have Nemesis.

Both Nemesis and Halls of Terra are great examples of expansions that add quality content and development of existing gameplay concepts without burdening the game with pasted-on subsystems and piles of cards that all but the most devoted players may never see due to the quantity of them. I think Relic is somewhat underappreciated, likely because it is out-of-step with current trends and it is a “Munchkined” product, but with these additions I think it makes a for a more distinct and dynamic adventure game than popular opinion might suggest.