Rimelocked Relics
Welcome to our rundown of Rimelocked Relics! We’ll be celebrating this giant release of new Underworlds content with a whole week of content! That’s right, you’ll be getting a podcast episode every day for six days until we’ve covered it all! And to kick it all off, below are links to each of our card-by-card rundowns for your perusing pleasure.
Thanks go to GW for providing a review copy to make this content possible.
Introduction
[D]AVY & [P]HIL
P: The relics of the underworlds frozen in the deeps for an unknowable amount of time, drawing all with the allure of power. The question is, is it a power that is a boon or a curse? Let's find out!
Plot Card
P: Woof. That is a long time to wait to get your upgrades. A full three activations after you play it before you see a benefit is a real price. The upside is there are some ways to apply the effect to your opponents upgrades which seems close to breaking an upgrade.
D: Friendly and enemy activations though right?
P: Yes, friendly and enemy but still close to half a round...
Objectives
P: A pretty aggressive one glory end phase, but I think it is pretty doable as long as you have enough bodies.
D: The new Spiteclaw seems to want to spend all day every day in enemy territory, so they may just do this in passing. But one glory is a little low.
P: First condition is great, second condition not so much. You could potentially do this by just pinging a single enemy fighter but I can imagine some awkward situations with needing a certain number of wounded fighters so you can't get a kill.
D: Kinda works with hordes who are more prone to dying than getting wounded?
P: Unless you are bringing power card support to control when you get to flip your upgrades this is a hard pass in my book. Having to wait around on an objective for your upgrade to flip makes this feel like it will be inconsistent at best.
D: If you've got someone camping out in an out of the way place, this is a pretty minimal ask. Play an upgrade to get a glory, basically. Assuming you're rocking the Rimelocked.
P: As kill surges go this is not bad. A solid card for a flex strategy but still not the easiest kill surge we have seen.
D: Pretty reasonable for kill surges. I won't feel terrible if I have to take this as a sixth surge.
P: Do the thing, get a glory. This feels solid so long as you have the seed glory to get your upgrades out. As we have seen with masks, that is pretty manageable.
D: Easier than Defrosted? Sure thing.
P: Hold each in one territory without a way to cheat is tough, but if you are leaning into hold it will probably come up anyway. This makes board setup pretty crucial because you really don't want to have to hold 3 for 2 glory.
D: I think this is pretty great. If there's only one in no man's land, you can grab that and one other.
P: Fun call back here to got it boss and now wot from krushas. Pretty decent surge but the timing can still make this challenging if your opponent is determined to stop your holds.
D: If you have a way to snag stuff in the deep backfield, I like making the opponent have to ponder whether to turn around and head back the other way. Surges for holding can be better than this, but this is perfectly solid.
P: Nice, land an attack is quite good and the hold and objective while doing it only makes this marginally harder. Since it has to be outside your territory you probably want to set up similar to fearsome fortress for this. Ranged attacks help a ton with this one!
D: Hot. Especially if you have ranged attacks.
P: Ugh, the second part of this will be tricky. There are a couple ways to set this up in the power deck but if it doesn't happen just right then you will be locked out of scoring this.
D: Weeeeird. For two glory, I'll definitely think about it. There's some tech to make your opponent's stuff Rimelocked. But it's gotta be face down. Yikes.
P: Maybe chill if the grave is too easy but by having the face up condition for the upgrades this is much harder. Feels like it would have been significantly difficult if it just said two friendly fighters have rimelocked upgrades period.
D: Ouch. Yeah, that's a little rough knowing that easier versions exist elsewhere.
P: Huh, for two glory I kinda like this. I've managed this condition with stalkers enough to think it is pretty reasonable for a later game score so long as you have the bodies to hold. Seems good.
D: A surge for two, you say. Definitely a round 2 or 3 one given that you have to log a kill. A reach goal, but maybe a reasonable one?
P: Supremacy doesn't really need an additional condition but as additional conditions go this one isn't terrible. Just getting one upgrade played is quite doable, even if it isn't doing anything. Holding three is still a big ask for an end phase though.
D: Doesn't care if the Rimelocked are face up or down, at least. It's *just* about Supremacy, but you have to have drawn the right upgrade *and* have seed glory to play it out. In Nemesis, though that big score could bring you up and over the top.
Gambits
P: Pretty sure this is just bad? If you have more dice in a roll you stand a better chance of criting, if you have fewer dice you probably want the chance for a lucky crit, so you are looking at even number of dice and wanting to remove the spikes of crits?
D: I like this offensively if I'm tossing a lot of dice and don't want to get critted out. Combos well with cleave/ensnare. Do I like it enough to take it? Also can turn off crit effects like grievous.
P: Flip up instantly for the downside of losing it after the round is an interesting trade off. Helpful when you need to score those face up objectives but I'm not sure you want to lose your rimelocked upgrades. I'm also curious if you have to have at least one thaw counter to play this? If so this is less good...
P: Oh, womp womp, doesn't break at the end of the round it is at the end of the action phase. Booooo
D: This feels like the Breakneck Slaughter gambits that manipulate Momentum counters. Reasonable if you're leaning hard that way, but probably too corner case for the most part. A combo card by definition.
P: A nice piece of tech for locking in your held objectives, should be fairly easy to get this in at the end of a round and not have to worry about having your positioning get messed up.
D: Ooo. That's a pretty good spread of time, too. Effectively two power steps (your current and the next) plus an activation.
P: +1 DMG is nice in nemesis any way you can get it but this is pretty slow to turn on. Mostly going to be usable in the later parts of the game which isn't usually when you want your bonus DMG.
D: No range restriction!
P: I love pushes, but because you don't have full control of when you can use this it is a lot less useful. It also slows down getting your upgrade online which hurts.
D: I don't think this one slows anything down. That's a later card. This is... fine. But again, you gotta be leaning hard on the Relics to not have it be dead.
P: A chance to temporarily break an upgrade with no range restrictions is some nice control! I think there are a lot of uses for this but it's one I definitely want to see on the table before drawing too many conclusions
D: That's a 2/3 chance to land, but no range restrictions. You can use it on yourself if you're getting jammed up on some of the objectives that need Rimelocked to be out.
P: Double push yay! Extremely limited situations when you can actually push two fighters boo! And, aaaaand they get a move or charge token?! Why? Pushes are great but this is a stretch
D: I think this is amazing. Lets you get close to charged out if you need it. Double push in Grymwatch or Sepulchral Guard, for example, is choice.
P: This speeds up getting an upgrade flipped by 1/3... That, in my opinion, isn't worth a gambit slot. Would have been too good for this to just flip it right away?
D: C-c-c-combo city, USA.
P: Okay, this is more like it! Lasts for a while and speeds up all of your upgrades. I think if you are running more than a couple rimelocked upgrades you will need this.
D: You gotta really want those relics to be finding space for this.
P: Okay, the potential for a +2 dice attack is nice but again the timing restriction makes this very hard to use efficiently. The fact it is slowing down your upgrades is, again, a very high cost
Upgrades
P: Cool, I like this as a way to improve defense without specifying a symbol. Simple yet elegant and strong to boot.
D: Tasty. And you're going to want extra defense if you're pushing into enemy territory as much as this deck asks.
P: Helps with some objectives and can, at least temporarily, turn off upgrades? Seems solid to me. The only tough part is the range 1 limitation that doesn't really mesh well with hold objectives.
D: Cool... but locked behind a successful range 1 attack is a heavy gate to open.
P: Wow, that is a nice bow. However, because of the delay in turning it on and only being 1 damage you are pretty limited in how much you will get to do with it. If you don't get this until round two it's limited quite a bit.
D: Wow. If you have someone who can get extra mileage out of activating multiple times (like a Circling Hunter Rippa) that range gets really tasty.
P: Two pretty strong effects, I'm unsure how well you can plan for the teleport though since it will be three activations delayed assuming you don't use power cards to speed it up. I guess you just take it as upside if it happens to work out?
D: Looooove that. Great for Range 2 or 3 fighters especially. Plus you can hand out a surprise charge token to re-activate another fighter unexpectedly.
P: Now we are talking! Holy crap this is seriously powerful. The ideal of course is you get a ranged fighter that can go full turret mode while also supporting your whole team. This is definitely worth having to wait a little while for.
D: Wow, parked on a safe objective, you get to be King Velmorn for a day.
P: Also strong, but more limited by being range 1 and 2 only. I think range 1 will really struggle to take advantage of this but range 2 should be able to be a menace. The innate support may not always come up but it will probably feel back breaking when it does.
D: Especially powerful if you already have Leyfrost Conduit out to mean those innate supports are definitely helping.
P: Weird card. More DMG is never bad but having it be pretty unreliable to trigger is not great, especially since you had to wait for this to turn on and then it only works for range 1 attacks
D: WTF is going on in this picture? Is he karate chopping Vexmor in half?
S: Whatever is going on, he seems quite pleased with himself.
P: We have seen "can't be pushed" play out extremely well a handful of times so I'm sure these will be great as well. I think the limitations are okay too to try and keep them a little less powerful.
D: This is a really underrated effect. Great for hold strategies but I'm a big fan in general.
P: If you have a fighter that really wants to be inspired this is very nice, I'm just not sure who that fighter would be that also likes the very middle road flex that the rest of this deck calls for.
D: I'm struggling a bit to think which fighters would truly benefit a lot from this, but would also be down to take this deck. I know some of the Stormcast that rely on dice rolling for inspires wouldn't say nay.
P: A more balance frostwyrm cloak is still a really strong card. Like it quite a bit!
D: Whoa, tasty. Especially if you get those cute boots on to keep you where you wanna be.
Summary
P: So are you drawn to the Rimelocked Relics? Will the promise of power bring you all that you desire or see you frozen and forgotten... Let us know what you build! This one is a puzzle and a half.
Week of Warhammer Underworlds
Rimelocked Relics coming to a podcast platform near you… Sunday, March 17th.