mercenary

noun

• professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army:

  ‘he had planned to seize power with the aid of a group of mercenaries’

Mercenaries have been around since war itself and as such, are a regular sight on battlefields. Pick a war and you will no doubt find mercenaries fighting for one side or another. Men selling their skills in fighting to the side that pays.

This is no different in Relics.

Mercenaries in Relics offer you, the player, a way to break the mould of your army and paint up something different whilst also adding something new to your force on the table. Players have quite a selection of mercenaries to choose from for their armies and this range will continue to increase.

Let’s take a look at two of the currently available Mercenary profiles and see just how they bring different things to your force.

Maverick Mike

When you take Maverick Mike in your force, he comes with the attribute ‘His very Own Men – Troopers’ which allows you to take a unit of Britanan Troopers in your force. However, even better than that, the Trooper unit costs half its normal points! You also add the keyword ‘Mercenary’ to the unit, so they count as mercenaries, as they should do.

This means Maverick Mike is a great way for you to add a much needed gun line to a faction force that may be lacking in this way and for a great price too!

Mike is not without his own little bite too. With his ranged weapon profile and Twin Weapons, Mike is able to dish out some ranged hurt all by himself.

As a mercenary commander, Maverick Mike is ideally placed to give a player the perfect springboard for building an all merc force! For just 17 points, you have a commander AND a unit of mercenary Troopers!

Beorn

The Beorn is another great mercenary unit that brings much to a force. Again, we have a commander so he’s an ideal place to start building an all mercenary force if you wanted, but taken as a mercenary in a force, he adds a proper right hook to your army.

Just taking him in isolation, his swift movement, resilience to damage and his ability to dish out the pain makes him a powerhouse in anyone’s force. But, he isn’t just about working alone. On his profile are two advantages that are key to how the Beorn works with other units.

The first of these advantages is ‘Forward’. It gives the player an out of activation movement of 4” for a friendly unit within 10” of the Beorn. There is a stipulation that the chosen friendly unit must end this movement closer to the enemy that it started, but generally, that is the reason for using it anyway! This gives you the ability to move a unit across the table faster than usual and really helps to build pressure on the opponent whilst also ensuring the Beorn is supported.

The second advantage is ‘Blood Ceremony’. This advantage is great as whilst you are using the Beorn as the melee monster it is, you are also healing damage received when dealing out damage. This healing can be done on the Beorn itself or a friendly unit within 5”.

There are a couple of restrictions on this Advantage however. The first being the Beorn has to have dished out at least one point of damage this activation. The second restriction being that the recipient of the Blood Ceremony must have received damage this turn. So, it does put some emphasis on the order in which you are activating units…. But, it can be instrumental in keeping a unit alive.

Wrapping up

So, just by taking a quick look at two of the mercenaries we have on offer, you can see that the options the mercenary profiles can bring to your force are very interesting. This is just two of them too, when you start to look at others like the Chronicler or the Angilde then you start to see ways to deal with certain situations that you may struggle with using your current force. As a matter of fact, the Angilde are my favourite alpha strike unit and are also great for causing your opponent pain when it comes to their Casters.

Until next time.