Plastic Kits Now Available!
Attention Battle-friends and RelicBuds!
Relicblade Plastic Box Sets are HERE!! ORDER NOW!
My Biggest Project To Date!
I did not run a Kickstarter in 2025. Crowd funding campaigns have been a very fun way for me, as an artist, to harness community enthusiasm into a creative drive. I don’t just use the funding to create the content, I use the momentum and publicly sworn oaths to deliver lovingly crafted artwork. So far, I have successfully delivered seven Kickstarter campaigns. As a small business, my reputation is everything and a failed Kickstarter is a major risk.
Chaotic US trade policy made creating new products in 2025 a strategic unknown. I decided to skip a Kickstarter last year because I sincerely doubted that the project could be completed. In spite of a difficult year, and with great delight, I present the first hard-plastic box sets for Relicblade!
Remastered Favorites
Relicblade is 10 years old! To celebrate I poured all of my creative energy into revisiting two of my most popular sets. Looking toward the future and giving myself full creative freedom to make something great, I decided to adapt the “faction set” product into a new format. Each of these remastered faction sets include a hard plastic (HIPS) frame with 5 new miniatures, 10 cards with carefully updated rules, and a faction book packed with lore, tactics, and scenarios.
Let’s take a closer look at the new sets!
Bone and Darkness
The sinister devotees of Darkness were one of the first expansions to Relicblade. It goes without saying, that these skull faced villains became an instant classic. Their aesthetic is a mixture of stone age shamanism and cruel undead monstrosities. When I started planning new models for these characters, I decided to stay close to the original designs. After drawing sketches of these guys in hundreds of books, there were some details that I really wanted to capture. So the updating process was a creative treat for me.
With the new set, the rules for Bone and Darkness have been adjusted to keep them fun, balanced, and appropriately menacing! The metal faction sets include an insert with the packaging information. This little leaflet offered me the tiniest space to include a couple of sentences of lore or special rule, and a scenario. With plastic kits coming in a box, I didn’t want to lose the little space I had to tell the story of Relicblade. So instead of losing the insert, I expanded that single page into a full book!
These new faction booklets extremely fun. Instead of being limited to four or five sentences, I have space for pages upon pages of lore, miniature photography, illustrations, tactical insights, hobby notes, and scenarios (both competitive and cooperative). Writing two new books was an unnecessarily large and expensive undertaking. But you know I put the art first when I make product design decisions! I’m excited you’ll have these wonderful little books on your shelf and uploaded into your imagination.
For an in-depth unboxing, you can check out the video below.
Battle Pigs
Battle Pigs were part of Relicblade before the game even had a name or rules! These characters were originally sculpted in 2015 while I was still learning how to use ZBrush, and the characters still radiate naive charm.
Relicblade is infused with an “80s-90s Saturday Morning Cartoon” energy, and the battle pigs are majorly influenced by things like Ninja Turtles and Battle Beasts. As inherently toy-like characters, I am so excited that these hard-plastic versions can be built and handled by younger hobbyists with the reckless abandon only a Battle Pig can possess!
I’ve drawn thousands of battle pigs since I did the original minis were made. Over the years I have pushed a slightly more cartoon/comic style into my sculpts, and I have been furiously anticipating my moment to sculpt pigs again.
Of course, Battle Pigs need a few alternative build options. So even though the kit isn’t designed as a build your own pig multi-part set. It does have alternative build options available.
The Battle Pigs rules update and booklet were a big deal. As some of the first characters ever made, their rules have fallen behind a little bit. Battle Pigs were one of the most appealing factions to new and young players, while also (unfortunately) being one of the more difficult factions to play.
I worked closely with several people in the community including, Jon Kim and Will Orford, to refine some of the rules dynamics and make Battle Pigs a blast on the table. If you want to take a closer look at the rules updates and hear some of the design theory behind the changes, you can listen to the latest episode of RelicBuds here:
The Steel Viper
One down side of skipping a Kickstarter is the lack of “stretch goals.” Stretch goals have been the primary source for single character expansions to Relicblade. Over the years I have presented the core goal for Relicblade development, usually consisting of two faction sets and a book. Which is, by no coincidence, what is fulfilled with the new plastic box sets. And additionally presented a set of single character expansions as stretch goals.
Instead of content created and released in one massive burst when a KS fulfills. I am determined to release new single character expansions on a semi regular basis. The first of this latest wave a legendary martial artist from across the South Sea!
The Steel Viper is the very first “Monk” keyword character for Relicblade, and he finally completes a 100 point list for the Severed Hand neutral faction set. This character fills a unique combat role. He is well suited for both dealing and taking damage, but also offers interesting battlefield control. Equipped with his “Dictate Engagement” upgrade, he will make it very difficult for enemy characters to disengage from him, and even more difficult for them to stop him form disengaging from them. As you strive to control and deny objectives to your opponent, the Steel Viper is the ideal character.
The Steel Viper is produced in white metal, just like most of the Relicblade miniature range. I felt that it was important to show that even though I am working to produce the best quality miniatures in hard-plastic, White Metal is still an extremely good material for these smaller character expansions. I also wanted to cement the reality that Relicblade will remain a hybrid range of hard-plastic and white metal miniatures into the knowable future.
NOTE: As a metal mini, this miniature is produced in much more limited quantities than the new plastic kits. So if you are ready to expand your Severed Hand collection, don’t wait! If these sell out, I will restock them ASAP. But it will certainly take time that you won’t want to suffer through.
Conclusion
Ok. Thanks for reading. This is (most of) the stuff I have been working on for the past 8 months or so. This would have been my biggest Kickstarter to date in terms of cost and sheer number of miniatures manufactured. But because I couldn’t promise to deliver it, I didn’t promise anything. Now we all just get to reap the benefits of a secret quest achieved!
(Those four pallets are just the plastic frames and new bases. There are three more pallets of books, cards, and boxes, and another pallet of shipping materials so I can actually ship the stuff to you!)
As always. By ordering Relicblade model kits, you are supporting my boldest ambitions. You are directly making the world of Relicblade come to life, and directly funding further game development.
I am grateful beyond words for your continued support. THANK YOU.
Now it’s time for me to put my head down, and ship your order!
Your friend,
Sean Sutter
FAQ:
Q: Can I buy an extra frame of miniatures without the box set?
A: Not at launch. Once we have fulfilled the initial wave of orders, we may be able to make that available. I just need to make sure the main product launches well before we start filling bits orders. It will only be $15 cheaper, because we remove a $10 book and $5 of cards. So you can decide if its worth waiting.
Q: Can I buy the cards and books separate from the box set? I already have the metal minis.
A: I got you fam. There is a “scholar” item in the new releases section with the new cards. Note that Battle Pigs and Darkness PDFs have been updated to include the new book and updated cards. So you can re-download that if you already have it or purchase it relatively cheaply.
Q: There are other updated cards. Can I get those?
A: Yes. There is a special add-on for the 5 updated cards for single character packs. You can add that to your order to get the new Bone Fury, Berserker Pig, and Hellebore cards. I won’t be able to restock enough copies of those characters to make sure they don’t sell out. But I have enough new cards to make this add-on available.
Q: Shipping internationally is too expensive.
A: I agree. I don’t even charge the full price. I only charge part of the cost to you and cover the rest.
Q: Is Relicblade available in distribution within the US/EU/UK/RoW?
A: I don’t have a distribution partner. I do direct sales with stores. So if you have an local game store that you would like to buy Relicblade at. Have them email me! I will gladly create a trade account so they can stock the game.