Trench Crusade

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Balloonacorn
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Trench Crusade

Post by Balloonacorn » Sun Apr 26, 2026 8:28 am

Trench Crusade is a grim dark skirmish-style miniatures game set in an alternative, World War One. The year is 1914 and in addition the horrors of European trench warfare, during the First Crusade a group of knights opened a gate to Hell. They have had 800 years of demonic warfare.

The game was designed by Mike Franchina (MtG, Diablo IV, Path of Exile), James Sheriff, and Tuomas Pirinen (Mordheim, WFB) and was kickstarted in 2022. At this year’s Adepticon they were the second most popular booth and held their company sponsored first tournament.

Why this game may be for you:
• Amazing lore combining the reality of human history with Demonology
• Low model count / low cost
• It is miniatures agnostic but with a style all its own
• Simple rules but also very strategic
• Good for a single game or campaigns
• The company has stated that they will never do FOMO.
• Growing fast with lots of options for purchase, 3D printing and kit-bashing.

Check it out!
"true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe."

Balloonacorn
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Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2019 1:34 am

Re: Trench Crusade

Post by Balloonacorn » Mon Apr 27, 2026 9:41 am

I don't know about you but I have really like the models to play a game. Trench crusade models are unique and because of there attitude of opening up the models to 3rd parties, of great variety.

The original evil Trench Crusade models -


The iconic Bomb Witch
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The Court of the Seven Headed Serpent
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The Heretic Legion
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The Black Grail
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"true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe."

Balloonacorn
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Re: Trench Crusade

Post by Balloonacorn » Tue Apr 28, 2026 11:06 pm

Did you know that Graham McNeill (of GW's Black Library) has written a Trench Crusade story?

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It is part of the rulebook and is available for free (the rules or just the story)

https://www.trenchcrusade.com/news/a-ne ... Gt0rrI6Emg
"true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe."

Balloonacorn
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Posts: 584
Joined: Tue Oct 08, 2019 1:34 am

Re: Trench Crusade

Post by Balloonacorn » Thu Apr 30, 2026 11:11 pm

This is an interesting video about the design and layout of the Trench Crusade hard cover rule book by the man lead the design team. He goes into great detail about fonts, picture choice and other elements of perception.

I am not a graphic artist in any way, but found it insightful into the game making process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hve5dV2oNG8&t=264s
"true love is the greatest thing in the world - except for a nice MLT - mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe."

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me_in_japan
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Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 2:46 pm
Location: Tsu, Mie, Japan

Re: Trench Crusade

Post by me_in_japan » Fri May 01, 2026 12:32 am

One of the things I like about TC is the accessibility it has for a wide variety of players. Like, personally I enjoy the 3d printing aspect of it, which was heavily supported in the initial release. Now, however, they've leaned in hard to regular plastic production. Sure, this means I personally can't print the new shinies, but it does mean that those without printers can be my opponents. Plus, there's a near infinite amount of 3rd party 3d sculpts available, and the game devs have explicitly said they're find with 3rd party stuff being used. A side effect of this is the healthy number of subfactions, which is getting to the point that, like Malifaux, you can't really be expected to know all the little nuances or rules of what you come up against (although, with a polite opponent, you should at least get some kind of heads-up as to what you'll be facing beforehand, so you can do a bit of research.)

Here's my Black Grail:

Image (3rd party thralls from someone on cults3d. idr who exactly)

Image (3rd party fly thralls, again from someone on cults)

Image (Corpse Guard. The middle guy is from a separate company's kickstarter from years ago.)

Image (Grail Knight, official model)

Image (Grail Hounds, official models)

Image (Herald of Beelzebub, official model with various conversions by me)

Image (Lord of Tumours, official model)
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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