No one expected the Trench Crusade to get so big, least of all its creators. “Popularity is something I've never seen before,” Tuomas Pirinen, one of those creators and head writer of the alt-historical brawler game, tells me. “It's absolutely incredible. It's amazing.”
The Trench Crusade exceeded all expectations. Pirinen, who seems more eager to praise his colleagues than admit it himself, says that the original Kickstarter would have “blown all our expectations out of the water” if it reached $500,000. It broke $6 million, and the team had to 3D print and deliver more than 1.6 million miniatures to backers before they could even think about moving on. It was an unprecedented success, but also a huge burden on the shoulders of the creators.
Suffering from success, and keeping backers happy
“The only thing stopping us from making it bigger is that we don't want to start selling stuff until backers get their stuff,” explains Pirinen. “We don't want anyone to go into a store looking for their mini or book and find that they can buy it. [there]. But now that's all out of the way, we can clearly move on. “
He regrets that the process took so long and many people received their highly anticipated products late, but now that “99.9 percent” of backers have received their rewards, the Trench Crusade is moving forward. It just so happens that the forwards are away from STLs and 3D prints and towards plastic minis.
The first plastic box of the trench crusade was the Prussian stoststruppen warband, followed by sniper priests – both auxiliaries of New Antioch. Made by Poland's Archon Studio, the quality is excellent, a notable step up from the varying quality of resin prints received by Kickstarter backers. While the company likely won't be making any new 3D printable STL files, Pirinen says Trench Crusade will continue to support its current range and points to the countless companies that produce licensed figurines for those interested in 3D printing. But if you want minis made by Trench Crusade's six in-house sculptors, you'll have to buy plastic.
“It was a huge gamble,” Pirinen admits. “Those things are stupidly expensive to make. But it paid off. A lot of people bought them.”
Appeared before the corpse in the Adepticon
At this week's Adepticon Showcase, Trench Crusade showed that it really means business with its plastic. Carcass Front is a starter set and story campaign box that will hit shelves in late July. Priced at just £99.99 (~$129.99), it includes simplified rules (the full rules are still available online for free), a 96-page campaign book, terrain pieces, and 16 miniatures divided into two warbands. Featuring 700-ducat warbands for barnacle-encrusted heretic naval raiders and a zealous procession of holy grieving, the listings promise that this is the “first phase of an annual schedule” that will “blend miniature releases with events, organized gameplay, and an evolving world story.”
Carcass Front feels like Trench Crusade is on the rise, offering an off-the-shelf box to entice a whole new army of players into its game. Pirinen estimates that the audience for boxed plastic is about 20 times larger than for 3D printing, but it's still “a big risk,” he says.
Carcass Front comes from the brains of Pirinen and co-creator and artist Mike Franchina, but they've recruited a lot of talent for the new box. Warhammer legends Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson, and Graham McNeill are all credited, along with fellow Games Workshop alumni Pedro Nunez and Thomas Elliott. Artem Demura, who has worked on video games such as Mortal Shell and Lords of the Fallen, also features.
2025 is the year of the non-Warhammer wargame
Hobbyists rejoice, our options are plentiful.
As for what's next for Trench Crusade, more plastics are evident. Carcass Front also looks to deliver on the Kickstarter promise of campaign rules — an area where the swingy brawler game already thrives — but Pirinen dreams bigger.
“One day I'd love to do combat level games as well,” he tells me, adding that it's a personal desire rather than an official team plan. “I want to do tanks, I want to do vehicles. But of course, there is a limit […] In a game of Trench Crusade a tank would just wipe out the other side, so if we did that it would be a completely different system.”
I'd be interested in a Trench Crusade war game for the vehicle miniatures alone – I can already imagine the artwork Franchina and co. will produce – but the game needs a serious rules overhaul to make it work. Currently, a skirmish game works much better as a campaign than as a solo battle because the momentum quickly swings in favor of one army. I'm curious to see how Carcass Front's official campaign addresses this, and I'd love to see what Pirinen has in mind for a larger battle system.
For now, though, Trench Crusade players have their first big box on the horizon, and the promise of more to come. This may be the biggest gamble in the history of trench crusades. Whether you play or not, more successful independent micro companies are always a good thing, so I hope this one pays off too.
