There’s a game I enjoy playing, a variation of the ol’ “if I were a king for a day,” where I pretend what I might actually do if I had a day at the reins of a company. After all, I gotta keep that MBA limbered up lest it atrophy, right, and the business side of gaming fascinates me almost as much as the historical side.
I’ve run this exercise a couple of times for Cubicle 7 Games as part of the Warhammer RPG Weekly column, with areas of focus ranging from structuring preview content communications to consumer expectation management. I know, I’m definitely fun at parties1.
When it comes to Warhammer, I’m always looking for officially-licensed merchandise to add to my collection, such in the Aeronautica shelf above (comprised of five different SKUs). I even have an occasional column, Black Library Bibliophiles, dedicated to the collection and display of Warhammer books.
So today, I’m taking that same approach to Trench Crusade. With the property still in its relative infancy, we only have a small amount of official accessory products available at present. I’ve already looked at the coins from Baron of Dice as well as Jared Blando’s amazing world map print. Now, let’s enter the land of imagination and look at some things I’d love to see exist!
One: Story and Game Magazine
Meet Mordschlag. A “sword-and-sorcery” magazine preparing for public release next year, the debut issue contains a number of short fiction pieces as well as a critical article on what genre writers of the present can learn from their peers of the past. Not only that, but it also has a bestiary of new monsters for use in the critical-darling Shadowdark game system.
It’s this combination of fiction and game content that most intrigues me about the model, because of how it appeals to different segments of the consumer base in a natural and organic way.
Asking for a Factory Fortress version of White Dwarf is a reach that well exceeds the grasp of the present, but why not a version of Mordschlag or Inferno!? The latter was the short-story-and-comic magazine launched in 1997 that served as the foundation of what’s become today’s Black Library, and one of the guys behind it was none other than FF’s current Head of Special Ops, Marc Gascoigne.
So if we have Mordschlag on the one side and White Dwarf on the other, one that splits the difference may be Shrapnel, the BattleTech quarterly by Catalyst Games. Shrapnel is doing all the right things that Inferno! did, serving as a scouting mechanism for new talent while developing new lore through recurring character stories (such as Bryan Young’s Fox Patrol) and serials.
What I like about Shrapnel’s model here is that it’s PDF with a print-on-demand option that’s handled by a third party. Factory Fortress doesn’t need to worry about guesstimating circulation, a prospect that’s especially daunting so early in the property’s life. Capital is always particularly dear at startup/ramp-up; the last thing they’d want to do is overshoot projections and have excess inventory taking up warehouse footage.
Trench Crusade is similarly in its early stages, but already with the labors of some top-tier writing talent (I reviewed the stories by Graham McNeill and Gav Thorpe here). A magazine launched with a mix of short fiction, lore content, and game scenarios could easily coexist alongside The Trench Wire (the game’s terrific digital bulletin co-helmed by Dave Taylor and Lyle Lowery) without cannibalizing or competing for content.
Two: Acrylic Displays
Speaking of Dave Taylor, just today he ran a miniatures painting profile spotlighting some wonderfully creative and colorful work (“It’s not ALL grimdark, you know!”). As more and more people get their hands on Trench Crusade miniatures and express their talent and passion through painting them, the more there will be an interest in finding ways to showcase and display them.
Enter Wicked Brick. I profiled their officially-licensed Warhammer acrylic displays here, and as shown in the above image a number of their products do indeed decorate the shelves of my Black Library Museum.
Wicked Brick’s display solutions generally come in several varieties. There are Limited Edition releases which tend to be character-specific, such as Abaddon the Despoiler’s there (there’s also a different, non-limited edition design). Then there are faction-based ones that aren’t tied to any particular named character.
This display is for the Nemesis Claw Kill Team, with the squad’s unique icon anchoring the background. With Trench Crusade’s faction symbols having wonderfully intricate and occult designs, these backgrounds could really make a warband pop.
Alternately, some offer background images designed to give your miniatures a sense of kinetic action. Imagine reskinning the background of this one for a more nautical theme to show off your Heretic Naval Raiders warband, for instance.
Wicked Brick products are print on demand, so again there’s little worry about a mismatch between supply and demand. And while we’re not at a place in the game- yet- where there are an abundance of named character models, this is a license that can certainly grow to accommodate.
Three: Wall Art
When it comes to hanging art off your walls, there are a couple of options to go. For Warhammer, you of course get A4-size art prints released through the retail outlets and in their deluxe edition products, any of which is just a picture frame away from adorning your walls.
But if you want something a little more striking, your best options for officially-sanctioned prints remain licensees Precision Printing Co Limited (who run WarhammerArt.com) and Displate. Displate brings a bit of a twist to the merchandise table, offering artwork on metallic plates than can easily be adhered to a wall through magnets. They also offer a range of exquisite Limited Editions that feature a much more detailed surface treatment, and I’ve profiled those before.
At present Mindworks has a small number of art prints available, while Displate offers a wide range of (unlicensed) Trench Crusade designs on its site, such as the one above- but with the caveat that they have all the quality control and sanction of music band-decorated mirrors or tapestries you can win at traveling carnival games of chance.
In other words, none.
Displate lets its ‘community creators’ upload images and make sales, so while you might never quite know if what you’re getting came from a human hand, a pirated image, or is AI slop, what you can be sure of is that the creative talents at Factory Fortress who created this world and brought it to life won’t see a nickel of it.
If you wonder why in all my content I take pains to distinguish officially-licensed merchandise, this is a bit of an ethical line for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I’ll be very excited to support product lines that are made in partnership with Factory Fortress (such as the Blando’s aforementioned map print)- rather than at their expense.
Four: Trinkets, Curios, and Jewelry
This far I’ve stuck to products that have a (relatively) easy entry to market due to their on-demand nature, but let’s shoot the moon a bit for this last one. I’m a big sucker for trinkets and curios, physical items that embody the imaginary world they’re crafted from. They go great in my museum as decorative accompaniments, and for Warhammer that means companies like Starforged, Merchoid, Koyo, and Fanattik.
The world of Trench Crusade is every bit as rife with possibility as Warhammer. From medals to reliquaries to talismans, it is a world rich in symbolism and iconography that lends itself well to physical recreation. To be fair, the occult layering and religious grounding of the setting present some real-world challenges that Warhammer’s futuristic setting more easily sidesteps. For instance, some imagery may be less appealing as wearable art once it leaves the context of the game world, and for goods manufactured in China there may be some cultural considerations that would need to be taken into account2.
As the game’s organized play support continues to grow to meet the moment, sooner or later there will likely be a conversation around physical prize support. Games Workshop has robust support here too, and these items inevitably find their way into the secondary market. Combine that with other metal goodies and you’ve got the makings of a nice physical accessory range for Trench Crusade.
I don’t know about you, but I’m very much looking forward to the day when I can build a Trench Crusade museum display, staging a Limited Edition novel alongside, say, a Prussian Stoßtruppen warband- led by Frau Hauptmann Frederica von Goltz3- encased in an official Wicked Brick. Perhaps a miniature metal tank-splitter sword lies in repose on the other side of the book, while my wall shows off a (licensed) Displate while I thumb through a printed-on-demand copy of the latest TC magazine.
To be clear, today’s feature was just a bit of educated wishcasting. I didn’t, for example, go in for some of the more advanced pages from the Warhammer playbook such as JOYTOY figures or Trench Crusade video games. After all, you have to walk before you can run.
But I’d love to hear what would catch your interest in terms of officially-licensed merch, too, What sort of things are you hoping to see in the days ahead?
But it’s been exciting to see some of these ideas coming to fruition recently, with the Cubicle 7’s addition of Alex Evans, former Editor of Wargamer, as their new Head of Marketing. In the short time he’s been in the role already, they’ve come up with a revamped communication strategy that I expect will go a long way to improving customer esteem.
And on a more pragmatic level, Starforged itself may not prove an opportune partner due to the adjacency Trench Crusade has to their own existing Warhammer license. Games Workshop might not relish the prospect of both lines sitting side by side on the same partner site- and Factory Fortress too may appreciate the avoidance of brand overlap. Then again, it also appears that Starforged has tagged a number of Warhammer products as “Trench Crusade” as well:
I have a strong personal preference for named characters in my displays, sort of like Legends in Magic: the Gathering. They just have that much more story and personality.