Trench Crusade Weekly: Grand Alliances

What recent partnerships portend for the long-term health of Trench Crusade

It was almost a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it week of news for Trench Crusade, overshadowed as things were by the second round of its first-ever worldwide campaign, Operation Leviathan. But there were two news stories in particular that stood out to me this week as savvy moves that hint at the game’s ambition to build something enduring.

Since Trench Crusade splashed on the scene with its highly successful Kickstarter campaign in 2024, much of the focus has been on those elements that made it so attractive in the first place. Obviously there was the heady creative fusion of Mike Franchina’s visual palette and Tuomas Pirinen’s game design, which gave the initial push that resulted in USD $3.3m in funding from over 20,000 backers. That’s certainly impressive.

But funding a Kickstarter is only the first hurdle to clear, and the rogue’s gallery of games like Robotech Tactics, Myth, and GKR: Heavy Hitters serves as a cautionary tale of how short-term success can easily end in long-term failure. For this reason, I’ve been particularly intrigued at the business-side decisions that Trench Crusade has been navigating as it looks to build a solid foundation to build upon for the years ahead.

The decision earlier this year to hire Marc Gascoigne, for instance, had me really sit up and take notice. Gascoigne, alongside Rick Priestley and Andy Jones, helped build Warhammer’s Black Library, the most successful in-house, vertically integrated publishing arm for IP tie-in fiction¹. In 2019, Gascoigne would look to run the playbook back with Aconyte Books, the publishing arm of Asmodee, and would serve there for five years overseeing properties like Arkham Horror and Legend of the Five Rings².

With several Black Library veterans now writing lore and story for Trench Crusade, I’ll be very excited to see what Gascoigne helps to nurture.

That brings us to a couple moves that were announced this week that also pinged on my business-objective radar.

The Launch of Crusade Se7ens

First, Factory Fortress has teamed up with The Army Painter, one of the top three players in the hobby miniature painting space, to bring a Trench Crusade-branded line of paints to market. Launched under the name Crusade Se7ens, these boxes will feature seven paint colors tailored to one of the game’s factions, with the Free State of Prussia kicking things off.

This is one of those deals that has obvious value to both sides of the partnership beyond merely the pecuniary. For Trench Crusade, these products will help reinforce a standardized aesthetic identity of its factions while offering convenience to the consumer by putting it all in one convenient box. Not only that, but it gets their brand into the painting space without taking on the massive infrastructure and capital expenditures needed to offer their own line of paints.

Finally, while for the moment it appears that these are offered as online-only products, it’s not hard to see a point in time arrive where they might be carried in brick-and-mortal game stores, serving as additional points of impression on consumers like little, miniature billboards.

For The Army Painter, this is a clever way to repackage existing product and tap into a new market opportunity. These aren’t brand-new shades, but rather collections of products that have already been released as part of their John Blanche Masterclass and Historical paint lines. And by partnering with one of the hotter wargaming properties of the moment, it allows The Army Painter to benefit from some of the excitement and publicity currently surrounding the game.

Finally, this gives The Army Painter a leg up in the painting community, with the partnership extending into community events like The Arena Challenge (announced at AdeptiCon earlier this year). And with these now the official color schemes for the various factions, community content such as painting guides, tutorials, and battle reports also serve as a passive advertisement for the company.

The Partnership with Miniaturama

This deal is another one that reveals some interesting strategy at work in the meeting rooms of Factory Fortress. On the face of it, it seems fairly straightforward, right? “Okay, so Trench Crusade will be available in Spanish.” But there’s a couple of other things going on under the hood.

Miniaturama Publishing is an experienced player in the wargaming space, with previous work for Warlord Games and Studio Tomahawk. Not only that, but it’s more than just a translation/localization company, being instead a full-service publishing firm that has its own well-established logistical network. That means that Factory Fortress isn’t just sending off a PDF of its material in English and getting it returned in Spanish.

Rather, Miniaturama is not only translating, but handling the publishing and distribution side of things as well. Factory Fortress gains easy access to the massive Spanish-speaking market without having to juggle the complexities of freight and localized printing halfway across the world.

Latin America has long been an underserved market, and this gives Trench Crusade the opportunity to get established in it while it’s still in its relatively nascent stage. It’s also worth noting that Spain itself is a sophisticated player in the wargaming hobby, being home to Infinity’s publisher Corvus Belli. Factory Fortess will be well-equipped to compete directly in their backyard.

So in short, these two developments this week might not be as sexy as a new lore drop or the latest updates in Operation Leviathan. But those wanting to read the tea leaves for signs of the game’s long-term health may well find this in hindsight to be a significant week indeed.

ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Trench Crusade content!

Trench Crusade Official

• The latest official lore drop is a feature on Blessed Bartolomeo, the Martyr of Leviathan. It’s written by Graham McNeill and illustrated by Mike Franchina!

• Each Friday during the worldwide campaign, the Trench Wire will be bringing reports from Decisive Battles from games all over the world. This week’s included conflicts from Peru to Sweden!

• Results from Operation Leviathan are also being reported by Andy Chambers and Sammie Dae. The latest dispatch saw the Faithful continue to push back against the Fallen, but the Fallen continue to hold their own giving only little ground. The games held in Central and South America (Leviathan Cove Landing) proved the most disastrous, with the Fallen making up 60% of the casualties. Most other tilts were much more close-run affairs.

• A new feature, Mentioned in Dispatches, kicked off Monday and will run every week throughout the duration of Operation Leviathan. Curated by Peter Hairston, MiD will bring you some of the most striking Trench Crusade miniatures, terrain, and tables that have been shared across social media.

• Don’t forget, the game’s first-ever worldwide campaign Operation Leviathan will run until 19 October, and will leave its mark on the world forever. Make sure to get your results in!

Wargame Content Sites

• Tabletop Battles has been running a series focusing on specific warbands one at a time, and this week it was The Red Brigade’s turn to shine!

Community Content

• Trench Crusade podcast Saints & Sevens was back this week, looking at more developments around the release of the Carcass Front set!

• For more audible content, The Pilgrimage Podcast devoted a ‘mailbag roundup’ episode to all sorts of Trench Crusade questions they’d been asked in Discord, as well as taking a look at Four Days Dead by Josh Reynolds!

• What’s that, you say? You want even more podcast content? Fair enough, make sure to check out the Trench Scribe Podcast this week for a discussion on playing Trench Ghosts!

• Now, if you’d rather a more visual treat, scannerbarkly posted a video this week diving into the lore around the Eternal Massacre at Baghras Fortress, and another about Blessed Bartolomeo!

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming physical releases from Trench Crusade based on the available preorder information we have.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, with new or updated info presented in boldface.

• Trench Crusade Rulebook (hardcover, 11/30)

That’s it for this week, see you again in seven days’ time!

1. While it’s true that properties like Star Wars and Star Trek vastly eclipse what Warhammer’s managed to do, this is through licensing with major publishing houses- an important distinction.

2. I talked at greater length about Aconyte in my Tabletop Battles review of Poison River, by Josh Reynolds.