The first boxed Trench Crusade narrative campaign is coming soon from Factory Fortress Inc. - Trench Crusade: The Carcass Front! The boxed set includes everything two players need to enter the hellish landscape of the alternate timeline of Trench Crusade. Complete with miniatures, dice, tokens, rules, and a gorgeous campaign book, there has been no better time to jump into Trench Crusade than right now.
Factory Fortress, Inc. provided GamingTrend editors Alec Kozak and Ronn Orsua with a review copy of the box. Let’s open up the Gates of Hell and see what evil we can unleash!
Trench Crusade: The Carcass Front Unboxing Video
If you haven’t already, you can check out GamingTrend’s unboxing video where Randy dives into the contents on our new TableTop YouTube channel!
What is Trench Crusade?
Trench Crusade is a skirmish-scale tabletop miniatures game set in a horrifying alternate timeline of World War 1. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have fallen to demonic forces after demons were set loose during the First Crusade. The crusades have continued, and the landscape is devastated by a prolonged, trench-based war. Created by a collaboration of horror artist Mike Franchina, sculptor James Sherriff, and former Games Workshop designer Tuomas Pirinen, Trench Crusade is a miniatures-agnostic combat game that allows, and even encourages, players to use miniatures from their favorite 28mm-32mm scale miniature games (Like Warhammer, Warmachine, Bolt Action, or any other .stl file miniatures you find). The game itself uses a clever success and failure system using d6 dice, so no proprietary dice are needed.
Unboxing The Carcass Front
This box comes with a lot of content. While it is marketed for a 2-player experience, the box actually includes content for up to 8 players to play through the campaign, so your friends with models and warbands can join in on the carnage, too!
Beginning with .stl files and slowly introducing more ways to buy the official models, Trench Crusade has been leaning more into making their official models more mainstream. The Carcass Front has full plastic sprues, produced by Archon Studios, which are part of the latest move to incorporate more plastic. Last year, Factory Fortress announced they were not going to make new models in .stl format (3d printing) and would instead be moving to plastic models. You can still buy the .stl files of the original models, but these two new warbands, The Procession of the Sacred Affliction and the Heretic Naval Raiders, are only available in plastic in this box.
Box Contents
The box itself isn’t terribly big, but it comes with a ton of content, including the following:
- The Carcass Front Campaign Book (complete with rules for the campaign, Leviathan scenario, and SO MUCH LORE!)
- Two Complete Warbands: The Procession of the Sacred Affliction (9 models) and the Heretic Naval Raiders (7 models)
- Beach Landing theme scatter terrain
- Campaign Cards (more on those later)
- Campaign Tracker Sheet pad
- Introductory Scenario Sheet
- Introductory Warband cards (for the introductory scenario)
- Rules Reference Sheet
- A Poster (of the campaign board, and the Leviathan on the other side)
- Assembly Guide with QR code.
- Dice (d6) - 6 black 16mm dice, 8 blood red 12mm dice, and 1 white 12mm die.
- Rulers, Markers, and Tokens, including blood markers, blessing markers, and tokens for the campaign.
Incredible detail in design - the inside front shows a clean map, whereas the inside back shows a post-campaign map, complete with coffee stains, game notes, and doodles.
A small but important note is that the sprues were packaged on top of a throw-away cardboard divider, protecting the paper and books underneath. Unsurprisingly, the sprues are loaded with pointy parts, which would easily dig into any book. This packaging choice was really smart and prevented a lot of aggravation.
The Introductory Game & Carcass Front Warbands
In the box set, there are two sheets; one is the Quickstart Rules Reference and the other is the Introductory Scenario. For those players who haven’t played, or haven’t played in a minute, the Quickstart Rules sheet is a great way to refamiliarize yourself with the rules, including phases, actions, attacking, etc.
The Introductory Scenario is a great way for new players to play a quick game and for veteran players to become acquainted with the new Warbands. The card outlines a simple, 4-Turn scenario with each player using a preconstructed Warband with three models. This allows players to get a nice sampling of weapons, movement, attacks, and keywords without having to dive too deep into the warband building.
Remember! The full rules are free to download.
The Campaign & Cards
There are two versions of a campaign within this box. The larger campaign utilizes the Carcass Front map and is played over a series of 4-12 games for 2-8 players. It is mentioned that you can have more than 8 players in this campaign, but you will need more copies of the Vision Cards (Campaign Cards).
There are 16 of these cards. Each player gets 2 at the start of the campaign and chooses one, keeping it secret. The card has an objective for the player that, upon completion, gives them their victory conditions for the campaign. Each campaign card is different, so not everyone is trying to achieve the same goal.
The named campaign is a 2-player narrative called “The Path to Leviathan.” This is a 5-mission campaign that will pit the two players against each other with opposing tasks: one to unleash the Leviathan upon the world under the banner of Hell, while the other is “Summoning and then slaying Leviathan in order to feast righteously on its flesh, turn its skin into capes and give glory to God.” (seriously, how metal is that?)
Building the Trench Crusade Models
Ronn and Alec took the Sacred Affliction and Naval Raiders, respectively, to build (and later to paint). If you haven’t built miniatures before, or have only built a few, we recommend checking out our handy-dandy guide for cleaning, clipping, and gluing your models. These sprues are full of release agent, so we highly recommend washing the plastics before applying your glue for the best adhesion.
Additionally, we also strongly encourage you to dry-fit your models before adding glue, so that you know where the parts are supposed to go and how they fit together.
Alec Kozak
The Procession of the Sacred Affliction
Ronn: Overall, these models were a joy to put together, but there were a few spots that were more difficult than expected.
There are a few spots on these models were the connection points between two pieces are very well hidden, but there are other connection points where it felt that it was right out there in the open. Above is the picture of the hat for the Lazarist Castigator as an example of both ideas. The connection is very well done at the tassels, but across the top of the hat it is very pronounced, so you'll need to be comfortable using some sprue goo and sanding or using some extra thin cement glue to fuse it together.
A couple of things with this Punt Gun (I'm assuming that's what it is). I don't know the ins and outs of designing a model to be put on a sprue, but that little extra piece at the end of the barrel seems like an odd choice. For some inexperienced builders this could be confusing for them. Also of note, but not critical, is that without some kit-bashing skill and know-how, you cannot fit the Punt Gun and the fancy wide brim hat together.
Something I noticed while building The Procession of the Sacred Affliction, and I think holds true for both warbands, is that the builds are presented in the instructions as very black or white; option A or B. In reality, you can mix-and-match quite a few options, but there are some physical restrictions for certain weapon and gear combinations that simply won't work. I wish this was better explained within the instructions; mark a point where you can use options A, B, or C at that assembly point. Or, if it's a point of no return, just make it easier to see all the options a builder has available to them.
With the instructions to build Leper Pilgrim #3, it illustrates to fully build the upper body before you attach it to the lower assembly. However, after I got it put together, the body would not slide on without breaking apart the upper half. So I had to disassemble the torso and build it around the legs. A great example of why you should dry fit everything before you glue.
One of my favorite designs in the Sacred Affliction — asking the holy statue to hold your Battlekit
Last on my minor list of complaints is that within the instructions for Leper Pilgrim #5 was this a diagram for what was being used as the backpack. It just struck me as odd to not show a small side panel or something similar to how the diagram shows where it goes to show what the front of the backpack looks like. This would have made it 1000 times easier to find on the sprue. It's such a slick looking pack, so why not show it off as much as you can!?
Heretic Naval Raiders
There was one small piece that escaped from the sprue and was loose in the box.
Alec: Having grown up with watching the original 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea numerous times on VHS, I was immediately drawn to the Heretic Naval Raider aesthetic. I also feel like I can have a lot of fun with the basing for these pieces when I get around to painting them. That being said, I was not anticipating their assembly being so difficult.
The Drowned Chorister was by far the most difficult to assemble, with just the body and head being six pieces
The Drowned Chorister and Anointed Heretic Raider were very difficult, and kind of annoying, to assembly, even for a veteran model builder. The Drowned Chorister felt overbuilt/overengineered with too many small pieces needing perfect alignment to fit together properly in the end. Because of this, the shark has a very obvious mold/gap line on its side. A combination of numerous pieces and the order in which they should be assembled could create a challenge for builders, regardless of skill. Considering these figures are likely going to see more table time, it's important to go slow and take time to assemble so that you're happy with the end result.
Also of note was that some models had no slots for arms/legs, but others did. There are Option A & B choices for how you build your models, so it makes sense to have the model's parts be a little more universal, but I would have assumed the parts could have been engineered to allow that and still have slotted parts.
Be Prepared to fill gaps and smooth mold lines! While some of the models were clever in their design, causing assembly points and mold lines to be hidden, some were just incredibly obvious on the model. It seemed like there was a lot of inconsistency in the design choices. I am not sure if that had to do with engineering or sprue production or what.
Heretic Captain Gaps - Before & After
Anointed Heretic Raider Gaps - Before & After
Drowned Chorister Gaps - Before & After
Of course, all of the models look fantastic once they were assembled, but building them felt like it was sort of a boxing match.
Sprue Bits for the Sprue God!
Carcass Front Scatter Terrain
Easily the most straightforward build for the box, the scatter terrain went together quickly. There are noticeable mold lines running longitudinally on the mines, so I do recommend using gap filler on that.
Carcass Front Tokens
The box comes with a sprue of plastic tokens, which include rulers, blood markers (?), and some campaign markers (?). One thing we did notice is that this sprue was quite warped, affecting the ruler on there. This, fortunately, is an easy fix using the boiling water technique. These could be painted, but it's not necessary.
One thing we found odd was that the rulebook didn't have any explicit text or accompanying images to explain what the different tokens were for. Many game elements can be marked with a die or physically turning the model, so perhaps these tokens are meant to replace those. Additionally, some of these tokens look like they're used for campaign tracking. The numbers might be for marking/identifying duplicate units, too. Regardless, it's not obvious what the tokens are for.
Carcass Front Rulebook Typo
Rulebook (left) and PDF (right) show different Melee stats.
As Ronn was going through the list building rules (one of his favorite pasttimes) there was a typo that he found. In the rules for The Procession of the Sacred Affliction, there are the stats for the Anchorite Shrine, including the Melee stat (as shown above). The stat as printed in the rulebook is -3 DICE, but according to the base rules for the Trench Pilgrims (from the downloadable PDF), the Shrine is supposed to have a Melee stat of +2 DICE. Ronn reached out to Factory Fortress to confirm if this stat is correct, and we were told that it is a known typo and is, in fact, supposed to be +2Dice. It disappointing that there is a stat mistake within the physical book. There may be more, so we're expecting to see an FAQ/errata document available soon.
Initial Impressions
The Procession of the Sacred Affliction and Heretic Naval Raiders built and ready for painting
For $130 USD, the box offers a lot of hobby and game hours. The box comes with a lot of amazing, quality content, with a smattering of absolutely gorgeous grimdark art. For what is effectively $65 a player, this box gets you everything you need to play 17 curated games - 12 campaign missions and 5 scenarios. Of course, you can replay the campaign and scenarios infinitely, as well as play just a standard skirmish game, so there is really a lot of mileage to get out of the box in terms of game time.
As a cost comparison, a plastic warband sprue is $50 (for 8 models), and the hardback rulebook is $60, so that’s $160. So even though $130 has a slight sticker shock, it’s actually an incredible deal if you factor in all of the additional content.
The campaign itself being able to host up to 8 players really needs to be spotlighted here. Effectively, this box allows 6 other friends (or enemies) to partake in the Carcass Front campaign with their own warbands. Because this game is miniature agnostic, it allows for a very easy entry into the game and campaign, so your local miniature game community at your LGS really won’t have any good excuse not to play.
The miniatures, once built, are absolutely gorgeous. However, for two veteran miniature builders/painters, some of these were definitely a challenge. If you are new to miniature building, we highly recommend going slow and having patience while building. There were some interesting engineering choices made. Many models could cleverly hide mold/seam lines, while others were very prominent. Some models felt incredibly over-engineered, which created assembly challenges. As noted earlier, the Heretic Naval Raiders had some models with 4-5 pieces just for the body. Not all models had slotted parts (to hold the arms or legs in place), and that required parts to be aligned properly, or else there would be gaps later in the assembly. Additionally, the ordering for assembly on some of the models felt off; both of us built the models in a slightly different order to capitalize on better alignment or sturdiness, for a player coming from Warhammer or Marvel: Crisis Protocol, that can be a system shock for sure.
Looking closer at the sprues, here are some things that were observed. The sprues can be difficult to navigate, given their organic layout, and, as you go through the instruction book, you hop from sprue to sprue. There are definitely some questionable seam/mold lines, with how the parts were implemented onto the sprue. This also means that some of the gates connecting to the part were hard to get to and/or had additional cleanup after removal.
Choosing which model to build is also not intuitive. Even though the game is not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) when it comes to weapons on the models, you get two build options per model, each with different weapons and aesthetics. If someone is trying to match the model with the loadout, there’s nothing in the rulebook to indicate what weapon is what, specific to that unit. A majority of the models can have different components, and the instructions make it seem like you can only have Option A or Option B, but you can definitely use whatever head or weapon that fits on the piece.
It does beg the question of: “Who is This Box For?” Both of us have painted and played Trench Crusade before, so this feels like an expansion for veterans and those looking to have a more guided, narrative campaign experience. However, the building experience is really meant for players/painters who have built models before. For new players, this is a wonderful entry to the game; it gives you a lot of content and replayability, and so it would be safe to say that the box is really meant for both.
Overall, this box is absolutely worth it. There are some hiccups and minor comments, but overall, this feels like there is a new, solid foundation for the game. Going through the book, there is a ton of lore and rules to supplement the main game. It is a fantastic source of inspiration and gives you a lot of locations and new characters to help feed the creative creature lurking in the dark crevices of our hobby brains. Although we haven’t read it from cover to cover, this seems to be a well-formatted book. It goes from where you are in the universe and timeline, what's happening and why, to what warband you're taking into that universe, and concludes with what you're fighting over through the scenarios and story. It honestly makes it an easy book to get sucked into.
Trench Crusade Carcass Front Campaign Box
Excellent
A phenomenal box for new and veteran Trench Crusade players alike, offering a solid foundation to cultivate a local playgroup, complete with a gloriously grimdark rulebook, stunningly detailed, hard-plastic models, and enough content to keep you fighting in the eternal war for No Man’s Land.
Pros
- Great introduction for new players
- A box made to support a local gaming community
- Rulebook with the grimdarkiest of lore
- Two narrative campaigns, with all the fixins!
- Beautiful miniatures
- Tons of replayability
Cons
- Some of the models can be tricky/frustrating to assemble, especially for new players.
This review is based on an early copy provided by the publisher. Trench Crusade Carcass Front Campaign Box comes out on August 31, 2026.
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