[Trench Crusade] New skirmish game being designed by Tuomas Pirinen (KS closed US$3.3 million)

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**Iracundus**

With how their mods act on their Discord, banning people on the basis of flimsy and false accusations and treating denial of the action as admissions of guilt as well as banning anyone that chose to speak in defense of the accused, I think Trench Crusade deserves to fail. Insulting and abusing your potential customers is no way to run a business. I will definitely not fund this and have already successfully convinced a few players in my local gaming group to steer clear. Here's hoping it crashes and burns

**cole1114**

Iracundus wrote:
With how their mods act on their Discord, banning people on the basis of flimsy and false accusations and treating denial of the action as admitting to it, I think Trench Crusade deserves to fail. Insulting and abusing your potential customers is no way to run a business. I will definitely not fund this and have already successfully convinced a few players in my local gaming group to steer clear. Here's hoping it crashes and burns

Well, it looks like it's super successful. So it seems their strategy of immediately purging bad actors was actually the right one!

**Kid_Kyoto**

Gotta say I'm really enjoying this discussion

Informed posts about the pros and cons for their vendors, prices and business plan

This is what Dakka does best.

**Cyel**

They lost me at random charges.

**lord_blackfang**

All I've heard is they are quite ruthless at banning alt righters who come in whining about disrespect to religion, which sounds like the biggest pro so far tbh

**Sasorijap**

lord_blackfang wrote:
skrulnik wrote:

This screams that they do not really understand what they are getting into, or how complex that kind of ordering and picking will become. Even if minis are fulfilled by Only Games print farm, it's going to be hundreds, if not thousands of unique order pulls.

Exactly, they're all art, no business skill, trying to go with elite prices but corner cutting delivery. Digital only pledges are probably gonna be okay.

Couldn't have said it better my self. I wish they partnered with a bigger name like Warcradle, Para Bellum or Archon.

**Marshal Loss**

Love the premise and the models but a bit put off by the price to be honest. I don't 3D print (and don't want to get into it), and the reputation of Only-Games is making me question whether to buy in at all/just grab the book.

Hope it keeps doing well though

**Sunno**

Iv watched this with interest in the last year. It gained a lot of publicity when several wannabe edgelords "left" 40K and tried to get all over Trench Crusade because it "wasn't woke" and were promptly told to sling their hook by the community and their social media mod which gained them even more publicity.

Our locals are all in on the KS. The minis look amazing and there is real passion around the game. My question is what happens after the KS. One amazing KS does not a game make.

However other games have gone down this route (think Moonstone) and that is now available in retail stores.

Will be interesting to watch.

**beast_gts**

Sunno wrote:
My question is what happens after the KS. One amazing KS does not a game make.

There's talk about scaling it up - adding vehicles & bigger monsters, as well as spinning off a full TTRPG.

Remember that it started as a setting and the game rules came later.

**Theophony**

cole1114 wrote:
Iracundus wrote:
With how their mods act on their Discord, banning people on the basis of flimsy and false accusations and treating denial of the action as admitting to it, I think Trench Crusade deserves to fail. Insulting and abusing your potential customers is no way to run a business. I will definitely not fund this and have already successfully convinced a few players in my local gaming group to steer clear. Here's hoping it crashes and burns

Well, it looks like it's super successful. So it seems their strategy of immediately purging bad actors was actually the right one!

lord_blackfang wrote:All I've heard is they are quite ruthless at banning alt righters who come in whining about disrespect to religion, which sounds like the biggest pro so far tbh

I've got to say that I am actually happy about the moderation. They have a vision for the game and their universe and they are not going to let some random person derail that vision. The real world and this game universe are 2 distinct spaces that had a similar history that diverged long ago. People are being upset because their current real-life religion isn't being depicted as they see it now, they are not understanding that the game universe has different aspects that affected how the religions have changed because significant events didn't happen or happened completely different to "real life".

For example, in a world where Hitler may not have even survived past infancy, the way Europe developed would be astonishingly different to the way it is now. That would be a major change that events of the last 100 years would cause ripples into modern time. This game has major changes during the Crusades, empires which don't exist today are superpowers and superpowers today can be backwards empires or not exist at all. Some people don't see that change. They can play it how they want in their homes, but they are wanting it changed in the actual lore.

**Cyel**

Religious people reacting like that actually makes the setting a bit more believable, not less

**beast_gts**

It's passed 1 million dollars...

Thank you.

So there you have it folks, you hit this campaign so hard you quite literally jumped our development schedule forward by over a year. I hope you’re happy. We sure are.

On behalf of Tuomas, James and Mike, I want to thank each and every one of you who have supported Trench Crusade, as well as all of those still to come in the twelve days we still have to go. The goal was to make the kind of wargame we wanted to see and make it as amazing as possible and thanks to you all, this is going to happen!

A big shoutout to our Discord community. You guys are GOATs and your support kept us going through development and even now are keeping my sanity intact during these unprecedented events. This goes doubly so for all our Apostles, Missionaries and Wardens - we could never have done this without you.

Which brings me on to my next point.

Folks, we need to talk about Trench Crusade…

I know that sounds dramatic, but hear me out. I’m going off script here.

We’ve shot so far past our goal that Trench Crusade COULD become so much more than both us and you expected.

First of all, regarding comments I’ve seen both here and on other sites, I feel like there have been certain expectations (some I may qualify as unfair) placed on us because of this success. I think it would be good to really lay out who we are, what we set out to do and why we made the choices we did. This isn’t to defend ourselves, we absolutely stand by our choices, but more to help reassure some of you.

From this, we can talk about the future of Trench Crusade and stretch goals. I’ll say it now: We won’t be posting any more stretch goals for now. This level of success is now in the territory of serious money. Trench Crusade was meant to be a fun side project where 3 guys made a cool game alongside other creatives and, with a bit of luck, raised enough cash to keep doing it casually alongside their day jobs.

The level of support you’ve shown is the kind that changes lives. On the horizon is a world where we can not only continue to pay artists and creators every single cent they deserve for their hard work and creativity, but also one where we can have people working on Trench Crusade full time. Seasonal rules, narrative play, solo rules, matched play and of course, more models… it’s all possible. We’re not there yet as this is an incredibly expensive endeavor and a lot of responsibility. You can’t go messing around with people’s careers and lives. It needs to be done carefully, measuredly and with long term sustainability in mind.

These are the sort of questions that the TC crew has in front of them. We need to have a long discussion about where we will go next with the game as, up until now, these matters were relegated to the realm of fantasy. Based on what is decided we may have more Stretch Goals. But be warned, they will be very high to reflect the level of investment they represent.

I’m not yet sure how we’re going to handle this conversation with you all yet. A big article would be easiest but I don’t think that’s as personal a discussion as this should be. Maybe a video or a livestream. We shall see.

This update is already VERY long so I’m going to stop here for now.

Thank you all once again for your support, patience and understanding.

**Alpharius**

And NOT pumping out more stretch goals is a good sign too - even if it somewhat stifles campaign growth going forward, and they have to 'settle' for only $1M!

**Fayric**

You know the topic has class when no one dare post a "one million dollars" meme.

Not personally interrested in the game, but really nice to see the support they get.

**ScarletRose**

Alpharius wrote:
And NOT pumping out more stretch goals is a good sign too - even if it somewhat stifles campaign growth going forward, and they have to 'settle' for only $1M!

Yeah, the first step in a kickstarter failing is generally over promising on the stretch goals. Then the company realizes they can't make all the stuff and it just spirals from there.

I'm glad they're looking at this as a game that will be around in the long term, that's definitely the right approach.

**lord_blackfang**

Good to see they have some sense

The money we're talking about here tho, would easily fund 6 hard plastic faction sprues, that would probably help more than hiring a guy to write GW style season rules

**Monkeysloth**

Sure they could afford plastics now but the delay to switch would be huge. Not only would they need to resculpt any models for the material -- they might not have anyone with experience making HIPS kits let alone multipart ones so they'd need to find someone and get on their schedule. Then you've also got the schedule the factory which is usually required a year before you needed it and you'd need to wait until the sculptor(s) you hire get close to being done. The ex-GW guy modiphius has can only sculpt 4-5 multipart kits a year and he's full time as an example of what to expect time wise for that.

Easily could be 2 years to get them delivered. For a new game it's best to actually deliver and get people playing it before investing in something that you need to move thousands of units to make back said investment.

**Kid_Kyoto**

Well said!

**kodos**

2 years fro a new game from Kickstarter, as in the platform to found the future work and not pay for the previous one, to release isn't that long (specially if the company is planning for the game to be still around after 2 years, this isn't GW were after 3 years the game gets replaced with something new)
in addition there are now more companies available doing HIPS now so it is much easier than it used to be (specially as they already have the multi part renders)
and as there are 3D prints anyway it is not like there is nothing from end of KS to that at all

there need to be physical models at one point, and pure 3D printed isn't suitable for the mass market to get models on the shelf
so HIPS is the next logical step and depending on how they handle the money from the KS (any physical product can still mess up the margin and there is less left to invest than expected)

**lord_blackfang**

Monkeysloth wrote:

Easily could be 2 years to get them delivered.

Gonna be sooner than an already struggling print farm hand picking 5000 individualized orders

Anyone know why the downgrade from previous KS's Siocast to 3d prints?

**beast_gts**

lord_blackfang wrote:
Anyone know why the downgrade from previous KS's Siocast to 3d prints?

SioCast (the company) are a nightmare to deal with -

Spoiler:

(From their last KS)

**lord_blackfang**

Hm, that is something I've been saying would start happening. Slaving your business to a proprietary resource is an awful idea.

**kodos**

so also the other KS models were done by 3rd party service and those had problems getting enough raw material for the models because their supplier had problems to get enough raw material to make that material

that is less of SioCast being a nightmare but rather the usual supply chain issues if there is just one supplier for the proprietary materials

and as almost every smaller company now is replacing their metal models with something different, with only few risking to go the route of developing their own resin casting process, my guess is that SioCast simply faces higher demand than expected

yet the same problem can happen with 3D printing if the demand of a certain grade quality is higher than expected because of a larger order of models
and not like these resins are all equal/identical so replacing them to fulfil orders can lead to quality issues instead of delays

but we will see of this works out better or not

**parakuribo**

Spoiler:

I'm just going to say two things here:

1. The game has a good chance of not selling, I'll concede to that. What you said will not be any reason.

2. The server banned them for the EXACT same reason why GW had to stop doing Regimental Standard, as well as almost doing a kids Warhammer singalong audiobook where David Tennant narrates how Guilliman and Archaon do a musical number with the entire cast of the Jackson Middle-Earth films about WHY extremism is bad(hint: in GW's case, it had to do with what happened at a European gameshop and an alt-right gamer).

I swear I am about go mad with this alt-right Occam's Razor nonsense.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Like to admit, it's pretty cool. Designs are very top notch.

Still a shame the models may end up as painting centerpieces though.

**lord_blackfang**

Iracundus wrote:
With how their mods act on their Discord, banning people on the basis of flimsy and false accusations and treating denial of the action as admissions of guilt as well as banning anyone that chose to speak in defense of the accused, I think Trench Crusade deserves to fail. Insulting and abusing your potential customers is no way to run a business. I will definitely not fund this and have already successfully convinced a few players in my local gaming group to steer clear. Here's hoping it crashes and burns

Cancel culture at its finest!

**catbarf**

lord_blackfang wrote:The money we're talking about here tho, would easily fund 6 hard plastic faction sprues, that would probably help more than hiring a guy to write GW style season rules

There are some pretty compelling reasons for a project like this not to go the route of plastics, though. Molds are a significant financial investment, it takes months to go from design to production, plastics are much more limiting about geometry than resin prints, and maybe most importantly the design pipeline for multipart plastics is a lot more complicated than for resin prints, where you can go straight from digital modeling software to a slicer and have a prototype out within hours.

From a consumer perspective, I like that prints almost always have fewer sub-assemblies, and support nubs are less visible and easier to mitigate than mold lines or seams between parts. Privateer Press had issues with their switch to printed models, but they're learning, and going forwards I think we're going to see more companies use 3D printing as their production method and skip resin casts or plastic sprues altogether.

Plastic-vs-prints aside, it's bizarre how some posts in this thread are talking like the game is for 3D printer enthusiasts only. They're offering files for those with printers, physical prints for those without, a permissive license for third parties to design minis for the game, and carte blanche to players to kitbash their own models. It's not a mass battle game, it's a skirmish game of 5-10 models a side; anyone who doesn't have a printer and doesn't want to buy the 'official' models can kitbash 40K, AOS, and historical parts and have a warband knocked out in an afternoon.

**kodos**

Since when do people need the official allowance of someone else to kitbash models if they don't like the originals?

Point is, physical models are hard to get if you are not a printer, stores won't stock it unless they also have a printing service and "just use something else" makes it a rules only game

**Pacific**

With some of the names involved in this (loved Tuomas's work in Mordheim and WHFB!) and some super interesting/grizzly miniature concepts, think this one is definitely worth a punt.

I can't remember the last time I saw such a buzz on social media about a new game & miniature line - it's been building over the last 6-12 months, a lot of GW-tertiary bloggers and painters posting about it and big interest - this is why it has hit the million mark so quickly I think. Good to see they are not trying to over-stretch in terms of deliverables & think there are enough industry regulars here to be able to deliver it.

**beast_gts**

kodos wrote:
Since when do people need the official allowance of someone else to kitbash models if they don't like the originals?

There are still FLGS's that won't let you use 3D printed models and/or things they can't stock themselves. There's one of them local-ish to me and there's some sulking on their (unofficial) Discord about how/if they can play Trench Crusade.

**Pacific**

I think that is a minority though? I have never, ever had that problem in any FLGS I have played in (and have lived in various spots around the country over the past 20 years).

Unless someone is absolutely taking the piss and not contributing anything to the store they are playing in (even then there is usually some sort of membership/table hire charge, they need to buy paints etc.)

Another big differentiation is at least in the UK a lot of gaming is still club-based, which would generally have very limited restrictions.