Trench Crusade

Submission 9,273

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About

Trench Crusade is an upcoming skirmish tabletop miniatures game set in an alternative universe in which a war between forces Heaven and Hell rages in the year 1914. Created by concept artists Mike Franchina and Tuomas Pirinen and in development since 2018, the game saw early playtest rules released in January 2024. In May 2024, the game garnered attention online for a controversy regarding a conflict on the Discord server for 28 Magazine (a left-leaning publication about tabletop games).

History

In 2018, concept artist Mike Franchina started worldbuilding and creating artwork for a grimdark universe that would later become Trench Crusade. The artist posted artworks of priest warriors and demonic forces opposing them to his ArtStation^[1] and Instagram^[2] accounts (examples shown below).

The artist was later joined by game designer Tuomas Pirinen and 3D sculptor James Sheriff.

On July 20th, 2022, the first Kickstarter^[3]^[4] campaign for the Trench Crusade miniatures was launched, gathering over 1,900 backers.

Trench Crusade is a skirmish-scale tabletop miniatures game that will plunge players deep into a horrifying alternate timeline. During the Crusades a heretical band of Templars dared defy the Almighty and, casting aside their sacred vows, unleashed the forces of Hell upon the Earth. Over 800 years later, in the Year of Our Lord 1914, this brutal, merciless war between the forces of Heaven and Hell rages on. This is not just a fight for survival, but a cataclysmic struggle that will decide the very fate of humanity's soul.

On January 2nd, 2024, the first edition of playtest rules for the game was released.^[5] As of May 16th, 2024, v1.3.2 was the latest edition of the ruleset.

May 2024 Discord Controversy

On May 12th, 2024, X^[6] user @AetiusRF wrote about the game, inviting Warhammer 40,000 fans to take a look at it, in a post that garnered over 1,700 reposts and 21,000 likes in four days (shown below).

The post was followed by a spike in interest in the game among users on X / Twitter, with multiple users joining the game's Discord server.

At that time, the game's community was largely centered on the Discord^[7] server of 28 Magazine, a left-leaning publication about miniature wargames. Moderators of the server proceeded to ban multiple new users,^[8]^[9] with screenshots of Discord conversations shared on X indicating that the moderators felt that banned users were a mismatch for the game's community due to their worldview and beliefs^[10]^[11]^[12] (examples shown below).

On May 15th, 2024, the 28 Magazine Discord server was put into lockdown.^[13]

On May 16th, 28 Discord moderator Alexander announced^[14] that a dedicated Discord server for Trench Crusade will be launched.

Fandom

Starting in 2020, multiple threads about Trench Crusade were made on 4chan's^[15]^[16] /tg/ board. On May 15th, the first general thread for the game was created on the board.^[17]

On May 14th, 2023, Redditor SkepticSentinel launched the /r/TrenchCrusade^[18] subreddit, which accumulated over 2,700 followers in one year. Here and on X / Twitter, multiple memes based on the game were shared by users (examples shown below).