A Deep Dive into the Carcass Front

by Brook Close

New Gameplay Options in the Carcass Front

The Carcass Front Box is coming soon, and within its humble cardstock cage writhes a glut of new gameplay content worthy of the ever–hungry Leviathan itself. Today, I bring you an overview of some of this new content, handily divided into sections depending on whether you are new or Crusade-Curious (™) or an experienced, EnTrenched (™™™) player of Trench Crusade. Many thanks to Marketing for definitely approving this very official and very serious nomenclature convention – I’ll e-mail over the invoice for all of those Trademarks.

Introductory Content for New Players

The Carcass Front Box offers the most accessible welcome into the Trench Crusade hobby thus far. Not only does it contain two full 700 ducat starter warbands, each boasting two different sample Warband Lists, but it also contains a number of resources explicitly designed for people who may also be new to wargaming in general.

Notably, we include a handful of handout sheets, including:

• A Quickstart Rules Reference Sheet.
• Sheets for two bespoke Intro Warbands of 3 models each – with slightly truncated rules for ease of play. 
• A custom, simplified scenario sheet designed to be used with the Intro Warbands and the terrain in the Carcass Front Box.
• Dice of different colours, including a number of red D6 to represent BLOOD MARKERS, and even a special white D6 to represent the BLESSING MARKERS available to the Stigmatic Nun.
• Measuring tools and tokens! We included a red plastic sprue with two small Trench Crusade measuring rulers, and a bunch of tokens to help you remember what models have Activated, which models are Down, which models have used their TOUGH Keyword, and even some numbered tokens to denote which Fireteam your models are in.

Tokens and miniatures shown were painted by Loïc Muzy. Miniatures and tokens supplied unpainted.

New Content for Existing Players

Whilst there is an abundance of content designed to make this a great on-ramp for new players of Trench Crusade, the ancient sea-serpent’s trove of new gameplay content both expands the existing options for players and also offers brand new ways to play Trench Crusade. We can break this down to general content, and Carcass Front-specific content. As for the general content, you can expect to see:

• New Patron options for the two protagonists of the Carcass Front narrative: Blessed Bartolomeo and War Priest Charon, available to all Faithful and Fallen Warbands respectively, as well as a bonus Patron for Iron Sultanate Warbands in the shape of the House of Wisdom.
• Full Warband Lists for the Procession of the Sacred Affliction and the Heretic Naval Raiders: These Warband Variants have been promoted to full Warband Lists, and have had new pieces of Battlekit added, some tweaks to some existing abilities, and each have two new Warband Variants of their own. More on those in a separate article!
• Rules for Levant Hedgehog and Naval Mine terrain pieces.
• Five brand new scenarios, based on some of the most important and storied areas of the Carcass Front.

Carcass Front Specific Content for Everyone!

For those looking forward to diving into the Carcass Front specific game content (no lore spoilers here!), the Carcass Front Box offers no less than two brand new ways to play Trench Crusade; the Path to Leviathan narrative campaign, and the Carcass Front campaign system.

The Path to Leviathan narrative campaign system was written so that it could provide a simple, accessible way for two players to string the five new scenarios together to tell the story of the raising of Leviathan – the beating heart of the story of the Carcass Front. We also included guidelines to include this string of scenarios in either a regular Trench Crusade Campaign, or the Carcass Front campaign!

The Carcass Front campaign system is a new, map based campaign system for 2-8 players, spanning either 4, 8 or 12 games. This system revises the campaign rules present in the rulebook, adding secret, campaign wide objectives for each player, rules for developing and building a base for your Warband, as well as adding a number of other ways to gain Campaign Victory Points to help you win the campaign as a whole. The most important new mechanic is that of the humble, suitably abstract Resource, which is gained by fighting in particular Zones on the map. Resources fall into four broad categories: Favour, Relics, Supplies, & Territories.

Gaining Resources will let you roll on their bespoke Exploration Tables, build (and upgrade!) Camp Buildings, and get you all important Campaign Victory Points. Will you build towards a specific Resource? Or will you diversify across many? Perhaps that secret objective I mentioned earlier – the Patron Vision cards, will nudge you in a particular direction… 

And there you have it! A look at some of the things you can expect when the Carcass Front arrives at your door. Remember that if you were a backer of the Kickstarter, you will get the digital assets for all of the Carcass Front material too, as well as some other rather exciting secrets that we think will blow your minds…

The time draws nigh, and Leviathan must be raised. The question is, what will your Warband do when it happens? 

Brook Close

Brook is a full time game designer at Factory Fortress and a lifelong wargamer. After years of freelancing in the gaming world, Brook joined the company in late 2025, and he has been Extremely Normal about the idea of working with the industry legends who shaped his childhood. When he’s not doing abominable things to miniatures, he spends probably a bit too much time reading books on esoterica. He is, however, very happy that he can now say “it’s for work” and it be the truth. Art by Moritz Kreb.