Rules

Learn to survive in the trenches, soldier, or die trying.

How it works

Trench Crusade is a skirmish tabletop wargame pitting Heaven’s Faithful against the Fallen of Hell in the mud-choked trenches of a WW1 that never was. The rules are easy to learn but difficult to master, letting you get into battle as quickly as possible.

In a game of Trench Crusade, each player fields a small, elite warband of miniatures from one of many diverse factions. You’ll take turns activating one model at a time, resolving their Actions by rolling a number of six-sided dice, and combining the results of two of them. You start with a pool of just two dice, but the strategic decisions you make, your equipment and the use of esoteric abilities can increase or decrease the number you roll, making you choose the two highest or lowest results. The outcomes, however, are always the same: a result of 2-6 is a fail, 7-11 is a success and a 12+ is a critical success.

The vast majority of the rules in the game revolve around this simple 2D6 system. However, other mechanics add strategic depth, the most common being Blood Markers. Models in Trench Crusade do not have hit points – they are either in the fight or not. Models accrue Blood Markers to represent the physical and spiritual damage they take. Blood Markers on enemy models can be spent to increase your chances of bringing them down for good. However, you can also spend them to make their own actions more likely to fail.

Choosing the best way to spend your Blood Markers is one of the many ways Trench Crusade offers strategic depth, and can spell the difference between glorious victory and bitter defeat.