The Prussians have joined the Great War…
It’s time to reveal the future of Trench Crusade! Our Kickstarter campaign funded beyond our wildest dreams back in 2024, and we’re incredibly grateful to all of our backers for their patience and support during the fulfillment process. None of this would have been possible without you.
Over the past months, we’ve been working on the next step of the Trench Crusade adventure. Our original plan was to take things slowly, concentrating on 3D printing. However, 3D printing comes with a lot of issues, especially when dealing with the high demand we’re now facing.
The success of our Kickstarter and the incredible support and enthusiasm of the community has given us the means and the confidence to develop the game much, much faster than we originally planned. And so, we are very proud to reveal the first step in the future of Trench Crusade:
The Prussian Stosstruppen Warband box… in hard plastic.
The Stosstruppen of the Free State of Prussia is a New Antioch Variant list. This box includes a Lieutenant (Hauptmann), Trench Cleric (Feldkaplan), three Stormtroopers (Stosstruppen) and three Yeomen. This is a full hard plastic kit on sprues that includes moulded plastic bases with a well for 2x5mm magnets.
Each model can be assembled in one of two ways, allowing you to build one of two different pre-made warband lists, or create your own hybrid. As plastic is the easiest material to work with when it comes to miniature building, we expect to see some very cool conversions in the future too!
As you all know by now, the rules for Trench Crusade are free to download on our website. We wanted to continue this digital trend, so instead of a physical assembly guide, each warband box will have its own digital faction guide that will include all the lore, rules, sample lists (as mentioned above), assembly guide and additional resources. These guides will not only be available on our website, but also via a QR code on the back of the box. This means that whilst you’re browsing the shelves of your FLGS in the future, you can take a Trench Crusade box, scan the code and get ALL the information about its contents on the spot!
To show you what this will look like, the Prussian Stosstruppen warband guide is already available for your perusal!
Availability
We will have a limited amount of copies of the Prussian Warband box with us at Essen Spiel, which starts tomorrow! If you’re attending the event, you can stop by and grab one on our stand, #1C311. Look for the giant statue. Which statue? You’ll know it when you see it.
If you aren’t going to Essen but would like to get your hands on a box, you can preorder it on our webstore tomorrow, Thursday October 23rd, from 10am CET!
These preorders will be open until the middle of November, and will ship out for the 22nd of November. We are currently only able to ship from the EU, so please note that other destinations will be subject to import duties and fees imposed by local authorities. We know that this is far from ideal for a lot of our players, and are currently organizing hubs in the UK and USA as well as distribution with local partners, so this will improve in the near future. In the meantime, you can order with your FLGS. Speaking of which…
Retail Stores
With this move to plastics comes a firm commitment to seeing Trench Crusade available in Friendly Local Gaming Stores worldwide. So for all those that service their local wargaming communities, this next part is for you:
Getting Trench Crusade onto store shelves is very important to us. Most of the team grew up playing wargames in environments that you all still cultivate to this day, and we want Trench Crusade, as both a game and a product, to be easily accessible to players and gaming communities. Plastics are essential to making that happen.
Whilst our small team has to focus on the tasks at hand for now, we would like to also reassure you that we’ll be doing our part to support the development of local events in the near future.
If you are a store owner and are interested in stocking Trench Crusade, you can contact Archon to order copies through them or one of their partners. These copies will also ship out for the street date of the 22nd of November.
Finally, please note that the miniatures from the Kickstarter will also be made available to you shortly once the Kickstarter has finished delivery.
What’s next?
These Warband boxes are the foundation of the future Trench Crusade range. We’ve spent the last year putting together an amazing team of artists, sculptors and engineers to make this transition to plastics possible. Plastic sculpting and production is a long and expensive process that requires a completely different skillset to resin. We’re incredibly proud of the Prussians, and we hope you have as much fun playing them as we did making them!
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the entire team at Archon Studio who have gone above and beyond to help us bring our vision to life.
We’ll be back soon with more information and on the Prussians, the broader plans for the plastic range and also how we plan to continue to use 3D printing going forward.