Operation Leviathan is Coming!
by Jervis Johnson. Graphic elements by Viktor Pushkarev.
Trench Crusade Worldwide Campaign 2026
From September 7th to October 19th, we will be holding a Worldwide Campaign for Trench Crusade called Operation Leviathan. It’s a great opportunity to play your favourite game, and what’s more, the outcome of the campaign will have a direct influence on the lore of the game. You can join in with the campaign wherever you may live – all you need to do is play games of Trench Crusade and let us know who won. What could be simpler!
The rest of this article will explain exactly how you can join in with the campaign, how the results will be decided, and what is at stake.
The Carcass Front
The Worldwide Campaign takes place in the Carcass Front – the same setting we are using for the Carcass Front supplement for Trench Crusade that will be released on the 31st of August. Although owning Carcass Front is helpful, it is not a requirement in any way, and you can take part in the campaign whether you have a copy or not.
The Carcass Front consists of the lands that lie to the north of New Antioch. Once ruled by the ancient Kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, bloody wars have been fought here between the Faithful and the Fallen since the Gate of Hell appeared in 1099. These battles have reduced the region to a devastated wilderness, pock-marked with craters, crisscrossed with abandoned trench lines and littered with heaps of fly-ridden corpses. Never has a land been more aptly named.
Although the main battlelines have moved southwards towards New Antioch, Warbands from both sides continue to scout deep into the Carcass Front, establishing strongholds and exploring the region in a bid to discover its hidden secrets. Skirmishes and bloody firefights take place whenever Warbands encounter each other, all the way from the Carrion Coast to the west and the Iron Wall of the Great Sultanate to the east. This is the region where our Worldwide Campaign will take place.
Campaign Background – Operation Leviathan
The campaign focuses on the final stages of Operation Leviathan, a massive offensive launched by the Fallen at the start of 1914 with the aim of capturing New Antioch. Operation Leviathan began with a powerful assault at the start of February, which smashed into the Faithful trench lines to the east of New Antioch. The Faithful line held, just, but as the pressure mounted reinforcements were hurriedly despatched from the Carcass Front to bolster their defences. However, this was just what the Fallen leaders had been counting on; while the battle raged on before New Antioch, a second Fallen army was unleashed, which advanced northwards into the Carcass Front, and then swung round the Lake of Antioch with the aim of out flanking New Antioch from the north.
THE INITIAL ASSAULT
The 2nd Fallen Army moved swiftly, brushing aside understrength and underprepared Faithful formations. Caught with most of their reserves fighting to the east of New Antioch, there was little that could be done to stop the 2nd Fallen Army, and for a moment it seemed that the unimaginable might happen and New Antioch would fall. It was at this point that the Fallen’s northern offensive reached the plains to the east of Baghras Fortress.
Baghras had been held since 1909 by the Pilgrims of the Lazarine Ascension under the leadership of a shadowy War Prophet called the Risen. Little was known of the pilgrims or their leader, and fears mounted that they would turn out to have been corrupted in some way. However, these concerns were soon proved to be completely unwarranted. The defenders of the Baghras Fortress sallied forth from their fortifications, hitting the Fallen army in its flank and stopping it in its tracks. Attempts by the Fallen to bypass the Pilgrims were foiled one after the other, and the Risen was able to create a defensive line that stretched from Baghras to Lake Antioch. Finding their way barred, the Fallen turned north once more, trying to find a way to get round to New Antioch that didn’t involve having to battle their way past the Risen and his followers.
However, the time bought by the defenders of Baghras had allowed the Faithful just enough time to send reserve formations to the Carcass Front. These fresh troops were able to slow and block the 2nd Fallen Army whenever it tried to turn southwards back towards New Antioch. The campaign developed into a series of bloody minor battles, as the Fallen tried to race northwards to turn the flank of the Faithful army, and the Faithful raced equally quickly northwards to stop them. Finally, at the end of February both spearheads arrived at the coast at the northwest corner of the Carcass Front, bringing this brief period of mobile warfare to an abrupt end.
THE RACE TO THE SEA
With no room left for maneuver, both sides started to dig in along their lines of advance. Thick lines of trenches were quickly erected, and the campaign turned into a grinding war of attrition. Throughout March and April both sides launched offensives in the different sectors of the front line, in an attempt to break through and cause the enemy to retreat. It is these offensives that form the backdrop for the worldwide campaign.
Worldwide Campaign Rules
We’ve decided to keep the rules for the Worldwide Campaign as simple as possible, so that it’s easy for as many people as possible to join in. All you need to do is to play a game of Trench Crusade, and then the winner needs to enter the results of the game using the simple Worldwide Campaign Results page on the Trench Crusade website. You can enter the results of one game each day, and just need to let us know which sector in which the battle took place, whether the Faithful or Fallen won the game, and how many models on the winning and losing sides were taken out of action during the game.
WHAT IS AT STAKE?
The outcome of the Worldwide Campaign is going to have consequences which will directly affect the ongoing storyline for Trench Crusade. We can’t go into too much detail about what these consequences will be just yet, for the simple reason that they will be dictated by what happens during the campaign. What we can say is that the outcome will decide the fate of Blessed Bartholomeo and War Priest Charon – the two protagonists who are introduced in the Carcass Front supplement – and will determine what will happen to Leviathan. In addition to that, the results of the campaign will generate new Patrons and Battlekit for players to use in their games.
CAMPAIGN SECTORS
As we’ve described in background to the campaign, the battlelines in the Carcass Front are divided into eight sectors. We’ve assigned each Carcass Front sector to an area on our real-world globe, as shown below. Any games you play will take place in the sector that corresponds to the area in which it was played. For example, if you live in the UK, the games you play take place in the Northern Sector.
| SECTOR | REGION |
| Leviathan Cove Landing | Central and South America |
| Star of the Sea Expeditionary Force | Canada and Nordic countries |
| Northern Sector | United Kingdom |
| Central Sector | USA |
| Southern Sector | Europe (except Nordic countries) |
| Gabriel’s Sword Straits | Australia, New Zealand, and Asia Pacific |
| Antioch Lake Flotilla | Africa, and East and West Asia |
| Aerial Raiding Columns | Games played on virtual tabletop |
CAMPAIGN REPORTS
The campaign will run for three weeks, from Monday 7th September until Sunday 18th October. As already noted, you can play up to one campaign game each day and send us the results. Then, twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, we will publish a report on the progress of the campaign here on The Trench Wire.
The report will say how well each side (Faithful and Fallen) has been doing in each sector since the last report was published. If one side has managed to accumulate a win-loss ratio of 52% or more for a sector, then they are victorious. If the W/L ratio is 51% or less for both sides, then the side that took the most enemy models out of action is the winner. Winning in a sector will allow the winning side to make an ‘advance’ which will be shown by an arrow on the campaign map. For example, if the Faithful were victorious in the Central Sector, then their campaign progress arrow would advance one step across the map into Fallen territory. If in the next report the Fallen managed to win in the Central Sector, then the campaign progress arrow would be pushed back one step to the original front lines, and so on.
WINNING THE CAMPAIGN
When the campaign ends on the 28th September, the side that has the most advances in a sector scores their side 1 victory point. For example, if the Fallen finished the campaign with the most advances in 5 sectors and the Faithful with the most advances in only 3 sectors, then the Fallen would win the campaign 5-3.
If the victory points at the end of the campaign are tied, then the side that had the most of their own models taken out of action will be the winner. Yes, you read that right, if there is a tie at the end of the campaign, the side that was willing to make the biggest sacrifices wins!
DECISIVE BATTLES
Trench Crusade is supported by a dedicated group of individuals from all over the planet called The Observers. All of the Observers are enthusiastic supporters of Trench Crusade as well as being expert players, and they are organising special Decisive Battle Events for players to take part in. We highly recommend you take part in these events if you get the chance – watch out for details of them at your local games stores and on social media. The Observers have already started running Decisive Battle events, and you can take part in them before the official start date of the Worldwide Campaign if you are lucky enough to be able to attend one before the 7th September.
When you take part in a Decisive Battle, all you need to do is turn up and play; all of the reporting will be dealt with by the Observer, so you don’t have to worry about posting the results of the game yourself. In addition to this, we are going to weight the results of Decisive Battles so they count for half of the win/lose ratio in each sector, which means that playing in Observer games will have a greater impact on the results of the campaign.
CAMPAIGN MEDALS
Although the primary focus of the Worldwide Campaign is on playing games, we also want to be able to reward players that go above and beyond with their contributions to the Trench Crusade Hobby. To this we have created digital Campaign Medals. These digital files are individually numbered and totally unique, and will be awarded by us and our Observers to players that go above and beyond in their contribution to the Trench Crusade hobby. We’ve deliberately kept what a suitable contribution is as vague as possible, because it’s one of those things that you know when you see it. However, it can be anything apart from playing and winning games – have a wonderfully converted and painted Warband, making a great set of terrain for a game, or writing a wonderful battle report of one of the campaign games you’ve played and so on. You get the idea!
Of course, in order for us to give out the medals we need to hear about your contribution to the hobby, so don’t be shy about posting about what it is that you’re (or what a less-forward friend is doing) are doing as part of the campaign.
FAQ
Q: What happens when I report the result of a game if my opponent and I have the same allegiance?
A: In such a situation you and your opponent must roll-off. The player that loses the roll is assumed to have been working (or have tricked into working) for the opposing side.
Q: Can I play any scenario? Can my games be part of a campaign?
A: Yes & Yes.
Q: Can I play multi-player games using the All-Out War rules?
A: Yes you can. However the game still counts as only one game when you report its results.
Q: What is there to stop me from reporting more than one game per day?
A: We will be checking the results that are received and will discount any that we deem to be in excess of the daily quota.
Jervis Johnson
Before joining Factory Fortress as a project lead and rules designer, Jervis Johnson worked for Games Workshop as a games developer for almost 40 years. His first game design was Blood Bowl, released in 1987, which combined elements of American Football with fantasy monsters to create a unique and completely over the top board game. After that, Jervis was involved in the design and development of nearly all of Games Workshop’s boxed games, rulebooks and army books, and he was a regular contributor to White Dwarf magazine. Jervis left Games Workshop in 2021 and now works as a game design consultant and independent game designer.