Mercenaries Rules Update
by Sammie Dae and Brook Close
Our first Rules Review preview for Mercenaries was met with reactions ranging from “yippee!” to “what are you doing?” but ultimately gave us perspective on what players are looking for in Mercenaries. First of all, we hear you, there are far more Faithful mercs than Fallen mercs. This is something we have every intention of evening out – and we have many ideas – but we are wary of opening a floodgate of new ideas. Mercenaries bear a unique design challenge in that they are “factionless” units that require wider consideration for their place in games of Trench Crusade; a Goetic Warlock interacts with a Court Warband differently than it does in a Heretic Legion Warband, for instance. There will certainly be more Fallen Mercenaries, but for now we need to review what we have.
Faithful Mercenaries
Faithful Mercenary changes, however, were received fairly well with one very notable exception (we’ll get to that in a moment). As discussed in our Preview, the Combat Biologist, Communicant Anti-Tank Hunter and Sister of Saint Cosmas are in a healthy place, and the community tends to agree. The changes to the Scripture Guardian were explicitly a formatting change to make it clear that it’s a slow, durable gun platform, but otherwise it plays exactly the same as it had before. Feedback shows that the changes to the Ammo Monk were generally welcome to avoid particularly nasty combinations, but we were made aware of interactions that could let a model have more than one Sacrament at a time, so we’ve added a line to clarify our intent.
Observer
The Observer cost increase was a bit contentious. Some players found 5 Glory to be too much of an increase, while others thought it wasn’t enough. What this tells us is that the Observer has an extremely wide range of performance, typically depending on Warband composition, role in the Warband and player skill. New and casual players find it to be a very useful vanguard powerhouse, while skilled players can really maximize results through clever play of the Voice of God ability. Ultimately, this leads us to leave the Observer at 5 Glory, representing its strength in raw stats in addition to its excellent tactical strengths under clever play.
Witchburner
The original Witchburner was generally an underperformer, and the Faithful already have a number of low cost Mercenaries to choose from, so we decided to crank up the dials on the Witchburner. Feedback was a mixed bag, showing favour for increased manoeuvrability and durability, but Divine Judgement was simply far too powerful. We still want to honour the Witchburner’s unique ability to call down fire on their foes without line of sight, but we recognise that it needs significant downsides to avoid unfun gameplay. Now, Divine Judgement has less range, can only hit a single model, and cannot take enemies Out of Action. The Witchburner will torment their foes but now needs to find their way into combat to make the most of their capabilities.
Sin Eater
For the Fallen mercs, there were a couple of important bits of feedback that we needed to take heed of. Firstly, for the Sin Eater, there was praise for the inclusion of REGENERATION, but some players felt like they weren’t quite meeting the cost of 6 Glory. To that end, we added a couple of small tweaks. To start with, the poor model inside of the Sin Eater’s stomach(s?) can still have their BLOOD MARKERS be used for GOETIC magics, a minor quality of life patch for the Court, but the big change comes in an update to the Sin Eater’s Tenderiser Maul.
Beforehand, the Tenderiser Maul was unique in that it could be used to attack multiple enemy models within 1”. However, this could readily be countered by a smart opponent, who would tie them down with a single chaff model. To remedy this, the Tenderiser Maul now has a second optional attack profile that allows the Sin Eater to focus their gluttonous wrath on a single model, gaining an additional +1 INJURY MODIFIER (for a total of +2) to help mulch their unfortunate foe.
Goetic Warlock
As for the Goetic Warlock, the changes are slight and simple, but we think they will add a lot more benefit, especially for Court players. Their access to Goetic Magic has been attenuated to only pull BLOOD MARKERS from enemy models or friendly Wretched models, to ensure that they don’t become the best healing model in Heretic Legions Warbands. Most excitingly, the Necrotic Gaze Goetic Spell has been changed to cost 0 BLOOD MARKERS. Now, the Warlock can be a fast and sneaky assassin model, whilst also providing a notable boon to a Court player’s BLOOD MARKER economy.
Additionally, and this is more of a quality of life change, we have decided to make MERCENARY a Keyword and put the rules for them in the Keyword section. This is to bring parity to the other Faction Keywords, plus it opens up cleaner rules language for future content.
To give us your thoughts and feedback, use the Contact form on the Trench Crusade website and select the header ‘Rules Feedback’.
Mercenaries Rules Update (Public Beta)
Sammie Dae
Sammie Dae is a game designer for Trench Crusade. Her experience is grassroots: setting up weekly game nights, running campaigns and events for local clubs, writing silly scenarios and fun homebrew rules for her friends, and suffering the “forever GM” curse. She’s been a volunteer Observer since 2024 and has organised major Trench Crusade narrative events at AdeptiCon and NOVA Open. She’s dedicated to her community, supporting human creativity, and ensuring everyone has a place in the hobby.
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.