Carcass Front is the first major expansion for Trench Crusade, a narrative campaign box set that comes with two new warbands and a hardback rulebook packed with lore, custom scenarios, and two campaigns. I've got an early sample, and while I'm still finalising my review, but one thing was apparent from the moment I opened the book and started to read - if you're looking for a grimdark setting to get obsessed with, Trench Crusade has just kicked Warhammer 40,000's teeth in.
I'm not going to spend this article shitting on modern Warhammer 40k; I love 40k, and in those areas where the creatives have plenty of freedom, like model design, the novels, the lore for spin-off games like Necromunda, they create genuinely breathtaking work. But the last time I felt like the lore developments in a Warhammer 40k rulebook or campaign supplement actually mattered was during the Gathering Storm campaign in 2017; and as for the last time the lore really astonished me, we're talking third edition, either the Necrons codex in 2002 or the Eye of Terror campaign in 2003.
I had thought that was a product of me getting older and more cynical. Of course I don't feel the same about Warhammer 40k books as I used to. I got into the game last century. I know the Warhammer 40k factions back to front, and I've been exposed to so much more media since then. Reading wargames books is part of my day job, of course 40k doesn't hit as hard. Nothing is going to feel as cool to me as Warhammer 40k did when I was a kid!
Then I read Carcass Front, and it blew my mind. No, that's an understatement - it shot me full in the forehead with an anti-tank rifle and blew my brains out in a fifteen foot splatter zone. Picture me writing this article with a bloody crater where my head should be, blood-caked fingers tapping on my keyboard as my corpse is reanimated by Trench Crusade's sheer psychic aura.
The Carcass Front is one of the most active battlegrounds in the war between the Faithful and the Fallen, a stretch of coastline and mountainous terrain in the Levant north and east of the fortified city of New Antioch. The servants of Allah, Christ, and YHWH have battled the forces of hell here for centuries, and the land is blighted by wreckage from conflicts both material and spiritual.
The book introduces a dozen key locations from the front, each with at least a full page of incredible artwork, and juicy prose written by ex-Warhammer studio author Graham McNeill. Even the most conventional of these locations takes a classic fantasy trope and spins it into something unexpected.
The Vivarium is a mad scientist's laboratory, but it was founded by a renegade order of unauthorised priests attempting to create their own clone of Christ from relics stolen from the Vatican's catacombs. Nineveh Novus is a cursed, ruined city, but it's ruined and cursed because it was "burned from above and below for seventy-two days" after "profaning both heaven and hell".
Then there's the really good shit, like the Sword of God, a monumental railway gun gifted to the Duke of New Antioch by the Sultan of the Iron Wall, now a sand-covered relic since the alchemists who kept its sacred mechanisms functional were withdrawn in response to a growing political feud. Or the Steel Necropolis, a tank graveyard full of the carcasses of both faithful and heretic vehicles destroyed in an engineered flood, the wreckage stalked by a towering entity of broken iron and diesel fumes known as the Tank God.
Beyond even these there's the 'Pillar of Jonah'. This is some gourmet shit, and if you have any plans to acquire this book, avoid the lore videos that will no doubt pop up on your feed until you can read it yourself. I've taken to thrusting the book under my friends' noses with the Pillar of Jonah pages open, and forcing them to read it. About three to five minutes later (depending on their reading speed) they raise their head and in a stunned voice say something like "Fucking hell, that's metal", or "He ate the pope?!".
I've given you the headlines for these locations, and all the descriptions are fairly brief. But McNeill makes every word count. The lore is layered, with histories and mysteries reaching back into the past and far afield, and even into the real world.
The labyrinth of wrecked ships on the Carrion Coast is all that remains of a Papal Fleet dispatched to relieve New Antioch during the year of the Broken Trinity; the lone, superhuman survivor of that disaster now watches over it from an abandoned airship lighthouse - another location on the map - armed with an anti-submarine gun. Baghras Fortress - a real historical castle built to defend the vital Syrian Gate through the Amanus Mountains - was the last holdout of the fallen Templars who unleashed hell on earth. Their skulls are mortared into its highest towers facing towards Jerusalem and the disaster they unleashed.
These locations aren't just cool, they're eminently gameable. Each one suggests several different ways you could turn it into a board. The colossal corpse-sorting warehouse of Domus Demetrius could be a dense dungeon of morgues or a grisly rail depot complete with cadaver-hauling cranes. The Temple of Leviathan is depicted as a ramshackle folk horror altar erected on a D-Day beach, but if you wanted to make a Lovecraftian sunken city out of it that would absolutely work.
Then there's the Path to Leviathan narrative campaign. The great beast Leviathan was once a prime servant of hell, but was cast down in ages past by the almighty. It is said that the faithful will feast on its flesh at the end of days; inspired by these prophecies, the leper priest Blessed Bartolomeo seeks to drag up the Leviathan from the depths, slay it, and devour it. War Priest Charon of the Heretic Naval Raiders seeks to deny the tyrant YHWH's ordained plan. He means to kill the great beast himself, spoil its meat, and assume its mantle within the courts of hell.
That's the set-up, but Bartolomeo and Charon aren't the protagonists - it's up to your warband to actually make this happen. Perhaps serving one of these two masters, perhaps pursuing an altogether different agenda, across five linked scenarios you'll assemble the knowledge, and then the means, to summon and entrap the mighty Leviathan, and - just maybe - slay it. I'll get into what those scenarios actually involve in my full review, but for now, suffice it to say that they rule.
Strands of this plot are seeded all throughout the lore for the setting, but it's very light touch. This isn't a story you read, it's one you take part in during the campaign. It's clear that the shackled Leviathan is just one fucked up thing among many on the Carrion Front.
Graham McNeill wrote just about everything in Carcass Front that wasn't the rules, with input from three other ex-GW veterans, Tuomas Pirinen, Andy Chambers, and Jervis Johnson. The wealth of experience shows through in how well the lore serves its purpose: it's not a story and it's not an encyclopedia, it's a catalyst to inspire you to play wargames. Yet that same light touch, the combination of bayonet-sharp details and fog-shrouded mysteries, make for the most compelling world-building I've read in years.
You can probably guess that this is getting a good review, can't you? That'll be out soon. If you can't wait to talk about Carcass Front, I'd love to see you in the Wargamer Discord community!