After many months of fevered fan speculation, Trench Crusade has finally made it official: the game is making the transition from 3D printed resin to full blown, hard plastic miniatures in boxes! And it's starting in a place no-one suspected: a boxed warband for the Free State of Prussia, which is already available to pre-order, and is intended to go on sale in local game stores soon.
In its website announcement published on Wednesday, Trench Crusade reveals it's "spent the last year putting together an amazing team of artists, sculptors and engineers to make this transition to plastics possible" and calls this initial Prussian warband box "the first step in the future of Trench Crusade".
While new Trench Crusade models are still being sculpted by various members of the huge team of miniature wargames industry veterans who've flocked to Trench Crusade's banner, these new hard plastic, boxed kits are being manufactured by Archon Studio, the Poland based plastic molding giant behind the new Starcraft tabletop miniatures game.
"Our original plan was to take things slowly, concentrating on 3D printing," the Trench Crusade team says in its Wednesday announcement, but "3D printing comes with a lot of issues, especially when dealing with the high demand we're now facing."
However, $3.3 million of Kickstarter funding, and an accompanying tidal wave of hype and demand from wargamers worldwide, changed things. Trench Crusade's announcement says it gave them "the means and the confidence to develop the game much, much faster than we originally planned".
And the Prussian Stosstruppen Warband box set is the first example of what the TC team calls "the foundation of the future Trench Crusade range". The box contains eight hard plastic models on sprues:
- 1 x Hauptmann (Lieutenant)
- 1 x Feldkaplan (Trench Cleric)
- 3 x Stosstruppen (stormtroopers)
- 3 x Yeomen
It's up for pre-order right now, priced at $49.99 (£31.99), and TC says boxes will ship out for November 22, 2025, "although shipping times may vary depending on the destination".
Each model (including the two special characters) has variant builds, too. TC's reveal photo shows two versions of the Hauptmann with alternate weapon poses and heads (including compulsory shako hat option) and the Feldkaplan with either sword or steampunk submachine gun held aloft.
Like GW's special character minis and more niche kits such as Warhammer Underworlds warbands, but unlike regular units in the Warhammer 40k factions, TC also reveals that every model in these hard plastic squads has a molded plastic base - giving each mini a bit more atmosphere without the need for lots of custom basing materials.
Rules wise, this is a variant list for the larger New Antioch faction. In fact the full faction rules for the Prussian warband are already live, for free, on the TC website. TC's Wednesday announcement also explains how its famous commitment to completely free rules will work with the new boxed products: it's putting everything for each kit online, from rules to build instructions.
"Each warband box will have its own digital faction guide that will include all the lore, rules, sample lists.. assembly guide and additional resources," it says. "These guides will not only be available on our website, but also via a QR code on the back of the box."
We don't yet know exactly what other Trench Crusade warbands and kits are in the works behind the scenes with Archon Studio, but there's no doubt this is a huge step towards bringing the game to a properly wide audience. You can bet we'll be hounding the team for every drop of news we can get as the new range begins to roll out!
If you've been holding off from Trench Crusade until you can buy regular, non resin kits from your FLGS, your time may soon be nigh! If that's you, will you be jumping in with the Prussians, or waiting to see what other warbands and factions might come along next? Join the free Wargamer Discord community and let us know!
Meanwhile, if you want a larger taster of the kind of minis Archon studio is capable of producing, check out our huge reveal of the Starcraft Tabletop Miniatures Game's first wave of models. They're, er, really good.