The biggest surprise mega-hit in modern wargaming, Tuomas Pirinen, Mike Franchina, and James Sherriff's ultra-dark, religious horror game Trench Crusade has made serious waves in a pool normally dominated by Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k. With the game's rusty torture wheels now copiously lubricated with cash, we spoke to Trench Crusade's lead designer and loremaster Tuomas Pirinen at UK Games Expo, to see what the next phase looks like. And boy, did he drop a few hell-bombs.
As you'd imagine, Pirinen and the team are riding high. When I sit down with him (either side of a stack of freshly printed Trench Crusade world maps) the small booth is packed - as it has been all weekend. "Incredible", Pirinen calls it. "We knew that the UK was our biggest backer per capita, but hearing from hundreds of fans how much the game means to them has been humbling."
After raising over $3.3 million from 20,000 Kickstarter backers in November 2024, Pirinen proudly tells me Trench Crusade's triumphant crowdfunding launch is now in its home straight. "All the digital rewards are done," he says - "and all the physical miniatures will be shipped by the end of June (fingers crossed!)".
"The rulebook should be with the backers in August. It took a bit longer since we added 100 pages!"
The next stage, of course, would be to get this game into stores - and Pirinen says that's very much in hand. "We hope to have the models and the book with the retailers as soon as the backers have theirs first," he explains. That would put Trench Crusade boxes on local game store shelves by Fall 2025 - just in time for the holidays.
The runway for new models is already full, too, with lots for fans to hype about. Once the product starts to hit retailers, Pirinen, Franchina, and Sheriff will be releasing new models for the various factions the game has already mentioned in written lore.
"We'll be doing models for all the Warbands and sub-factions," says Pirinen, "as well as new warbands including the Temple of Metamorphosis and the Hebrew Knights!" While TC can't rival the 24+ Warhammer 40k factions GW has racked up over 40 years, launching with six ain't bad, and bringing out two more within months of hitting stores seems like a wise - but still praiseworthy - way to maintain momentum.
There's still a glaring question mark over all of this, however, and that's production. On the one hand, Trench Crusade's Kickstarter raised 49 times its funding target; over 20,000 people have bought in and can be expected to want to buy more minis soon enough. In general, there's a near unprecedented sense of community enthusiasm and momentum here that brings the phrase 'like hot cakes' to mind.
On the other hand, Pirinen's small team is still making all its miniatures on resin 3D printers - and he's not shy in telling me soaring demand has already left those initial production processes in the dust.
I ask what they're going to do about it - and, while he can't say it in so many words, Pirinen characteristically hints so hard that the message can't be missed: it looks like they're doing plastic kits, and they're doing them as soon as they possibly can.
"It's the number one thing people have been asking if we'll do since the Kickstarter," Pirinen tells me - "it doesn't take a genius". Strolling through Trench Crusade's online communities, I notice Pirinen has already replied to a bunch of fans' questions on the point, suggesting they'd never expected to be able to afford it, but would love to in the future - it appears the future is now.
He all but confirms how they'll go about it, too. Winking at me, he says "You might just think about why we're sharing space with Archon," nodding at the show booth TC is sharing with plastic miniatures powerhouse Archon Studio.
Based Piła in the west of Poland, Archon had a breakout Kickstarter success in 2019 with its first Dungeons and Lasers modular dungeon terrain set. Since then, it's sealed licensing deals to make tabletop adaptations of various classic PC games - first Wolfenstein, then Heroes of Might and Magic, and most recently Starcraft. It has a reputation for producing very high quality plastic minis, in large quantities.
While we don't know the specifics or timeline of any Trench Crusade/Archon plans, it seems likely we will very soon - as it'll be intimately tied to how TC rolls out boxed kits to stores. And Pirinen tells me exactly when all will be revealed on that front.
"We have more news on the retail offerings at Nova later this year," he confirms - so Nova Open, in Washington DC over Labor Day weekend (August 27-31) will be the time to watch for a hard announcement.
One last zinger from Tuomas skilfully leaves me wanting more: alongside doing minis and warband packs for all the factions and subfactions they've already written up, there's another ambition on the horizon.
"We'd love to do some TC tank kits!" he texts me after our chat. Tantalizing, infuriating, but ultimately encouraging stuff! I can't stop imagining the twisted, nightmarish alt-WW2 vehicles Pirinen, Franchina, and Sherriff can cook up between them.
We'll be keeping our eyes on the latest TC developments, so to stay updated and join the discussion with our community, come join the Wargamer Discord server! We remain uninfected by any cosmic plague and uncorrupted by any hell spawn, we promise.