Zig and I got together last Saturday for a first go at Trench Crusade. If you're not familiar it's the very grim, very dark alt-history game set in the WW1 time frame. The back story is that crusaders did some dumb stuff back during the Crusades and opened a portal to hell in Jerusalem. Out comes all the badness contained within, plunging the world into a hell on Earth situation.
The rules are free, it is miniatures-agnostic and very friendly to get into for budget-minded gamers. Beware, the game art is gory as all get out and not for those of weak constitution. I bought two warbands on Etsy months ago and they've sat painted yet unblooded ever since. See here and here.
I put together two basic forces for our first out. I used The Cult of the Black Grail nasties while Ziggy took command of the Antioch forces. We played a vanilla scenario with five pretty evenly-spaces objectives. It's a four-turn scenario and each side earns points for controlling objectives over time and from completing special feats. I was warned to use a terrain heavy tabletop so I did just that on a 36" x 36" mat.
Our setup:
In the early goings, I sent a couple a cannon-fodder Thralls forward to capture an "easy" objective location.
Shuffle shuffle. I piled up a ton us dudes behind the barn since Ziggy was heavy on the opposite corner and the Antioch guys are far more shooty than mine.
One of my hounds was knocked down by an uppity Shocktrooper. I sent a Herald forward to assist poor doggie. The shotgun blast from Harry the Herald was ineffective against the Shocktrooper.
I also got to learn a lesson about the effectiveness of those snipers. They should be avoided! One of Corpse Guards becomes just a corpse in no time.
After a turn, we've both pushed forward. I was more aggressive in part because my troops a mostly melee and CQB types. See the hound I have sneaking up the far right!
Chomp-chomp, buddy. It turns out they were pretty evenly matched. The hound did do a brilliant job of gumming up that whole Antioch flank though! Ziggy dumped a lot of effort into dealing with the critter.
More pushing forward and snatching objectives! I think at the end of both turns 2 and 3 I controlled four of the five objectives on the table. That alone gave me enough of a score to win, but I wanted that sniper's head!
No action shot, but I finally got a Plague Knight into melee, of course with a Yeoman schlub but whatever. I magicked up a 12 (on 2d6) to hit, so that was a crit then rolled another 12 for the effect. That's one amazing first outing for that Plague Knight! One attack, one Yeoman, cleaved in twain.
The PK who was wasting time on the right side started to meander down to where the hound was doing all the work. He'd set those Antioch guys straight.
But alas, we were at the end of four turn, so it would have to wait until next time. Although I took many more casualties than Ziggy, I was very dominant in objective capture points and won the scenario handily.
The game itself plays quite nicely. Four turns doesn't sound like much, but it's a small unit skirmish and everyone gets to do something. The small battlefield keeps everything tight, a lot like Infinity and Batman Miniatures, the other two small unit skirmish games I've played a lot of.
The game mechanics (primarily the dice system) is different but easy enough to pick up quickly. Like many of these games, the biggest slow down is referencing what all the skills and attributes do in game terms. Once you've got that either memorized or have everything on a handy document, things would flow more smoothly.
Trench Crusade... I'll give it two thumbs up.
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