A skirmish system that might actually click for us: first impressions of Trench Crusade
We had one of those very familiar hobby chats recently: what if there was a skirmish game that really matched the things we already enjoy? And this time Michał may actually have found something that sounds dangerously promising.
The system is Trench Crusade. It is not a Warhammer game, but the reason it immediately caught our attention is very Warhammer-adjacent: it sounds like a mix of things we like from Warhammer: The Old World, a bit of the lightness of tinyD6, and some campaign/skirmish DNA that reminded us of Necromunda and old specialist games.
Most importantly for us, it sounds narrative and model agnostic enough that we instantly started thinking: could we just use our existing miniatures and build our own warbands around them?
Why it caught our eye
Michał summed it up best: the rules sound a bit like what we already enjoy in The Old World, but adapted into a compact skirmish format. That alone was enough to make us curious, but the details made it even more interesting.
1. Alternating activations
This was the first thing that sounded really good. At the start of each turn, the player with fewer models gets initiative and activates one model first. Then the other player activates one model, and so on.
We really like systems where both sides stay engaged all the time, and this kind of back-and-forth usually makes a game feel much more alive than “you go, I go” turns.
2. A very elegant 2d6 test system
Every test is based on 2d6:
- 1–6 = fail
- 7–11 = pass
- 12+ = critical pass
The fun part is how modifiers work. Instead of simple pluses and minuses, they change how many dice you roll:
- -dice means you roll extra dice and keep the two lowest
- +dice means you roll extra dice and keep the two highest
And it stacks. So if things get really bad, you might roll four dice and keep the two lowest. If everything is in your favor, you can roll a whole handful and keep the best two.
That sounds both cinematic and easy to read at the table, which is exactly the kind of thing we like.
3. No fixed action limit during activation
This is probably the bit that made us lean in the most.
An active model can do all the actions it has available during its activation. So it can move, shoot, fight in melee, dash, withdraw from combat, and so on. But some actions are marked as critical, which means you have to pass a test to perform them. If you fail, your activation ends immediately.
That creates a really cool push-your-luck feeling. For example, Michał pointed out that you cannot charge after a normal move, but you can charge after a dash. The catch is that dash is a critical action, so it might fail.
That sounds like the kind of decision-making we love: not just “what is optimal,” but also “how greedy do we want to be right now?”
4. Shooting has meaningful trade-offs
Shooting after moving, or shooting beyond half range, applies negative dice modifiers. Again, we like this because it sounds intuitive without being overloaded with tiny exceptions.
5. Injury instead of classic wound tracking
Another thing that immediately reminded us of Necromunda: after a hit, you roll on injury results. A model can take a blood marker as a lighter injury, fall down, go unconscious, or be completely taken out.
Ender compared that part directly to Necromunda’s feel, with models dropping and escalating into worse states instead of just ticking down a neat wound counter. Michał clarified that in Trench Crusade there are effectively no standard wounds in the usual sense here — you can accumulate blood markers until you finally go down.
6. Blood markers matter a lot
This is one of the nastiest and most interesting ideas in the whole chat: the opponent can spend your blood markers to make your tests harder.
So the more battered your fighter becomes, the more unreliable they are. We love mechanics that make damage feel like actual battlefield pressure instead of just bookkeeping.
7. Morale and collapse pressure
If you drop below half your models, you start making initiative tests each turn, and the second failed test means you lose the game.
Again, Ender immediately connected that to the kind of “bottling out” pressure known from Necromunda. That comparison alone tells us a lot about the intended vibe: brutal, unstable, and full of momentum swings.
8. Short playtime
And then there is the killer feature for busy adults with too many miniatures and not enough evenings: apparently a game lasts about an hour, or maybe two hours when it is your first time.
Honestly, that is a huge selling point.
Why we immediately started thinking about proxies
The funniest part of the whole conversation was that almost as soon as the rules started sounding great, we also noticed the obvious issue: it does not naturally contain the exact armies we are attached to.
As Ender put it: there are no Salamanders and no dwarfs.
Which, of course, immediately led us to the hobbyist solution: fine, we will just proxy things.
That is probably the biggest reason Trench Crusade sounds exciting to us. If the rules really are this flexible and narrative, then it feels like the kind of game where we could bring in miniatures we already love — including models from Warhammer: The Old World collections — and build our own lore around them.
That idea alone is incredibly appealing. We always enjoy systems that leave room for our own stories, conversions, and weird little campaign ideas.
“So… dwarfs?”
At the end of the discussion Michał shared one warband entry that immediately triggered a very predictable reaction from us:
The linked warband was Defenders of the Iron Wall from the Iron Sultanate, described as an elite ranged-focused force using powerful long-range weapons and alchemical ammunition to control the battlefield.
Michał’s summary was immediate and perfect: so, kind of dwarfs.
And honestly, yes — if there is a faction whose battlefield identity is “elite shooters with scary guns,” we are absolutely going to start mentally sorting our collections into possible stand-ins.
Our first takeaway
We have not played it yet, so these are very much first impressions from reading and discussing the rules. But based on that conversation alone, Trench Crusade sounds like a system we genuinely want to try.
What appeals to us most is the combination of:
- alternating activations
- a clean but flavorful dice system
- risky, momentum-based activations
- injury mechanics that feel messy and narrative
- short game length
- room for proxying and making the setting our own
That is a very strong package.
So yes — this may be one of those dangerous moments where we say “we are just reading the rules out of curiosity” and then, two weeks later, someone is already assembling a test warband out of spare bits and The Old World leftovers.
If we do get a game in, we will definitely report back.