Norman: Hello folks and welcome to Comp Crusade! We’re going to be working on creating a ruleset and framework with Factory Fortress Inc for the competitive Trench Crusade scene and we figured we’d start a developer diary. For those who aren’t huge nerds, a developer diary (or dev diary) is a place for people who make stuff to explain why they did stuff and so you, the reader, can get insight as to why we made certain decisions and get a look at the process we took to get there. Before we get into all that, just who the hell are we?
I’m Norman, aka MildNorman, and you may know me from my articles in 40k on Chaos Knights and a little of everything else, AoS on a little of everything, our patron only podcast, HAMs Radio, and most importantly, Trench Crusade! What you might not know about me though (if you knew any of that to begin with) is I’m a UX Designer in my non-goonhammer life and have a background with game design. I like making stuff and especially stuff that people can have fun with. That's why when Factory Fortress Inc. told us we could take competitive play as a format and run wild with it, I hopped at the chance. That said, I’m not alone as I’ll be joined by my boy Ryan.
Ryan: Wuddup! I’m Ryan, but most of you would probably know me as bre4d_. I’ve written a couple of articles in Goon-land, mostly dealing with some questionable takes on Skaven in AoS along with being on the crew here for all of the Trench Crusade goodies. I also ate an egg one time. I’ve been doing things competitively for over a decade at this point, competing in a myriad of fighting games (SSBM, Street Fighter) shooters (CS:GO, CS2, R6:Siege, Gears of War 3/4) along with multiple first place podiums in the CSL (Competitive Speedsoft League, no I will not elaborate). Last but not least of course is Age of Sigmar – rounding out my experience across multiple mediums in both individual and team play. The competitive brain worm disease runs deep, but it doesn’t mean that I want to suck the fun out of every game I play. I enjoy pushing the limits of each system I get to play, using whatever funky ideas and strategies I come up with as a way to express myself. Trench Crusade is certainly no different.
As Norman mentioned, we are putting together the bones for the Trench Crusade sweats out there along with the Factory Fortress Inc Team and trying to provide a fun, streamlined, and competitive space for the game. We know Trench Crusade is a narratively driven space, generally designed in a more campaign focused mindset. That being said, the rules and the gameplay have a ton of potential to be an extremely fun and rewarding competitive experience as well.
Norman: Yeah, so you can forward all complaints about how we’re ruining Trench Crusade by making it too competitive to Ryan.
Norman: The story starts way back in the ancient era of August 2025. Ryan and I are hanging around NOVA and Ryan had just lost in his 6th round of Age of Sigmar and was bound for the 3-3 bracket. We were commiserating both the state of the game and his record when I offhandedly mentioned we could get our Trench Crusade stuff and just play that all day Sunday. While that wasn’t necessarily an easy task (we’re DC locals but not that local) we decided to talk to the folks running the narrative event there. Long story short we hit it off. First we got to talking with Jamie, Factory Fortress Inc’s CoO (who we interviewed just a few weeks ago!) but eventually we were hooting, hollering and hanging with the full events crew. We had a fantastic time and were even able to bum a couple of warbands to play in the Narrative on the last day of NOVA.
Ryan: Well, the real story starts way back when I got called out for a grudge match for Nashcon 2023, by the one and only Big Man Tommy G. One thing led to another, a raw egg gushed within my mouthhole, I stained my bathtub red, made some sick beats in FL Studio, and my response"> video blew up in the AoS scene. I end up going to Adepticon in early 2024, and visit the Trench Crusade booth – where I’m recognized by the Master Alchemist himself, Jamie Parsons. I get the pleasure of hanging out a bit in the TC booth, then we exchange contact information and go on our merry way.
Norman: Fast forward a few weeks, and we’ve kept in touch with a lot of those folks. Trench Crusade was gearing up for its 1.0 release and plastic Prussians were around the corner so things were very exciting. Ryan and I, along with Trench Crusade all star Dandy started kicking our Trench Crusade content pipeline into high gear, making sure we had hot takes and reviews ready for each release and had an article ready to go out every Friday.
While this was all happening, Zach, one of the events folks for Trench Crusade in the US, pulled Ryan and I into a call to talk about Adepticon. He invited us to run our own tournament for one of the days of the event and Ryan and I jumped at the opportunity. Both of us live for these kinds of events and being able to bring that to Trench Crusade was extremely exciting for us. We wanted to create a stepping stone that could be an example for what matched play Trench Crusade could look like and provide a framework that could be extended for future events.
Soon after that, we did our interview with Jamie, which you can watch"> here, and afterwards, we hung around to catch up and talk a little shop. That's when we got Jamie’s blessing to expand this out beyond just Adepticon and to work with them to create a full fledged circuit for competitive Trench Crusade. Which brings us all to here!
Our Goals
Ryan: The main shtick we are attempting to produce here is a standardized format of competitive play for Trench Crusade that can be applied and grown upon along with the game itself. The fine line that Norman and I know is extremely important is to keep the essence of Trench Crusade apparent and not suck the life out of the game to make it competitive. We are not trying to create a boring and watered down version of Trench Crusade. It’s important to have an environment where the game's quirks and niches shine, while also giving a medium for players to flex their ability to problem solve on the table and express themselves.
Norman: With all that in mind we really wanted to nail down a pack that always felt “fair” to each player. Variance is a very fragile thing and something that's at the heart of every interaction in Trench Crusade. Your leader can always just get punked by a Wretched with a Trench Club and those kinds of moments aren’t going anywhere. What we did want to make sure we avoided were players losing at faction or list archetype selection. For example, we could make missions where folks scored for having more models in certain parts of the table than their opponent, but this favors lists that go wide over ones that go tall in a way we felt was unfun. We want to make an environment where players can cook up a wacky list within our framework and try to find their own pathways to success. All of that said, because we’re targeting Adepticon for all this, we wanted a 4 mission pack with a standardized layout folks could recreate at home for both practice and to have fun with it.
Now this is a lot to work around so we're going to be using Adepticon as our testbed for our rules and missions and plan on using the data gathered there to transform this into a fully fledged tournament play pack.
The Format
Gregori Gula Credit: MildNorman
Norman: Something very important to us was to create a format that was at least familiar to what other players are already doing. We’re sticking to the rules for One Off games you can find in the core book. That said, we wanted to make a few changes to the standard formula. Trench Crusade has a few elements that don’t quite jive with an all comers competitive environment. For example, all demonic units are immune to the fire keyword. Lists that rely on going wide, like thrall heavy Great Hunger lists, are really susceptible to Blast. Going too wide and out activating your opponent can be a real degenerate play style. So we made some special rules to help this format really sing.
Ryan: There are a plethora of ways to construct your warband and express yourself in Trench Crusade, but as Norman said above, some of the strengths and weaknesses of the warbands could allow for some not-so-fun scenarios. Due to this, we have created the two list format special rule. This way, you can still push the limits of your warband with really intense skew – so your “oops all flamethrower” list doesn’t simply get squashed because you matched into nothing but Court for your whole tournament. The same type of thought process aligns with equipment selection as well, being able to have a force with gas masks or combat helmets or what have you. We know what it feels like to bring an army you like to an event, while trying to do well, to just get paired into bad matchups. Being able to bring two lists alleviates this a little bit, while also still giving a way for players to deep dive into their list building and strategies before coming to the table.
Another thing that we have gathered from other competitive experiences within Trench Crusade is a 12 model maximum. As someone who has the horde-army illness (it’s not a choice, it’s a problem) at first glance this seems like a needless cap. However, you’ll soon realize that in a 900 ducat list, it can be very easy to abuse any overwhelming spam of idiots and produce some problems for the game. Even though the idea of seeing a top table with 40+ Azebs stabbing each other does sound extremely funny, it doesn’t make for the best expression of skill or fun, especially in a competitive environment.
Norman: We also needed a bespoke layout to make sure everyone playing with these rules had uniform terrain. Terrain is incredibly important to Trench Crusade and you need a lot of it. After messing around with some rectangles and testing out missions, we came up with the initial layout you can find in the pack. It should give most warbands enough tall cover to hide their big guys while also allowing for some interesting game moments where players can risk exposing their models for some commanding positions on the battlefield.
That said a battlefield is nothing without missions to play on. We’ll go more into detail with our design philosophy on these in a future article, but the goal with each of these was to try some rules that could be expanded to the rest of the pack and future missions. The first mission plays with the idea of sticky objectives, ones where you can walk away from them and still control them. The second meanwhile goes in the opposite direction, playing with the idea of requiring a successful action to score points each turn. The third mission plays with the idea of an underdog, giving a player on the backfoot a way to dictate the tempo of the next turn. Lastly the 4th sees how much we can push the envelope of what objectives are and how you can interact with them. Some of the rules here, depending on how they’re received, could become rules that are present in every scenario or even disappear entirely if we find players don’t love what they’re going for.
Where You Come In
Credit: Sammie Dae
Norman: So where does that leave all of you? Well, we’re attaching our current Adepticon pack, missions, and map layout and would love to get your thoughts on it! The terrain is designed so it should be pretty easy to make at home and the missions should be pretty easy to get running. Play some games with it, make some crazy dual lists, try to break what we have so we can make a stronger product. At the end of the day, all of this is for you guys. We’re not just looking to make missions that will only live in the events space. We’re ultimately going to be trying to provide a format that can work for pick up games when you just wanna play with your buds outside a campaign.
Ryan: We want our creations to get blown apart by the communities’ testing and play experiences. What do you enjoy, what absolutely sucks, it's all important. Whether it’s terrain, something abusable in list building, or a mission mechanic that just isn’t quite working, the main objective here is to make the best competitive environment possible for Trench Crusade to thrive in. Be sweaty, beat the dingle dangle out of your homies, but also make sure to have a fun time.
Norman: You can submit feedback at our inbox at CompCrusade@Goonhammer.com but the best way to make sure we see (and address) your feedback is to post it in the Goonhammer discord. This is a Patron only discord, but it's a place we’re looking at daily and somewhere where we can directly respond to your comments and have a more in depth conversation about your feedback. We’ll be trying to do more of these articles in the future, going more in depth on some of our design decisions and our philosophy on some upcoming changes. Overall though, we want to be as transparent as possible with this process. As we make changes we want you to know why we made those changes. So until next time, happy trenchin!
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Trench Crusade, Trench Ghost Warband - Credit: Bair
Gregori Gula Credit: MildNorman
Credit: Sammie Dae
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