Trench Crusade has taken the world by storm since its Kickstarter last year. One of the things that makes the game so appealing is how flexible the ruleset is and how open Factory Fortress Inc has been to incorporating third party content into the game. In that spirit Creature Caster is doing a FronTier Campaign on Myminifactory to fund a run of models, rules, and a whole mess of lore for their own custom Black Grail subfaction: The Great Hunger. Will this fill the aching void in my belly for more goopy gross dudes with good rules? Let's take a look.

What Is Great Hunger?

At its core, the Great Hunger is a Black Grail subfaction that focuses on Thralls, the little zombie bozos on the bottom of the Black Grail roster. It focuses on making them the stars of the show, letting you play out the classic zombie horde scenario we’ve seen in larger scale games. The rules themselves were also made with some help by the Factory Fortress team so no need to worry about it not gelling with the rest of the systems of the game.

It's a bit more than that though, I have to reiterate that Creature Caster is doing a full suite of 25+ models for this release, including both their own takes on established Black Grail models and brand new units for the faction exclusive to this subfaction. On top of that you also get a 72 page book (available as a digital release alongside any purchase or physical for $19.99) that has short stories, lore, art, photography and, of course, the rules.

This is a monumental release and even if you’re not super into the Great Hunger play style (although it's fun as hell and well worth a try) there’s models here for the default warband as well and the sculpts are phenomenal.

How Can I Get Great Hunger

So how do you get your hands on this stuff? Well there’s a FronTier (Myminifactory’s crowdfunding system) going on right now you can find here with more details on the Great Hunger. Don’t worry though; if you don’t have a 3d printer at home, Creature Caster is providing options to purchase both physical minis and the STLs so you can get in on this cool subfaction without needing to have the poison goo machine in your home.

Alternatively, there is an option to purchase both the digital and physical models at a discounted rate (essentially full price for the physical set and 50% off the digital set). This gives you the best of both worlds, as you can print off and play with your Great Hunger models while you wait for the resin models to arrive. Why would you want to do that? Creature Caster has a partner who has taken over their miniature cast, and from what I’ve seen - it is an absolutely phenomenal blend of resin combined with injection machinery. The sculpts themselves are incredibly crisp, and I’ve been told by Creature Caster themselves that the models will arrive in only a few easy to assemble pieces, and absolutely zero clean-up that you would be used to with traditional poured resin miniatures. Here's an example of the quality of miniature you can expect:

There’s a few more options to buy, and add-ons are being added as the campaign hits stretch goals. The big bundle is the Great Hunger set which gets you all of the stuff you need to play the faction (basically everything except the Heralds which exist in a separate Black Grail Add-on) as well as any stretch goals the campaign meets.

How Does It Play

Gregori Gula Credit: MildNorman

Alright, we talked a ton about how you can get all the cool stuff, but how does it feel on the table? The short answer is: Pretty fucking cool. I've been a bit Black Grail guy since the launch of Trench Crusade, and I can say Great Hunger feels familiar enough to stay within the brand but new enough to differentiate it significantly from vanilla Black Grail or Dirge of the Great Hegemon.

At its core, Thralls are the star of the show. Because of this, you can’t take most of your ranged weapon options or the more elite melee equipment, but the Cradle of Filth rule lets you bring extra thralls over the model cap, and your thralls are juiced up with Blighted Claws. They also get access to the rule that makes the whole subfaction tick: Ravenous Infection. This allows them to put an Infection Marker on something within 1” as a Risky Action. This may sound somewhat small if you haven’t seen it in action, but this lets you build towards Blood Baths quickly and is your main way of dealing with Armor.

Great Hunger also gets access to its own spells, similar to how Court of the Seven Headed Serpent casts Goetic Magic. While these are limited to your Matagot Hag, Lord of Tumors, or Gregori Gulas, a lot of the spells available are focused on keeping your hordes active and alive.

The custom models, the Gregori Gula and Matagot Hag are both all stars as well. The Hag acts as a support piece, playing the role of musician and spell caster. She can also have shots blocked for her by nearby thralls, which is really useful considering how hard she is to hide. The Gregori Gula on the other hand is a missile. With fast movement, fly and even infiltrator, you can shoot this guy across the field and cause havoc. While he doesn’t have TOUGH, he can always come back after being put out of action by eating a thrall that goes near his dormant body. These two are welcome additions to the roster and complement the playstyle nicely.

Your other units aren’t left out to dry either. While you can’t take Amalgams or Heralds in Great Hunger, all the other units get an update or two. Your Corpse Guard (referred to as Desiccated Husks) get access to Strong, allowing you to create mini knights to run around and cause problems on purpose. Meanwhile Plague Knights (called Butcher Knights) get access to three new ranks which grant a variety of cool upgrades. Lastly the Hounds (called Prowlers) can take the new Grasping Maw equipment which lets you move an enemy model D6” towards them, which can make for some nasty set ups.

There’s also a whole slew of neat equipment and a few other tidbits, but we’ll dive deeper into that when we do our Tactics 101 article in a few weeks. Overall though there’s a lot to like here and a lot of depth to the subfaction.

You can check out the FronTier here, and stay tuned over the next few weeks for more coverage on how to play the faction, what they’re all about, and how to paint some of the new models.

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Tags: trench crusade | Creature Caster | great hunger