Trench Crusade: Stoßtruppen of the Free State of Prussia Plastic Kit Review

Welcome, everyone, to our latest Trench Crusade article. This time, we’re going to be taking a look at the first Trench Crusade plastic Kit, the Stoßtruppen of the Free State of Prussia. We’ll be taking a look at the kit in question, building and painting a few models and sharing our thoughts. We’d like to thank Factory Fortress for providing these miniatures for our review.

Who Are the Stoßtruppen of the Free States of Prussia?

Across the many battlefields within the Levant, the heretical forces have created formidable obstacles for the faithful to overcome in their mission to push back and reclaim lost territories. However, this is no easy task, with constant danger lurking across No Man’s Land, including stalking Death Commandos and bombardments from Artillery Witches. Even the very barbed wire used by the heretical forces seems to have a mind of its own, entangling the faithful and dragging them down.

To counter and surpass the many traps laid upon No Man’s Land, the Duke of Antioch calls upon the most elite warriors available to him: The Stoßtruppen of the Free States of Prussia. The Stoßtruppen excel at breaching enemy fortifications and communicate almost exclusively through hand gestures to ensure they are never spotted. Once they have reached their targets, the real fight begins! From hurling grenades into bunkers and trenches to unleashing torrents of flame, the Stoßtruppen never relent in their assault, breaking the heretical forces and claiming victory.

To earn the honour of being a Stoßtruppen, one must possess excellent athletic ability, an uncanny talent for finding cover in the unlikeliest places, and most importantly, iron in one's soul. One must be willing to stare down the demons of hell and smirk at the challenge.

What’s in the Box?

Credit: Factory Fortress

The box allows you to build 8 miniatures, each having two options to choose from (option A or B). Grabbing two boxes of these will enable you to build 16 different-looking models. The set contains:

Hauptmann (Lieutenant)
Feldkaplan (Trench Cleric)
3 Yeomen
3 Stoßtruppen (Shocktroopers)
Bases

The different build options are not purely aesthetic, though, as alongside the box there is a QR code that takes you to a digital document that not only gives you the lore, rules, and building instructions, but also two possible starting 700 Ducat lists. Build A is a get-in-your-face, close-range build, whilst Build B focuses on ranged combat, but you’re more vulnerable. If you are more of a WYSIWYG person, you can simply build all your models either A or B, and follow the list accordingly.

Building the Models

Dandy: Getting straight to the point: The sprues are of excellent quality, with the multi-part plastic kit having some great detail. This is my first plastic kit from Archon Studios, so I was intrigued going in as to how the quality would be. For me, things like contact points and mould lines are the most significant factors. I’m not a fan of cleaning, so having to do a lot of it because of these factors is frustrating. Luckily, for the most part, the contact points of the sprues were easy to remove and, in places, allowed for easy, natural clean-up. Mould lines are very thin and easy to remove. Except for the Hauptmann helmet piece, which had a mould line running around the helmet, and since it’s not a flat piece, the mould line weaved along the bumps and dents on the helmet. Not too much of an issue, however. Overall, a really lovely and well-designed sprue layout in terms of quality. The plastic felt a little softer than GW plastic, which made snipping, mould removal, and general cleanup more smoother and quicker.

Norman: As someone who normally only works with GW plastics, I was pleasantly surprised to see similar quality here and a few improvements to what I was used to seeing. The quality of the plastic itself was fantastic, and the sprue layout made sense. Something I noticed pretty quickly was the number stamps that indicate which piece is which were much less pronounced than on a GW sprue, which resulted in a bit more hunting for bits as I went. That said the numbers also have arrow indicators on them which point to the relevant bit which helps cut down on confusion.

I ran a quick experiment to see how the sprue was laid out. I went straight for building the Feldkaplan and a random Yeoman to see just how much traveling I’d have to do on the sprue. I’m happy to report all the bits were clustered in a logical way and the pieces themselves went together well. The models have pretty distinct arm joints, making kitbashing pretty easy with some clipping and trimming and there were only a couple fiddly bits on the Feldkaplan.

Credit: Dandy

Painting the Models

Credit: Dandy

Dandy: What I really liked about the sculpts when painting them was how easy they are to paint in both a grimdark or a more traditional “cleaner” style. There are enough details in the models that you can pick out and highlight if you wish, but not enough to overwhelm you as a painter, making you feel forced to pick them out. I chose the Hauptmann and the caped Stoßtruppe as models to test out. For the Hauptmann, I opted for the iconic aura pose, using only the Tank Splitter Sword, as seen in the Artwork. I initially feared there wouldn’t be enough detail to work with if I opted for this pose, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is potential to really show off more of the details, if you so desire. At the back, there are satchels, grenades and a pistol holster, as well as some pauldron details that aren’t initially present in the product photos. After a zenithal prime, I went right to work covering most of it in metallics, opting for Heavy Metal from Army Painter. Even though the model is 85-90% metallic, there are enough rivets, edges, and whatnot for it not to be boring to paint, and whether you want to go for a clean battle suit look or dirty it down with rust and filth, it’s easy to do with this sculpt. There are no finicky parts to get to or require some finger yoga to access. It’s a clean, easy-to-paint sculpt that lets you paint grimdark or clean, with lots of possibilities in between. The Stoßtruppe similarly has no complex or hard-to-reach parts to paint, and offers a good range of fabrics or armour pieces to pick out details and differentiate everything cleanly, or unify it more in a grimdark style paint job. The cloak, especially, is a big focal point that highlights this design idea. You can easily paint it cleanly with lovely smooth blends, or rough it up with mud and dirt, using drybrushing.

Credit: Dandy

Final Thoughts

Dandy: If this is the way that Factory Fortress are going moving forward with releasing their kits, I’m all for it! The models were a joy to assemble and paint, and it’s good to have a plastic kit that can compete with GW in terms of quality, as well as a sculpt that allows different avenues of painting techniques and styles. Factory Fortress wants to get multiple kits for all the variants they have, and well, that makes me excited for the future of this game and how these variants are going to look!

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Tags: trench crusade | new antioch