Trench Crusade

PM info and dates
3 months ago – Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 11:04:59 AM

Greetings Crusaders,

A very good day to all of you and we hope you had a nice weekend!

As promised, we’re back with info about the upcoming Pledge Manager. We’ll start with the current state of affairs, move on to dates and then a few specifics of how everything will work.

Backerkit

So, the main reason that we’re not going live today is one that Lucifer himself no doubt put on this earth just to test me over the past week: Sales Taxes. As we mentioned during the campaign, you’ll be charged these during the PM and they’re calculated depending on your billing location. 

Originally we were working with Gamefound who automatically calculate and collect these taxes (nice and simple for us). However, in our setup UK, EU and RoW backers will be receiving products from two different regions: minis from the UK and books from the EU. Gamefound’s system does not allow for this and in their defense it is very uncommon for a project to do this.

Therefore we’ve pivoted to a platform called Backerkit whose system does allow for this. Therefore, when your invitations arrive later this week, they will be from Backerkit, not Gamefound.

I do want to emphasise that this is the only reason we’ve changed platforms, Gamefound is still an excellent service and a great team. At the same time, I want to thank Backerkit for taking us on so fast and for all the help they’ve provided.

Dates

Now, as Backerkit doesn’t calculate taxes automatically, I’ve had to spend a lot of time elbow deep in international tax rates for our different products.

Needless to say, I would rather have been broken upon the wheel, sold as a wretched or drunk a Black Grail-bomb. But, as they say, we all make our own personal hells and this is mine. A shout out to our American friends because by the meta-christ how do you do this every year URGH.

Ok, venting aside, this should be completed and checked by the end of tomorrow along with the other final preparations.

Therefore the plan is as follows:

• Monday 25th - Tuesday 26th: Final preps and checks.
• Wednesday 27th: Alpha test with a small group of Apostles, Trench Wardens and Missionaries (basically community members from the Discord server). A quick tryout with a very small group of people to catch any major issues.
• Thursday 28th: Beta Smoke test. With the major problems (hopefully) out of the way, 5% of you chosen at random will receive your Invitations to the Backerkit. Hopefully this will catch any remaining issues before…
• Friday 29th: PM launches. This will be the full launch for all backers and you should receive your invitation before the end of the weekend.

The PM will run from Friday the 29th of November until the morning of Monday the 15th of December. 

A late pledge option will be running at the same time and I will of course post and share the link.

Overview

A quick preview of the page so you all know what to expect:

First of all, once you boot up the PM, if you pledged for at the $85 Physical Warband or $67 Digital Warband levels, you’ll be prompted to choose the warband you’d like to receive.

You’ll then be able to move on to the Add-ons section. Backerkit is much easier to use than Kickstarter and everything is arranged like for an online store. You click, add to cart and done.

As a reminder, any funds pledged during the campaign over your selected pledge level are converted to credits on BK. You need to select the add-ons you wish to receive. They have not been added to your cart automatically.

Once you’ve finished adding things to your cart, you proceed through a checkout process like those you’ve no doubt seen a million times before. Simple!

For those of you wondering, the late pledge option will look very similar.

Erratas

A few quick changes and corrections:

Bundles -> Reinforcements

Some of you may have noticed from the above image, but “Faction bundles” have been renamed to “reinforcements” for clarity.

HL bundle

The Heretic Legion Digital Reinforcements set is now correctly priced.

Bases

This was forgotten in our last update but during our visit to OG we were given samples of the bases that will be supplied with physical minis and were surprised to find that they were not plastic but indeed PLA printed. Now, before some of you go for the comments section, I know what you’re thinking and, honestly, we were very impressed. You can barely feel any print lines, let alone see them. After a base coat and, at the most, maybe a little bit of sanding, these will be indistinguishable from plastic bases. They also come with recesses for magnets for those of you that use them.

Shipping 

As a reminder, you will only be paying shipping for the books during the PM. Those of you ordering physical minis or dice will be contacted after the PM by OG and BoD respectively to confirm shipping addresses and pay the required costs.

Also, whilst double checking shipping prices for the campaign, we were warned by our suppliers that due to the physical products being shipped next year, there will be a general price increase across the board like every year and I didn’t factor this into the pricing on the campaign page. I apologise to you all for what is an oversight on my part. The increase roughly translates to a $2-$5 increase in shipping depending on your location.

Delivery order

Insofar as it is possible, OG will be delivering rewards based on your Kickstarter backer number, with the lowest numbers receiving their rewards first. However, this is not a hard and fast rule. It may change during the delivery process if it allows OG to get packages out the door faster.

We'll be back with more info very soon!

Only-Games visit and the Pledge Manager
3 months ago – Mon, Nov 18, 2024 at 11:13:49 AM

Greetings Crusaders,

I hope you’ve all had a good weekend and are ready for some news!

Only-Games facility visit

So what I should have been doing last week is recovering after the madness that was the KS campaign. And if any of my friends or family ask, please tell them that I was indeed having a long lie down in a dark room.

What I was actually doing though was going to London with James to visit Only-Games. Given the success of the campaign we all thought it would be best to have a face to face meeting as soon as possible.

We sat down and had a long discussion about the project and how it was going to be fulfilled, going into a lot of detail which I’m going to break down for you all here. To put it succinctly though, both me and James walked away very reassured.

The first reason for this is their setup. And I’m not talking about 3D printers here. Of course they have 2 rooms full of machines going day and night but, honestly, anyone with a credit card can have that. It’s the stages that come after the printing: Quality control, sorting and packing where OG have really innovated. The system they’ve developed tracks parts all the way through the process, from providing quality control agents with detailed 3D renders to check for defaults, all the way through to a barcode system to double check that all parts are present and correct for packing and shipping.

Next, their experience: Most of you will know Shop3D for their on demand printing services but they also have a lot of experience with bulk printing. They’re currently fulfilling a campaign for Greytide Studios which will be shipping even more individual pieces than we will for TC. We got to see how they were handling this and, once again, no notes.

Last, but not least, is that Factory Fortress and Only-Games clearly have a lot in common and get along like a heretic on fire. We have very similar views on miniatures, the industry and the wargaming community. They are very aware of the situation and the trust we’re placing in them with this project. At the same time, they’ve been waiting for an opportunity to show the world what they can really do, so they’re as committed to getting this done as we are.

For those of you that had some concerns, we also talked about some of the complaints levied against OG and they were very honest with their replies. They’re a company that’s really trying to push the boundaries of what 3D printing can do for the miniatures world. Of course, there have been teething issues as they’ve grown but they’ve continued to improve their process, fix any issues and, most importantly, make sure that everyone always receives their minis. A good example of this would be the aforementioned Greytide campaign. They found an issue with a particular piece and managed to get it fixed very quickly, another big advantage to 3D printing. Only 30 or so packages went out with the faulty piece and those concerned have had parts reprinted and sent.

So, as I said before, we’re very reassured after our visit (and I’m sleeping a lot better). But, what does that mean for delivery, Jamie? I hear you all cry.

Well it’s good news. Despite having around 3K more orders than the original estimation, Only-Games is standing firm on the 3-5 month delivery window. Barring any unforeseen issues, everyone will have their miniatures before the summer of 2025.

The current plan is to spend the rest of the year test printing and finalizing the files for bulk printing as well as pre-producing as much as possible. Things will really start up in January and the first packages will start to ship out before the end of the month.

I’ll finish with some photos of the test prints that we picked up whilst we were there. Like with the pics on the KS page, almost no cleanup was done on these. There’s a few changes we want to make to the thickness of certain parts (like the Plague Knight’s polearm) but otherwise we’re very happy with the results!

The Pledge Manager

The visit to OG did have one downside in that it took up a lot of my time last week. I was not able to finalize the pledge manager and still need some time to sort out the last few details and give it a test run. Therefore, the PM will now be launching next week instead. I’ll be back next monday (the 25th) with news and a final date, but it will be during the week starting on the 25th!

Obviously this doesn’t delay the delivery to the backers who pledged physical miniatures but it will technically push the delivery of STL files back by a week or so. I'm sorry about this folks but it really was worth it to get physical production locked in. Also, jokes aside, I needed to ease off the throttle a bit this weekend after 3 weeks of frantic activity and just couldn’t get it done. I hope you can all understand.

I’ll finish by saying that we’re almost at the 20,000 members mark on Discord and 40,000 on Facebook! Our mods have also just finished doing a redesign of the Discord server too so if you're looking for a place to talk lore, share your warband plans or find crusaders in your area to play with, feel free to join us!

Have a great week folks and we’ll be back soon with more news!

The Battle is over. The War begins.
4 months ago – Tue, Nov 12, 2024 at 11:00:19 AM

Crusaders,

What a ride. We’ve said it before but it bears repeating; we never expected this level of support but we are eternally grateful for it.

What humbles and motivates us the most is the turnout. There are well over 20,000 of you in the trenches with us now. That, folks, is one hell of a community.

And with a community like this, we can make one hell of a game…

So, thank you all. I said before that this kind of support changes lives and it really will. We now get to look much further into the game’s future than we ever could have hoped. We have so many ideas and plans that we are very excited to share.

But.

First things first.

This part of the campaign is over and the next step is the pledge manager. This is where you'll be able to confirm exactly what you'd like to receive as well as sorting out billing and shipping details. Rest assured that you can increase your pledge level and add more rewards during this time too.

You can expect an email invitation to a site called Gamefound sometime around the middle of next week. This is not a hard date however. The page is almost ready, all we need to do is finalize a few fiddly details. These are nevertheless very important given the number of backers, so it will take the time it takes to get it right. We’ll be sure to put out an update to let you all know where we are with things early next week.

Until then we’ll still be here in the comments to answer questions and you can also join the Discord for even more TC shenanigans.

Our deepest thanks once again, Crusaders.

See you in the trenches.

Jamie, Mike, Tuomas & James.

And because we can’t leave without showing you something cool, from the legend himself, Paul Bonner…

Bishops of the Brush
4 months ago – Sun, Nov 10, 2024 at 08:07:26 AM

Greetings Crusaders,

Today we have some more gorgeous pics to get you inspired to paint! This time it's from out own studio team.

Starting with some of the Court models from Stéphane Nguyen:

All the Court models were sculpted by Akshay Kumar 

We also have some new pics from Loïc Muzy!

As well as a rather interesting "winter war" colour scheme

The Lieutenant and Trench Cleric were sculpted by Joaquin Revilla Martín
The Yeomen were sculpted by Edoardo Fusi
New Antioch models were painted by Martin Grandbarbe
Terrain was sculpted by Marco Chitarrini and painted by Loic Muzy

 

Pontifex of Paint
4 months ago – Sat, Nov 09, 2024 at 04:03:43 AM

Greetings Crusaders,

As this weeks update's have featured a LOT of words, how about some photos this week-end to get your mojo going to work on some minis?

Cool? Cool.

We are extremely proud to present these stunning Trench Crusade models produced by  Alessandro Bonavero of @dark_ages_workshop using secret, esoteric techniques of miniature painting that he has developed over decades of dedication to his art. 

His unique style, uncompromising vision and skill at creating dramatic photography to match his painting style is the perfect match for Trench Crusade. 

The rulebook will feature a full section of Alessandro's photographs of the game miniatures he has painted, along with his custom-built terrain backdrops, as well as introduction to the techniques he uses to achieve these truly grimdark results. 

We look forward to further collaboration with Alessandro, and hope to one day do a Trench Crusade painting video with him!