Cangames - Trench Crusade - Batt Report

Howdy folks,

Another Cangames related post...I was really pumped when I saw a Trench Crusade game pop-up in the schedule that I immediately jumped all over it. Seeing that my buddy Mike was running the game, I also knew it was going to be a really good session.

So I have been seeing a lot of posts and comments regarding Trench Crusade for the past year or so, and like I said, when I saw it on the schedule, I was really pumped to give it a shot. In a nutshell, if you haven’t heard of it, Trench Crusade is the ongoing fight between heaven and hell with demons moving onto the earthly plane while also capturing the context or the setting of World War I. The battlefield has become this apocalyptic trench line and no-man’s land where religiously inspired factions can fight the armies of hell. Whatever your religious flavor is, that’s cool, my main focus on this has definitely been more so on the concept, art, the overall idea, and the setting of World War I feels very fitting.

Overall, each character/player has a variety of stats, kind of the normal ones…shoot, melee, health, and maybe a couple of others…the Classics. The main thing with each of the factions and the character types or leader type, is they have their own individual traits, specials, and accumulating a blood rating provides another potential modifier to the number of dice that you can use in your attacks and in your defense.

All that to say, I was looking forward to see how the models looked on the table and give this a shot. Now, admittedly, I think I have forgotten more than I remember about the game, but I do remember having a lot of fun so we’ll just have to go by the pictures and have some random comments there.

Enjoy the pics!

The overall battle. The shrine in the middle complete with skulls, and wall segments, and what not on the periphery. Each player started from their own corner and just slug-fested from there.

My army from hell, big ole demon on the left, the dapper looking lad next to him is my hell knight, and three pig looking things that I couldn’t remember what they were. But they are Piggly, Wiggly, and Fred.

The hell night took a step on the battlefield takes long range shot at one of the French looking figures, which I think were LDS.

Piggly jumps into the battlefield, and set up near one of the objectives (I guess I should’ve mentioned there were a number of objectives for each player to control gaining one victory point or per round objective).

You can see some movements around the table. Piggly gets knocked down bottom right part of the picture. The LDS Troops are moving to a corridor or walkway, squaring off against Piggly. At the top part of the picture you can see some Stosstruppen, can’t remember their faction, And at the top right of the picture, some very British inspired troops are slowly making their way into the field.

Youcan see the corridor where the walkway has become a very target rich environment Piggly‘s in their Wiggly’s in there and I think Fred is as well. Lotta back-and-forth between the demons and the LDS, and I think at one point one of the British players starts throwing grenades at us caue, well… we’re at target rich environment. My pig dudes are really good on the melee side of the action.

And around this time, I finally realized that my big ass Demon has a killer special action where I get to swing a couple of levers and cause a lot of chaos. It’s pretty awesome. So my demon flies over the wall and starts hacking the LDS to pieces

The demon does the devils work, and then heads over to the other side of the field to start dealing with the British type dudes.

And of course, the hell night is able to do double range attacks again, which is pretty awesome and he looks pretty gnarly.

Random action shot between the LDS and the stormtrooper type dudes, shooting through windows and what not.

All well, my hell knight and demon clean up the mess on the right side table.

Certainly by this point, the mechanics of the game are going pretty quick for us. And each faction is scoring hits on the other, victory points are being tallied up quickly. As it turns out the storm trooper dudes are getting about three points per round because they’ve been pretty free clear for most of the game. The next couple of rounds take us to the end of the game. The demons take some serious hits when all the pig dudes are gone and my big ass demon is killed, which ended up being really anticlimatic. But I think in the end I ended up with the second highest amount of victory, points, and the game was super enjoyable overall. 

Painting Update - Cabal & Hydra Reinforcements

Howdy folks,

I hope your winter is going well. I think we may be on the backside of the cold weather here...we did have some fairly cold temperatures in the last month but we did have some above freezing temps in the last few days.

Carrying on with my Marvel Crisis Protocol progress, I just finished up the Arnim Zola and Baron Von Strucker pack. The size of Zola is pretty impressive and the torso of the model presents its own challenge, given it is a clear piece so you can see the face of the robotic beast. I did have a Sorastro painting guide to help me out, but this time I also didn't overly stress on OCD-isms that have plagued me in the past...maybe I'm getting more confident with results, who knows.

The models themselves were really great to paint. Strucker is pretty straight forward and there seems to be a variety of characters in the Marvel world that rock the green jumpsuits with style...so I had plenty of appropriate shades to choose from. The main challenge with Strucker was painting the hydra chest symbol on his jumpsuit - for that I had to pull out the magnifying goggles.

Probably the biggest difference that I did this time came to the bases. Each character has some degree of debris that they are standing on and just having them straight up on the base didn't look right. There really wasn't much transition and the debris looked out of place. This time I took out some of my Citadel texture paints (choosing Astrogranite Debris) and build up some transition around the debris feature. I did this for each model. Painting up Zola also gave me the chance to use Citadel contrast paint on his legs to show some NMM technique - I'm really happy with the results.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

The big man and the Hydra man...

The Arnim Zola fashion shoot - a few angles to see how the big man turned out. He painted up really quickly and the debris was a fairly quick wash and dry brush using VJ Dark Sea Blue and then SC75 Caribbean Blue.

The main Hydra man...I took some similar inspiration for the debris, using the blues on the few bricks that were part of Struckers base. I also added a few chunks of rock and smaller stone to build up along with the Astrogranite Debris.

Inspired by my Asgardian group shot, I thought I would get Red Skull and the Baron for a Cabal affiliated group - of course only realizing now that Crossbones was there in spirit only.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       4, +2

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +4

Painting Update - More Asgardians

Howdy everyone,

First painting post of the new year and brings me to the last Asgardian figures that I had waiting to be painted from Marvel Crisis Protocol. I recently finished Skurge and Heimdall in December and I have just finished up Thor and Valkyrie. I was lucky enough to have another excellent Sorastro video to refer to for painting Thor. For Valkyrie, I referred to some google search images and the box art that Atomic Mass Games had drawn up for this expansion.

The most consistent thing that I can say about these Asgardian's is that they have certainly pushed my comfort zone with non metal metallic techniques. Thanos was very challenging for me, but almost each Asgardian is sporting some sort of armour or weapon that screams NMM, and these two were no different. Thor also added an additional opportunity and challenge with object source lighting depending on how one wanted to go with the hammer. 

Sorastro's Painting - Thor

I elected to follow Sorastro's video fairly closely to push myself to try these elements out...and I'm happy with the outcome (although my pics seemed to have blurred or muted the overall effect - another thing to learn more about I guess), and Valkyrie was a lot of fun as well as I went fairly free with the model, not stressing over any specific paint scheme or pattern. In the end, like I said, I followed the box art as I liked that look the most.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Thor and Valkyrie

...as I said, my camera seems to have muted the object source lighting affects of the hammer, I promise, they do look much better in person. I had actually done them with the intention of them popping on the right arm. They are fairly bright in some places.

I had some sort of reaction with my dullcote spray and it left this white film over sections of Thor's cape. I have since gone back and repainted these portions of the cape to cover up the film.

Trying to get the right NMM on her swords proved to be rather challenging and admittedly I think I may have 'whited out' the reflection along the main edge. The swords were rather difficult as there were multiple edges for highlights...took a few tries, in the end I stuck with the version I liked the most. But definitely more to learn for me.

The whole Asgardian crew...looking forward to getting all of them on the table at once.

2026's Trek up Mt. Shame

Painted

15mm         0    

28mm+       2

Terrain        0

  

Bought        0

Progress   +2

Painting Update - More Asgardians - Heimdall and Skurge

Howdy folks,

I think this is probably my last post for the year…maybe…and thought I’d post two more Asgardian warriors from Marvel Crisis Protocols. I’ve had this pack on the table for some time, and again I had another great Sorastro video to refer to. His Heimdall video is excellent! Unfortunately, I was left to my own vices for Skurge, lol.

Anywho, the biggest challenge for me has got to be doing this painting with no metallics. I’m enjoying the challenge, and I think it is upping my painting game…but I still have a lot to learn and work on. With that, the non-metal metallic work is fun but boy it sure tested me with these two figures. I think for Heimdall I revisited his armour about 3 times, and Skurge’s axe took me 4 tries to get to a point I could live with.

The bifrost elements that come with Heimdall really set the scene and using Sorastro’s guide, they gave me another opportunity to try out Citadel’s contrast paints. They come in some great colours but can be a little finicky in terms of coverage and wearing off or transfer from the model to skin or back to the brush.

I leaned pretty heavy on the artwork that came with the pack and some comic book shots I was able to find on Google to sort out Skurge. I thought the box art was too bright, so I wanted to see a few other examples. In the end, I settled on a toned down version from the box art and a couple of google images.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Running up that Lead/Plastic Hill...

Painted

1/200             4 

15mm          85    

28mm+        38, +2

Terrain           1

  

Bought        42

Progress   +86