Building Your First Custom Trench Crusade Warband

Trench Crusade has grabbed a lot of hobbyists by the throat recently, and honestly it's easy to see why. The setting is bleak, theologically weird, and dripping with painting opportunity. If you're looking to build a small warband and want something with real character on the table, here's how I'd approach it from scratch.

Start with your faction identity before you buy or print a single model. Trench Crusade warbands tend to cluster around a visual theme: flagellant zealots, battle nuns, inquisitorial agents, devotional cultists. Pick one and let it shape every decision that follows. A focused warband always looks better than a grab-bag of cool models, even if the individual pieces are excellent. Write down three adjectives that describe your warband's vibe. Mine for a recent project were: penitent, weathered, candlelit. Those three words informed every colour choice right through to the basing.

Once you have a theme, think about your core models. For a devotional or inquisitorial warband, I'd suggest four to six models to start. That's a manageable painting commitment and enough to give the group visual cohesion. The Trench Crusade style Inquisitor makes a strong leader model because the silhouette reads clearly at arm's length, which matters on a crowded table. Pair that with a couple of rank-and-file pieces and you have a starter core to build on.

On the painting side, the aesthetic rewards a specific approach. I zenithal prime everything in this range: black rattle can from below, then a Vallejo grey primer from roughly 45 degrees above, and a final white pass almost straight down. That gives you a built-in shadow map before a single brush stroke goes down. From there, thin washes of Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil do a lot of the heavy lifting on robes and leather. Let them pool naturally. These models earn their grime.

Accent colours are where you define the warband's identity. I keep them to two: one warm (ochre, rust, dried blood) and one desaturated cool (off-white, aged linen, pale bone). The Flagellant is a great test piece for this because there's so much exposed skin and rough cloth. Skin in this setting should look rough and sun-starved, so I start with Doombull Brown, work up through Cadian Fleshtone, and glaze back down with thinned Reikland Fleshshade rather than going bright. You want suffering, not a suntan.

Basing ties everything together and it's where a lot of warbands either win or lose visually. For a trench warfare aesthetic I use a sand and PVA texture base, paint it Rhinox Hide, drybrush Karak Stone, then add a few small stones and some static grass that's been drybrushed towards yellow to suggest dying ground. If you want to push it further, a thin gloss varnish in one corner of each base simulates standing water beautifully. A warband sitting in shared mud immediately reads as a coherent group, even if the models themselves vary.

When you're ready to expand beyond your initial core, think about what visual role each new model adds. A support character like the Medic Nun gives you a strong focal point with all that white cloth, and white is genuinely one of the more rewarding things to paint in a grimdark palette because it lets you push shadows much cooler than the rest of the warband. I use a Apothecary White contrast base then glaze back in with thinned Ulthuan Grey and Celestra Grey for depth, keeping the shadows slightly blue. It reads as white to the eye but has real dimension up close.

Use a proper wet palette for anything you're blending on cloth or skin. And don't rush the washes. Apply them, walk away, let them dry completely before you do anything else over the top.

The warband format is one of the best things about games like Trench Crusade. A small model count means you can actually spend real time on each piece. Use that. These models reward patience.