Trench Crusade Faction Guide: Painting Nuns, Inquisitors, Machine Cult and More
Trench Crusade has one of the most distinctive visual identities in modern wargaming. Every faction sits somewhere between WWI horror and medieval religious iconography, which makes it genuinely exciting to paint. The challenge is leaning into that aesthetic without everything turning into a brown muddy mess. Here is how I approach the main factions and what actually works on the table.
The Trench Pilgrims and Holy Orders
This faction is all about abject devotion. Think rough-spun robes, exposed wounds, crude wooden crosses and a colour palette that reads almost monastic. I start with a zenithal prime in black and white, which gives you the shadows for free before any paint goes down. From there, robes work beautifully with thin layers of Vallejo Model Color Buff over a grey basecoat, washed back with a Seraphim Sepia and Agrax Earthshade mix. Let the wash pool into the folds rather than tidying it up too much. These people are not clean.
The Trench Crusade style Flagellant is a brilliant centrepiece for this approach. The scarring and rope textures reward stippled drybrushing with a light flesh tone, and a very thin glaze of Carroburg Crimson around wounds ties everything together without looking painted-on.
For the Nuns, I keep habits in black with a strong highlight progression rather than going grey. Start black, edge up to a cold dark blue like Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue, then a final thin highlight of pure cold grey. It reads as black in normal light but has real depth on a lit shelf or in photos.
The Inquisition
Inquisitors want authority and menace. Rich deep reds, tarnished gold, aged leather. I basecoat armour plates in Vallejo Panzer Aces Dark Rust for a starting point that already has warmth, then build metallic layers using a wet palette to keep things workable. NMM is worth the effort here if you have the patience because it photographs better than true metallic and forces you to think about light sources properly.
The Trench Crusade style Inquisitor has great large flat surfaces on the coat that suit Object Source Lighting from a lantern or brazier. I add a very subtle OSL in a warm orange-yellow with a heavily thinned Yriel Yellow, building up from almost nothing. Less is always more with OSL until you really have a feel for where the light would fall.
The Machine Cult
Rust, oil stains, exposed mechanisms. The fun here is playing contrast between cold industrial metal and organic flesh. Prime in black, then stipple a mix of Ryza Rust and Jokaero Orange randomly across metal areas before sealing it under a Nuln Oil wash. This gives corrosion that sits under the metallic layer rather than sitting on top of it, which looks far more convincing. Stipple lightly with Leadbelcher or Vallejo Model Air Steel after the wash and the rust peeks through.
Tubes and cables benefit from a deliberate colour coding approach. Pick two or three accent colours and stick to them across the whole model. It keeps a complex miniature readable without needing to paint every single element differently.
Medics and Support Figures
White is one of the hardest colours to paint well. The Trench Crusade style Medic Nun puts that front and centre with her habit. The key is accepting that white is never actually white on a miniature. Basecoat in Ulthuan Grey, shade the deepest recesses with a very diluted Apothecary White Contrast or thinned Blue Tone, then highlight back up through White Scar to pure white only on the most extreme edges. Bloodstains on the apron are a small detail that does a lot of storytelling work. A heavily watered-down Mephiston Red with a touch of Rhinox Hide dries down to a convincing dried blood rather than fresh red.
Basing for the Trench
Almost every Trench Crusade faction benefits from a consistent muddy trench basing scheme. Stirland Mud technical paint, some grit, a few pieces of static grass going yellow-brown, and a gloss varnish patch for standing water. It ties different faction elements together on the same table and grounds the whole aesthetic. A single red poppy or small skull detail on a few bases adds that WWI weight without overdoing it.
The setting rewards painters who commit to the grimness of it. Push the weathering further than feels comfortable and the whole warband comes to life.