Carcass Front review: Leviathan rises in Trench Crusade’s ambitious new campaign box

Trench Crusade’s first physical campaign box has arrived, and it’s carrying a lot of weight on its shoulders: two brand new plastic warbands, a hefty lore-packed campaign book, and the promise of doubling as an entry point for newcomers to the setting. In this review, we unbox every component of Carcass Front in a 4K video, walk through the full campaign book, and show you high-res sprue images for the Heretic Naval Raiders, Procession of the Sacred Affliction, and the terrain and tokens. Leviathan awakes!

The Trench Crusade: Carcass Front campaign box is up for preorder right now, with the official release date set for 31 August 2026. The RRP is £100 / 120 € / $130.

Included in the box are:

• Heretic Naval Raiders warband (7 models)
• Procession of the Sacred Affliction warband (9 plastic models)
• 6 scatter terrain pieces (4 tank traps, 3 naval mines)
• 1 sprue of tokens and 6″ rulers
• 15 coloured, marble dices
• Carcass Front campaign book with rules, scenarios, and lore (96 pages)
• A2 size Carcass Front map poster
• Campaign card deck and score pad
• Quickstart rules reference sheet
• 1 introductory scenario and introductory warband rules sheets for both warbands

Trench Crusade: Carcass Front unboxing and review

Carcass Front started life as a narrative campaign supplement in digital format, the $1M stretch goal for the Trench Crusade Kickstarter. Thanks to the Kickstarter’s immense success, the team at Factory Fortress could pour more time and resources into Carcass Front, and what came out the other end is a physical, narrative campaign box with brand new plastic miniatures, one that also doubles as a 2-player starter set. In this unboxing and review, we find out how well this box pulls off that balancing act.

Watch our unboxing video for a breakdown of all components:

The miniatures: from STLs to hard plastic

Carcass Front contains two completely new warbands in hard plastic, 700 ducats each and ready to play. The shift from digital sculpts to a focus on physical miniatures for future releases has landed with a very mixed reception in the still-young Trench Crusade community. But a tabletop brand without plastic kits simply can’t reach the wider market and grow. As with the Prussian Stosstruppen, production duties fall to the hard plastic experts at Archon Studio, known among other things for the Masters of the Universe Battleground and Starcraft TMG (read my review of the Starcraft starter box here). On the design side, Factory Fortress has meanwhile hired some genuinely talented sculptors, including a few ex-GW designers.

The Heretic Naval Raiders reviewed

In the No Man’s Land of Trench Crusade, a full third of humanity has bent its knee before the idols of Hell. The main satanic military force on Earth are the Heretic Legion, and the Heretic Fleet has their own marine infantry, which often strikes in small bands deep beneath enemy lines.

The Naval Raiders comprise 7 models across three grey plastic sprues. The Naval Captain gets his own sprue, and the rest of the Raiders share the other two. You also get a set of bases. As is usual for Trench Crusade, the box doesn’t include assembly instructions; you need to download those via a QR code. Every model comes with two build options.

Patreon bonus content: Ultra high-res, uncompressed versions of these sprue images (and backsides of the sprues) can be downloaded here.

Build options for every model

• The Naval Captain (32mm base) comes with 2 different loincloths (A10 and A9), an arm pair with shield and pistol, an arm pair with keyring and spear, and 2 head options (A21 and A22).
• The Drowned Chorister (32mm base) comes with either a left arm with shield (B12 and B13), or a left arm with blade plus a floating shark (B9 to B11).
• Heretic Raider Legionnaire 1 (25mm base) chooses between a torso with left leg on a tactical rock, or an alternative torso with the leg kneeling on a pipe. You also get an arm pair with rifle and an arm pair with machine gun.
• Heretic Raider Legionnaire 2 (25mm base) builds with a veil and an arm pair with melee weapons, or alternatively with one of two regular heads (E14/15 or D11) and an arm pair with machine gun. An optional smoke grenade for the base is also included.
• Heretic Raider Legionnaire 3 (25mm base) builds with a veil and an arm pair with melee weapons, or with an alternative torso, one of two regular heads (E14/15 or D11), and a machine gun.
• Heretic Raider Legionnaire 4 (25mm base) comes with an arm pair with grenade launcher and an arm pair with rifle.
• The Anointed Heretic Raider (32mm) comes with 2 head options, a right hand with axe or sword, and 2 different left arms.

Sculpt quality: gothic horror meets nautical menace

You wouldn’t necessarily guess it from the grimdark and textured studio paint jobs, but these miniatures match Warhammer kits in level of detail and casting sharpness. The various build options are genuinely well done too; the two different builds per model look (almost) entirely different from one another. On the design side, the classic Trench Crusade gothic elements, archaic armour and veils, blend with nautical touches like diving bells. I find the hulking Anointed Raider the best sculpt of the lot; the weakest model is arguably, of all things, the Naval Captain. He doesn’t quite hold up against recent Warhammer character models like the Space Marine Captain from Armageddon. The cloak, for instance, feels a bit stiff, and it billows in the opposite direction to the loincloth, which throws off the model’s composition in my view.

The Procession of the Sacred Affliction warband unboxed

There are many crusades of the Faithful who throw themselves against the Heretics’ ranks in Not every crusade of the Faithful fights with restraint. The Procession of the Sacred Affliction throws itself at the Heretics’ ranks with near-suicidal zeal, known for their love of close quarters combat and the millstones they carry to tie around the necks of sinners.

The Sacred Affliction warband’s 9 models also come on three sprues. The Lazarist Prophet gets his own small sprue, while the remaining 8 models share the other two.

Patreon bonus content: Ultra high-res, uncompressed versions of these sprue images (and backsides of the sprues) can be downloaded here.

Build options for every model:

• The Lazarist Prophet (32mm base) chooses between 2 large crosses for the back (A9 and A13), 2 millstones for the chest (A8 and A12), 2 right arms (A11 and A7), and a left arm with pickaxe (A6) or sword (A10).
• The Lazarist Castigator (32mm base) can carry 2 different relics on the back (B9 and B10), comes with 2 head options (B4/5 and B6/7), and either a left arm with sniper rifle and a right arm with manhandler, or an arm pair with two-handed axe.
• Leper-Pilgrim 1 (32mm base) chooses between a right arm with flail or sword, 2 shields, and 2 loincloths.
• Leper-Pilgrim 2 with flame spear (25mm base) has no build options.
• Leper-Pilgrim 3 (25mm base) comes with 2 different torso/head pieces, two builds for the relic on the back, plus 1 right pointing arm, 1 right arm with axe, 1 left arm with axe, and 1 left arm with Molotov cocktail.
• Leper-Pilgrim 4 (25mm base) builds either with sword and shield plus a matching head and millstone on the back, or with flame spear plus a matching head and millstone with flame tank.
• Leper-Pilgrim 5 (25mm base) builds either with a torso and arm pair swinging a millstone (plus matching head), or with an alternative torso/head/arm pair carrying a two-handed sword.
• The Stigmatic Nun (25mm base) comes with 2 head options, an arm pair with axes, or an arm pair with two-handed pickaxe.
• The Ecclesiastic Prisoner (25mm base) has no build options.

A warband dripping in clerical dread

The Procession of the Sacred Affliction is another gorgeously atmospheric warband, dripping in clerical motifs that give me strong Blasphemous vibes. The standout models for me are the sprinting Leper-Pilgrim 5 and the Stigmatic Nun, whose dynamic poses have been captured brilliantly. As with the Naval Raiders, the leader’s statuesque pose (here the Lazarist Prophet) takes a bit of getting used to, at least for me.

A look at the terrain and gaming accessories

Alongside the two warbands, you also get a sprue with a handful of small scatter terrain pieces: 3 naval mines (2 of them identical), plus 4 tank traps in 2 different designs. You can freely decorate the tank traps with a selection of crosses, skulls, and hanging chains and hooks for a bit of variety. Nice pieces, but the terrain selection is a bit sparse considering Archon Studio’s expertise in plastic terrain.

Patreon bonus content: Ultra high-res, uncompressed versions of these sprue images (and backsides of the sprues) can be downloaded here.

Last but not least, there’s a sprue in red plastic with 37 tokens in total and 2 6″ range rulers. Three-dimensional tokens elevate any game, and thanks to the red plastic, you don’t strictly need to paint them either. The token design fits Trench Crusade’s gothic style very well. They could have been a touch more textured and ornate for my taste, but that’s nitpicking at a high level.

I can’t fault the included dice, though: 5 black 16mm dice with red numerals, 8 red 12mm dice with black numerals, and 1 white 12mm die with red numerals. They skip custom artwork on the 1 or 6, but they all sport a smart marbled finish.

Leviathan awakes: inside the Carcass Front campaign book

The heart of the Carcass Front box is the campaign book, 96 pages of quality matte paper. The first half covers new rules, lore, and art for the embattled Carcass Front region, its key locations, and the major players shaping the saga’s next chapter. The artwork is genuinely fantastic and packed with small details. A refreshing contrast to a lot of current GW publications, where the newer artwork often feels sketchy and rushed. The layout, by comparison, leans a bit more minimalist.

The second half covers full Warband rules for the Procession of the Sacred Affliction and Heretic Naval Raiders, plus two complete campaigns. The first is a 2-player narrative campaign built around a series of linked, bespoke scenarios themed around raising (and optionally slaying) Leviathan. The second is a map-based campaign for 2-8 players, where Warbands fight over the Carcass Front’s resources and esoteric secrets, with new mechanics baked in to keep every campaign playing out differently. Together, the two campaigns take up around 17 pages in the book and promise plenty of depth and crunchiness.

To go with the campaigns, you also get a score pad, a card deck, and an A2 poster with the key locations of the Carcass Front on one side and a large Leviathan artwork on the other. I unbox these in the video above.

How well does it work as a starter set?

But Carcass Front is also meant to double as a Trench Crusade starter set. For this, the box includes a sturdy quickstart rules reference sheet, an introductory scenario, and two pages of introductory warband rules for the models in the box. Honestly, though, this feels more like an afterthought, as the content for newcomers sticks to the bare minimum. Factory Fortress can’t quite compete here with Games Workshop’s starter sets, which nowadays typically include a whole extra booklet introducing the setting, the hobby, and tutorial campaigns. Then again, Trench Crusade’s target audience is probably a different one anyway.

Where to get

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