Veteran author Graham McNeill is among old friends. The former Warhammer 40k designer is now part of the Trench Crusade design team at Factory Fortress Inc, a studio that is packed with fellow Games Workshop alumni he last worked with at the start of the millennium. As part of my interview with McNeill about his work on the recent Carcass Front supplement, he told me about all the fun he’s been having alongside his fellow comrades in arms.
Before we start, I want to mention Trench Crusade’s junior designers, Brook Close, Sammie Dae, and Giovani C. Fiorini. I realised after the interview that I had been so interested in the big name designers I recognized that I didn’t ask McNeill about the people who may be the big names of the future. Trench Crusade isn’t just being developed by an old boys network of ex-Games Workshop employees – there’s fresh blood in there too.
With that said, Trench Crusade really has attracted some all time greats. The core rules for the game were written by Tuomas Pirinen, previously best known for his lead designer credit on beloved warband campaign game Mordheim. “I knew Tuomas from back in the day”, McNeill says, “he was my first manager at Games Workshop, he basically hired me to the design studio back in 2000”. Two other veterans from the same era are also on the team, Andy Chambers and Jervis Jonson, both phenomenally experienced designers who left indelible marks on many Warhammer 40k factions and Old World armies.
McNeill’s time working with them in the early 2000s was formative: “Over the course of your career you work with some teams and some people, and their collaboration, their teachings, their mentorship changes the trajectory of your life”. He explains “I like to think I had some natural talent, which is why they recruited me in the first place, but it was raw and unformed, and working with those guys really helped me develop the skills, the resilience to still have that career many, many years later”.
The feeling of working with them again is like “getting the band back together”, McNeill says. “Honestly it felt like it was yesterday that we last worked together on like Black Templars, or Tau, or Space Marines, the Empire, whatever”. The atmosphere in the studio “reminds me very much of the time I was at Workshop where everybody was in the room, everybody was throwing ideas around and going ‘That’s awesome. I’m going to use that. That’s brilliant. You could use that over here. That would be great for this‘”. He calls it “a really fun, collaborative environment”.
The Trench Crusade team works in a multidisciplinary style. “The people that I’ve met through working there, you know, the creative types like Brook Close and Sammie Mae, [original setting creator] Mike Franchina, [miniature designer] Loïc Muzy and the others… you could not meet a nicer, genuine, lovely group of people who then create the most diabolical horrors in art, in miniatures, in words and rules”.
Brainstorming sessions sound particularly fun. “We have these symposiums where we discuss ‘What about this for Trench Crusade? How does that manifest?'”, McNeill says. “I’ve never been to one of those where it hasn’t gone to places [where] you’re like, ‘Dude, this is fucked up, awesome, let’s do it!'” Making that work requires a certain temperament. “Everybody’s got the right amount of ego to want to throw their ideas in the ring and think they’re worth discussing, but nobody’s precious enough about them where they get butthurt if that idea either doesn’t make the cut or gets hit with hammers”.
The studio seems to be working. I gave Trench Crusade’s recent two player set Carcass Front a 10/10 in my review, and wrote up a separate article praising the lore that McNeil wrote for the book. I hope that they can sustain this quality and momentum – if only because it sounds like everyone is having so much fun.
Keen on Trench Crusade or the output of the Warhammer design studio in the early 2000s? You’ll find a warm welcome in the Wargamer Discord community! And check out the first part of my interview with McNeill, discussing the line between mature grimdark and puerile edginess.
Source: Wargamer
