Popular Wargaming YouTuber Janovich Calls Trench Crusade a “Disaster” in Scathing Analysis

Janovich, one of the wargaming community’s most respected voices, delivered a comprehensive takedown of Trench Crusade in a recent video, detailing why he’s chosen to avoid the hyped miniatures game despite hundreds of viewer requests. The analysis exposes a Kickstarter plagued by broken miniatures, unfulfilled promises, and a development team that appears to have lost control of their $3 million project.

For those unfamiliar, Janovich built his YouTube channel covering Warhammer 40K with detailed lore videos, painting tutorials, and hobby content. His departure from Games Workshop coverage earlier this year made waves in the community, with many viewers suggesting he pivot to Trench Crusade given the overlap in audience interests. The game combines World War I trench warfare with medieval religious imagery in a grimdark setting that should theoretically appeal to his fanbase.

“For almost a full year now, I’ve been getting a lot of comments about Trench Crusade under my videos, especially since I’ve announced that I will be no longer making content for Warhammer,” Janovich explained. “There have been so many comments telling me to start making content for Trench Crusade instead. I’m talking well into the hundreds of comments now.”

Despite the pressure, Janovich stayed away. His reasons go far beyond personal taste.

“As most of you will know, there was some political drama about Trench Crusade. But this video is not about that, and I really couldn’t care less,” he stated upfront, though it’s worth noting the developers did signal that right-wingers and traditionalist Christians aren’t welcome in their community - a bizarre stance for a game steeped in Christian medieval imagery. That decision alienated a portion of their potential audience before the product even shipped.

Janovich’s concerns focus on the Kickstarter’s catastrophic execution. The campaign raised over $3 million, yet backers are still waiting for rewards months after the promised delivery date. The comments section on the Kickstarter page has become a graveyard of frustrated supporters asking when their orders will arrive.

“If you look at the Kickstarter comments, it’s just an endless stream of people asking when their stuff will be delivered. I think there’s literally now thousands of comments like this,” Janovich noted.

The problems stem from fundamental design failures. Janovich obtained access to the Kickstarter STL files and ran them through slicing software and UV Tools, which analyzes 3D models for printing issues. What he found was amateur hour.

“I can indeed confirm that many of the miniatures have really bad pre-supports,” he reported. “The Trench Crusade devs claimed that the reported models they have at least had been fixed. So I double checked this by buying a few samples of this list from their My Mini Factory page, which should have been the updated ones and compared those to the models that I already had.”

The results were damning. “While I can say that some of the issues have been fixed, a lot of the issues still remain. The person who apparently fixed the pre-supports has not been thorough enough and still there remain a lot of unsupported islands even in the models they claim have been fixed.”

Worse than poor supports are the resin traps, which are hollow spaces inside models where liquid resin gets trapped during printing. These create ticking time bombs that can rupture weeks or months after printing, even on painted miniatures.

“A lot of the models also still have resin traps which if you don’t know what that is are holes inside of the 3D model where liquid resin gets trapped and eventually the resin fumes build up and even months later this can literally break open the model,” Janovich explained. “So, even if you’ve already painted the model and are playing with them, they can suddenly break open at any moment and spill toxic liquid resin all over the table, your hands, or your storage case, which is just really bad.”

For a $3 million Kickstarter claiming to have industry veterans on the team, these are inexcusable errors. Janovich reached out to the developers directly.

“I reached out to one of their devs and politely informed them about the seriousness of this issue,” he said. The developer claimed fixes were underway, but Janovich wasn’t satisfied. “I have double-checked several models recently purchased from my minifactory that have these issues. Even miniatures that were on the list claimed as fixed still have issues. For example, human body 4 was claimed as fixed, but the second largest resin trap still remains as well as unsupported islands.”

He continued: “This is really not just a matter of reported and will fix it. The entire range need to be double-checked by the developers. Otherwise, people are going to be sent out models with resin traps and files that are not properly supported.”

The developer promised to address the issues “this week,” but Janovich never heard back. Months later, there’s no evidence the problems have been fixed.

The incompetence extends beyond resin printing. The FDM terrain pieces show equally poor design choices.

“When I looked at their FDM printed terrain, I was actually shocked by how it was designed because nobody who actually knows anything about FDM printing would support and print a model like they showed,” Janovich said. “They even published a tutorial how to remove the supports from the terrain, which leaves the bottom of the sandbags with this incredibly rough spaghetti texture, which is just completely brain dead. Considering these parts would not need any supports in the first place if they had been designed correctly.”

His conclusion was harsh but fair: “At this point, I was just thoroughly convinced that despite their Kickstarter claiming they have industry veterans joining them, that either nobody knew what they were doing or they simply did not care. Whichever is the case, it remains that the quality control of this project is absolute trash.”

The situation worsened when Trench Crusade announced they were abandoning STL releases in favor of plastic miniatures at Games Workshop pricing. This directly contradicted their Kickstarter promises.

“Trench Crusade, despite very explicit earlier promises during the Kickstart campaign, that they would always support 3D printing and cherish that community, then announced that they will no longer be going forward with 3D printing STL files and will exclusively release plastic miniatures going forward, which are then also sold at Games Workshop pricing,” Janovich explained.

The developers tried to justify this by claiming they needed to ensure profitability, but the logic doesn’t hold. “Either the 3D printing community is large enough to support them and continue making profit selling STL files or the 3D printing community is so small that it wouldn’t impact their plastic sales anyway. They cannot have it both ways.”

Adding insult to injury, Trench Crusade partnered with Brand Shield, the same AI copyright enforcement company Games Workshop uses. The company has been copyright striking third-party sculptors for making “compatible with Trench Crusade” miniatures, despite the promised community license still not being released.

Then there’s the rulebook. After extensive delays to ensure perfection, it arrived damaged due to inadequate packaging, contained errors requiring a day-one errata, and was already outdated upon arrival because the developers had updated the rules.

Janovich painted a picture of the typical backer experience: “Imagine you are one of these Kickstarter supporters. You will spend several hundred of euros on the campaign because it looked promising, because it had a lot of industry veterans working on it. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Well, you’ve been patiently waiting like a year for your rewards, only for many miniatures to arrive damaged and some not to arrive at all. When you contact the Trench Crusade developers about this, they tell you to contact their printing partner who is already overloaded with emails and barely gives you any updates.”

Meanwhile, “the YouTube influencers have already been showcasing the plastic miniatures that they’ve received for free and you have nothing.”

The 3D printing supporters got rugpulled. Third-party sculptors got copyright struck. The rulebook arrived broken and outdated. And throughout it all, Trench Crusade offers no refunds.

“I think all of this is extremely bad and have basically speedrun from what is initially meant to be an indie team making a fun tabletop with their own community into a fullblown greedy corporation willing to screw over the people who supported them,” Janovich concluded.

His recommendations were clear: offer refunds, stop copyright striking sculptors with AI tools, and release the promised third-party license so creators know what’s allowed.

For Janovich, the decision to avoid Trench Crusade content proved prescient. While hundreds of commenters pushed him toward the game, his instincts about the project’s problems were correct. The disaster unfolding in real-time vindicates his choice to stay away from a project that promised much but delivered chaos, broken miniatures, and broken promises.

What do you think about Trench Crusade’s handling of their $3 million Kickstarter?

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