Welcome to the Trench Companion!

Hello folks!

For over a year, the Trench Compendium created by Bob The Seagull King has been a valuable asset for all Trench Crusade players, acting as an online rules reference, random scenario generator and most importantly, as a tool for warband building. As useful as it is, It’s not without flaws, however: the warband builder isn’t really intuitive and lacks any proper validation checks, so you could easily create invalid builds, if you don’t know the rules well (something I strongly advise anyway). Moreover, the site saves all warband information locally, so there’s no cross-device portability.

Alas, the time for the Compendium is now over: in the last few months the monarch of all marine birds and his new team have been busy working on an upgrade, and finally this weekend the public release of Trench Companion has been announced.

Out with the old. In with the same (but improved)

This new website has all the features that made the original Compendium great, coming to you in an upgraded graphical layout and more practical user interface. As we’ll see later, new features are also in the works and will be added in time!

DISCLAIMER: Please remember that the Companion is fan-based and, while attempting to be as faithful as possible to the original material, it’s not to be taken as an official source. Mistakes and inconsistencies are possible and the developing team is actively asking all users to notify any issues as detailed here.

The Rules Compendium section is a collection of all the current Trench Crusade rules in an easy to browse format, all organized into chapters that follow the structure of the rulebook.

The Armoury and Equipment chapter also comes with filters to quickly retrieve the information you need. Want to know which weapons can be loaded with Incendiary Ammunitions? Just type “Rifle” or “Pistol” in the search bar on top of the page.

In the Factions chapter, you’ll find the rules and rosters for all the 6 factions currently in the game and their variants. Each model’s sheet now comes with a picture of the respective miniature, every one painted by expert members of the Trench Crusade community.

Useful game aids, such as the Scenario and Campaign chapters, will help you manage the battle and aftermath. In particular you can have a Random Scenario automatically generated, down to the random glorious deeds. A unique Scenario Code will also help you share the scenario with your opponent, if you need.

Building Warbands made Easy

The warband builder got the largest improvement so far. Gone are the days of long equipment lists and potentially illegal builds: now everything is easily at hand and just a few clicks away through practical collapsible menus, while checks are in place to prevent the selection of non-allowed models and equipment.

Like before, warbands will be automatically saved and will be available for later updates. On all your devices. Exactly. Now the Trench Companion allows for account management, so you can sign up, create a personal account and log in from any browser or device: all your warbands are stored on the server and will be available on any supported platform.

Right now I’m working on continuing my series of introductory articles, and it happens the next one scheduled is right about warband building. I’d say the new update comes at the right time: it’ll be a chance not only to talk about how to create a warband, but also to show how to use the Companion Builder to do it.

… and there’s more

If these were the only changes, I would have been quite happy already as it’s a net quality improvement on all sides. Yet, further updates are planned down the line, which will make the Trench Companion even more handy.

First of all, Campaign Mode and Play Mode. Quoting from the Trench Companion launch announcement:

• Campaigns allow you to create and join other players in a long-form campaign. Keep track of victories and exploration, see how your warband grows over time, and record your journey in the trenches.
• Play Mode will allow users to keep track of a single game. Glorious Deeds, victory points, who got sent out of action, and how many times you’ve activated your once-per-battle abilities.

Moreover, the possibility to import custom content, such as homebrew models and factions, that was available in the Trench Compendium, is something that the developers would like to reintroduce in the future.

Also note that currently there’s no way to automatically import warbands from the old Compendium to the new website, therefore both sites will be available, at least for the foreseeable future, and imports would have to be done manually for the time being.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up to the Companion now. Your place in the Trenches awaits!