"Are you extremely divided by the Trench Crusade scandal?" Topic

Apparently it's all going to pot, and we're doomed, I tell ye, doomed…

YouTube link

Which, frankly, is never a good thing to hear.

Doomed.

Tut and blast it, I didn't want to be doomed.

Has there ever been a positive or non-crisis story from that channel?

@ DisasterWargamer…. no….

I wouldn't go for a hard no, but I can't offhand recall the days of wine and roses edition on that YouTube channel.

But that's the real world I suppose, we're all doomed and even our miniatures will betray us…

I have no idea what Trench Crusade even is, so likely don't care…

But I wouldn't trust a single thing that Youtuber says, since she seems to thrive on creating controversy & clickbait.

Damon.

I like a good argument as much as the next person. But this particular Youtuber more resembles the "Argument Clinic" than anything stimulating.

YouTube link

I've seen a few of her ramblings; I won't watch her anymore. She never says anything worth listening to.

I feel a bit sorry for Trench Crusade – a few videos ago they were the bees knees. I don't know how much of the "controversy" is genuine, so maybe I'm not the best to judge, but it does seem like they are now getting the wrong end of the stick waved at them.

Does anyone play Trench Crusade? Have you nearly been killed by their "toxic resin miniatures"? It is true, resin powder is not stuff you want to spend a lot of your time inhaling.

Never heard of it, so bring a Good Boi, I clicked.
Then I saw her.
Noped right out.
Is that the Most Annoying Voice in the Galaxy?

Did anyone watch that entire video? I could not:(

Neither could I

Nor summon up much interest for a controversy about a game system I first heard about last week

All SF and fantasy systems invented to sell wargame figures are doomed. They go broke, they lose the license or, sooner or later, they revise the rules in a way which kills the player base. Sooner or later, you wind up with figures you can't add to and "non-supported" rules. Not saying you shouldn't buy the figures or play the games, but I'd be sure to have a suitable generic fantasy or SF rule set handy.

But no, I wouldn't trust that particular critic either.

I have never had any requests for that range. The manufacturer only had one product in stock

I think the rules look interesting and I would like to try them soon. The only controversy I saw was that some folks think they turn the Christian religion into a grimdark orgy of demonic violence and warfare. With awesome art! Obviously, I'm not bothered. This lady is sort of nuts, she loses me about 20 seconds in.

Don't fully know the drama.
And I don't take any info from that YT channel as accurate but as conspiracy click bait.

Grimm

I feel like I was rick rolled by that link. I second John's point about that voice in this galaxy. I am thankful that she no longer appears in my YouTube feed of suggested videos. I have yet to hear her say anything nice about anything.
About Robert's point about Trench Crusade. I am not one of the Kickstarters who backed the game. I got involved from a friend who did. My friend bought in heavily and printed the figures. I have been painting and playing one of the factions. Thus far, we have almost only positive things to say about the experience.
The rules are free. The rules have been and are promised to be updated once or twice a year. The only quibble about the game has been that my friend's printed rulebook is at this point obsolete (to a minor degree at this point). The game is openly figure agnostic. Official figure purchasing is not required. Therefore this game does not hook you in nor require you to purchase only their figures. Recently the company has decided to move into plastic figures, which will allow more people to get involved and allow game stores to become active in the game as well.
Overall, my experience has been all positive. A fun game, free updated rules, and great figures to paint.

Did anyone watch that entire video? I could not:(

Me neither TBH – mostly because it runs for nearly an hour…and switching to 2x speed on the video doesn't help much.

I do enjoy (most) of her videos – probably not for the right reasons, but they usually do make me laugh at some point.

And you can play "I'm not criticising the game but" bingo – there are a number of regular issues that come up (price, quality, stock levels, FOMO scrambles to purchase, lack of alternatives, lack of willingness of hobbyists to try new things….).

In response to Robert Piepenbrink's comment about "All SF and fantasy systems invented to sell wargame figures are doomed.", I can think of at least three gaming companies that have been around for 40+ years and are still going strong. The first is ADB, which has held its license from Paramount to do the Star Fleet Battles game for over 40 years now. Then there is Starguard which has been around for over 50 years. The last one that I can think of off the top of my head would be Ground Zero Games, which has also been a company that I have been buying from since the 1980's and is still going strong.

GW?

50 years, miniatures for nearly all that time…

Skimming the discussion and not watching the video, I can guess which YouTuber we're talking about. Muckraking, exaggeration, and all very negative. That content is not good for you, I avoid it. The less I experience of that channel the better.

I don't like to be negative, but I'm willing to be negative about negativity!

It's hard to comment on how annoying she is, without sounding sexist.
So here is what I did. I pretended she was a man. That meant that I could be annoyed without being sexist.
The fact that she reminded me of a particularly obnoxious MALE DnD GM made it easy. I only gamed with him twice, and wondered why I went back a second time. 🤷

So, I gave her a second attempt to watch that video, and "Noped" out after 5 minutes.

Googling the system convinced me that I had 0 interest in the game or the system. Therefore the alleged scandal had no meaning to me.

The real thing is there's no real game there with Trench Crusade, the artist just had some ideas and someone thought this should be a game.

The forums got all toxic when the moderators took offence to interested people seeing the demonic armies as a force of evil for the game, and insisted the forces in Europe were the real evil in the game.

It's the whole issue some people are having with the anime Frieren killing demons in game form all over again.

Frieren "The more you desire to coexist, the more people will die by your own hand."

Karl, 20th, it's the whole sentence. "System designed to sell wargame figure"--not how long the company lasts, but how long you get to use figures and rules, and whether the rules were written to sell the figures. GW is still there, but your Squat army isn't, your Eldar harlequins have had to be completely rebuilt. Much the others as new troop types are introduced and pretty much any surviving figures are now below scale. While there are Starguard figures, they're not required for play. Am I wrong in thinking this is also true of Stargrunt and Full Thrust?

Even in my geezerhood, I'd be reluctant to buy rules and figures from people who had a strong financial incentive to get me to replace both.

Star Fleet Battles I think is an exception. My fault for not being a space gamer. Ogre would be another similar one. But note in both cases the story comes first and the miniatures meet an existing demand.

I did listen to the whole thing, the biggest problem for me is her accent. What I think she was saying was what the company had decided to legally codify what they will tolerate from people producing things in association with their games. She suggested that they had started as sort of sort of open source (my word.) She believed that the company was trying to protect it IP but at the same time not wanting to have another business entity come along and eat their lunch. Their fan base is up in arms over this, feeling betrayed. She thought that their lawyers had done too good of a job in trying to tie up any loop holes. Again, I had a really hard time with her accent which was my problem.