Last Bastion of Christendom
Every war has to have a front line somewhere. In Trench Crusade, that front line runs straight through the Principality of New Antioch. While the Trench Pilgrims wander from battlefield to battlefield on divine instruction and the Iron Sultanate guards its Wall, New Antioch is the place that cannot fall. It is the last foothold of the Christian faithful in the Levant, a fortress-city surrounded on all sides by territory controlled by the forces of Hell, held together by tithes from every nation in Christendom and the iron will of the soldiers who garrison it. If New Antioch falls, the Levant falls with it, and then all of Europe and Africa are next. Every soldier behind those walls knows that. It tends to sharpen the mind considerably.
How It All Started
The story starts in 1099, the same catastrophic moment that defines the whole setting: the First Crusade storms Jerusalem, the Knights Templar open the Gates of Hell, and the world tears in half. In the chaos that followed, the ancient city of Antioch in the northern Levant became the most important piece of ground on earth. It was the last city of the faithful still standing in the Holy Land, and it held that position stubbornly for over four hundred years.
Then, in 1545, Hell erased it.
A mysterious demonic weapon wiped the city off the face of the earth entirely. The blast left a crater and a lingering demonic essence that made the ruins nearly uninhabitable. By rights, that should have been the end. But the garrison did not leave. Even as mighty Constantinople fell to the legions of Kimaris, Marquis of Hell, the soldiers in the rubble of Antioch held their positions. They had nowhere to retreat to, and they did not look for anywhere.
In 1559, the Sword Congress of Vienna made it official. Every Christian nation agreed to rebuild the city and to send a yearly tithe of warriors, equipment, and treasure to sustain it. Thirty-six years later, in 1595, New Antioch’s famous walls were completed: a fortress with seventy-seven great towers, anchorites embedded directly into the stonework, sharpshooters at every battlement. The walls have never been breached. They have survived eight great sieges since then, and they are still standing.
What New Antioch Actually Is
New Antioch is not just a military base. It is a functioning city-state, a melting pot of every culture in Christendom crammed together into one heavily fortified location. Walk through its streets and you will find Polish-Lithuanian soldiers next to Byzantine veterans next to Ethiopians, Prussians, and Irish guerrilla fighters, all of them there for the same reason. The Duke of New Antioch, currently Constantine XI, commands both the city and its military forces. The tithe system means he has access to soldiers, weapons, and resources from across the whole of the Christian world, which is the only reason the city has held as long as it has.
Beyond the walls, the Principality sends small companies into No Man’s Land with specific missions: gathering intelligence, recovering artifacts of power, raiding Heretic positions, and securing strategic strongpoints. These warbands raise their own coin and muster their own forces, answering to the Duke’s commission but operating independently. Promises of fame and wealth ensure the Duke never runs short of ambitious leaders willing to go out there.
The Most Human Army in the War
This is the thing that makes New Antioch stand out from every other faction in Trench Crusade: their soldiers are, for the most part, just people. No divine transformation. No infernal gifts. No alchemy-grown muscle or prophetic visions. The army of New Antioch relies on human technology, discipline, and teamwork, making up for the fact that they are physically outmatched by almost everything they fight against through sheer numbers, specialized skills, and overwhelming firepower.
More than any other faction in the game, New Antioch represents what it actually means to be a mortal human being in this war. The soldiers know what they are up against, they know the odds, and they show up anyway because someone has to.
The Soldiers of the Last Wall
Lieutenant
The leaders of New Antioch warbands in the field. These are experienced officers who direct their squads through the chaos of No Man's Land using the "On My Command!" order, coordinating Fireteam activations and keeping the layered shooting and assault tactics working together. A good Lieutenant is what separates a New Antioch warband from a scattered mob.
Shocktroopers
Assault specialists built for storming enemy positions and breaking defensive lines at close range. Shocktroopers are masters of combined arms and Fireteam tactics, trained to sprint across No Man's Land, clear a trench, and keep moving before the enemy can respond. They hit harder than Yeomen in melee and operate best when moving fast and staying close.
Mechanized Heavy Infantry
The true elite of New Antioch. Chosen from the best soldiers and given heavy chemical enhancements, the Heavy Infantry are physically superior to ordinary humans and sheathed in powerful machine armor that makes them nearly impossible to put down with small arms. They carry the heaviest weapons the faction has available and anchor the most critical positions on the battlefield.
Yeomen
The boots on the ground. Yeomen are regular trained infantry with guns, the backbone of every New Antioch force. They are not special. They do not have supernatural powers or alchemical enhancements. They hold the line, lay down fire, and follow orders. In large enough numbers, that is exactly enough. They can also be upgraded to Infiltrators, slipping forward ahead of the main force to position before the shooting starts.
Combat Engineers
Valued specialists who can demolish fortifications, discover and neutralize minefields, and build battlefield emplacements on the fly. They wear steel armor capable of stopping rifle rounds, which is good because they tend to be working in the most exposed positions on the field. The casualty rate in Combat Engineer units is high. They consider it an honor.
Combat Medics
The Sisters of St. Cosmas are a highly trained medical corps who keep the warband alive and fighting in the field. They are not purely support, however. If they encounter a downed Heretic during the advance, their field medicine training transitions seamlessly into something considerably less merciful. They save lives on one side of the line and end them on the other.
The Fireteam Doctrine
The thing that ties all of New Antioch’s units together is the Fireteam rule. Every warband has the ability to coordinate linked activations between units, forcing enemies into unfavorable positions before punishing them for it. This is not a faction that charges blindly or trusts a single elite unit to win the game alone. New Antioch fights like a real army: combined arms, mutual support, overlapping fields of fire, and the understanding that individual soldiers are expendable but the formation is not.
This makes them one of the more skill-rewarding factions in Trench Crusade. The tools are all there, but using them well requires thinking about positioning and sequence in ways that other factions do not always demand.
Five Ways to Fight: The Warband Variants
New Antioch has more warband variants than any other faction in the game, which makes sense for a city that pulls soldiers from the entire Christian world. Each variant represents a distinct national contingent with its own fighting culture, strengths, and limitations.
Papal States Intervention Force
These soldiers answer to the Supreme Pontiff in Rome, not the Duke of New Antioch. They are dispatched to the front lines for specific purposes: hunting down dangerous Heretic leaders, recovering sacred artifacts, or completing missions that the Church considers too sensitive for the regular military chain of command. They operate with papal authority behind them, which in this world means something considerably more literal than it would in ours.
Eire Rangers
The Emerald Isle has been hammered by Heretic raids and a full-scale infernal invasion aimed at destroying the House of Manuscripts, one of the most important repositories of holy texts in the world. The people who survived that and kept fighting came out the other side as some of the most capable guerrilla warriors on earth. Eire Rangers specialize in hit-and-run tactics, lying in wait, hitting hard, and retreating before the enemy can lock them down. Their Shocktroopers can be upgraded to Infiltrators cheaply, and their Clerics carry additional abilities that the core warband does not have access to. They are fast, bitter, and very difficult to pin.
Stosstruppen of the Free State of Prussia
When the Duke needs a strongpoint cracked or a heavily fortified trench line cleared, he calls the Prussians. The Stosstruppen are assault specialists selected for their aggression and athleticism, drilled obsessively in lightning grenade-based attacks and brutal close-quarters combat. Every member swears an oath at Konigsberg Cathedral: "To each, his own, to me, death." The casualty rate is the highest of any unit serving New Antioch. They get more Fireteam activations than the standard warband, their grenade range extends further, and they carry more submachine guns. They approach enemy positions in complete silence, then explode into action all at once.
Kingdom of Alba Assault Detachment
Soldiers from the Scottish Highlands who come to New Antioch chasing glory, penance, and the chance to get their hands on devil-worshippers. The Alba Detachment are melee specialists, brutal close-combat fighters who bring something no other New Antioch variant has: bagpipers. The pipes grant immunity to Fear effects, which in a war against the literal forces of Hell is a more valuable tactical asset than it might sound. They give up heavy troopers and most support weapons for this, making them a focused, aggressive force that wants to close distance and fight with blades rather than sitting back and shooting.
Expeditionary Forces of Abyssinia
Ethiopia has a deep and ancient Christian tradition, and its soldiers bring a distinct fighting style to the walls of New Antioch. The Abyssinian Expeditionary Forces represent one of the more unique takes on the core New Antioch playstyle, offering different unit options and special rules that reflect their particular military heritage. Among other things, they can bring a replica of the Ark of the Covenant as a relic, which generates blessing markers whenever anyone in the warband heals in the field. Even in a game full of extraordinary things, that is a remarkable item to bring to No Man's Land.
Why New Antioch Is Worth Your Time
New Antioch is widely considered one of the best starting factions in Trench Crusade, and for good reason. Their units are relatively straightforward to understand, their playstyle has a clear internal logic, and their warband variants give you an enormous amount of flexibility in terms of what kind of force you want to build and what national identity you want to represent on the tabletop.
But the thing that makes them genuinely compelling beyond pure game mechanics is the lore. These are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job. There is no prophecy pushing them forward, no demonic bargain, no divine transformation. The soldiers of New Antioch just show up because the city has to be held, the Church needs a sword arm in the Levant, and someone decided that they were going to be the one standing there when Hell came knocking for the ninth time.
Eight sieges. Eight times, Hell has thrown everything it has at those walls. Eight times, the walls held.
The ninth is coming. The lore makes that clear. All the intelligence reports and scouting parties are pointing in the same direction: the Heretics are marshalling for the largest offensive in history. Whether New Antioch can hold it is the question the whole game is built around answering.
That is a pretty good reason to pick up a warband and find out.
