In our Army Showcase series, Goonhammer contributors take a look at the armies we’ve been collecting for years, and the new ones we’ve just finished – what drew us to them, why we keep building and painting, and how they play on the table. This week SRM is talking about his trenchy bois, the Éire Rangers of New Antioch.
The Painter: Campbell “SRM” McLaughlin
The Game: Trench Crusade
Ducats: Genuinely no idea, I only know that word from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Collecting Since: April 2025
Instagram: crumbsmclumbs
The Past
I’d been interested in Trench Crusade for some time, seeing random conversions and pieces of artwork on Instagram and the like. There was a groundswell of creative support from all the 28mag types; something as weird as Turnip28 but with a seemingly more cohesive force driving it. When the Kickstarter popped off, I threw several of my own dollars at it. I immersed myself in the setting, read up on the background, admired the artwork, and even got to interview the game’s leads, Mike Franchina and Tuomas Pirinen, for Goonhammer. I was more than interested, and after playing a demo at Adepticon, I was hooked.
This was my first time getting into a game where there weren’t readily available physical models available for purchase – no starter box on the shelf at my FLGS for my eager hands to fumble over. The first order of business was enlisting the aid of my buddy Barkin and his 3D printer. I humbly requested one of each of the New Antioch models from the Kickstarter, which he promptly produced and gave me during one of our regular game nights. Now, it was time for research.
Trench Crusade is a semi-historical setting, informed by the first World War but also containing machine armor, bioengineered freaks, literal demons from hell, and a Catholic space program. With this in mind I decided to look to history for my scheme, while not bothering myself altogether too much with reproducing something for the rivet-counters out there. I don’t care if this isn’t the correct shade of emerald green for the 1916 Easter Rising, I’m trying my best over here. Still, my research found me paging through what I could of Osprey’s excellent books on uniforms and heraldry, including their books on the Irish Volunteer regiments from 1913 onward, and Gavin Hughes’ Fighting Irish: The Irish Regiments in the First World War. Most of my research turned up green, tan, or grey wool uniforms, brass buttons, and the cláirseach, or Celtic Harp. Combining these influences, I settled on a green jacket, grey pants, warm brown leather straps and boots, grey or emerald green armor, and brass buttons. Did I essentially just loop back around to creating the “box art” scheme? You decide!
The Present
Going for an Irish theme means I’m at least implying they’re Éire Rangers, even if I usually trend toward slower, tankier playstyles. The Éire Rangers are low on armor, heavy on priests, and trade out much of the heavier New Antioch machine armor for additional scouting ability. I assembled the warband in a couple hours, trimming away some supports and occasionally fixing where I inevitably snapped their fragile, 3D-printed ankles. These models are largely pretty well designed for the format, but printer resin seems to be on the brittle side. I’ve heard of more forgiving resins made for miniatures specifically, and maybe I’ll bug my printer pal for that in the future.
I started with the yeomen, as there’s no better place to begin than with your average joes. The self-imposed challenge here is that I limited myself to Colour Forge Hyrax Brown primer, then my smallish collection of Pro Acryl paints, plus a couple GW favorites for weathering. It meant loads layering and custom mixing for colors, which was liberating. These also represented most of the textures I’d be working with, covering cloth, leather, wood, metal, and a bit of skin. With such a big shield to work with, I also elected to have some freehand fun and paint that Celtic Harp on there. Some folks see it and just think Guinness, but it means a smidge more to me than that ubiquitous draught of malty velvet. Growing up, my dad had an Irish brigade flag hanging in his office, and that bright green banner with a golden harp in the middle has stuck in my mind for a quarter century. I’d hardly be the first obnoxious white guy who spent a significant portion of his life in Boston to claim an undue amount of Irish heritage and culture as his own, but at least I can contain that to a couple of toy soldiers.
I kept my painting a little loosey goosey to maintain some momentum, as I’m in the middle of upturning my life in order to move all of a mile away from where I currently live. The chief time saver for these guys was the aforementioned Hyrax Brown primer; by leaving that dark brown in the recesses, I not only implied that these models were much dirtier than they were, but saved a ton of time that would have been spent shading. It also warms up the models a bit and gives deep shading without being as stark and cold as black. I’ll have a more detailed guide for how I painted these guys up in the future.
I painted up the Combat Engineer at the same time as the Yeomen, mostly to see how much of the dark blue-grey I could get away with, and what a more metallics-forward paintjob would look like. I’ll never like working with metallics, I don’t think, even if the Pro Acryl ones are smoother than the rest. I’m also yet to find a historical source of inspiration for the studs on the Engineer’s shoulder pad. There’s obvious examples across Warhammer 40k of studded pauldrons with various lore reasoning, but I’m unsure if this is just a stylistic influence or there’s some mystery in history I’m yet to uncover here. Rivets are common as a general fastener, but big golfball-sized lumps of metal seem contained to the grim darkness of the far future.
Somebody had to lead these goobers, so I painted the Lieutenant next. I wanted to incorporate a bit of orange, first as a nod to the Irish flag, second as a spot color, and third as a test for how I could break up this scheme down the line. I think it works well, and also echoes the more official paintjobs that show a red helmet on the Lieutenant. I painted his uniform grey instead of green, figuring that would not only stand out from his coat, but also mark him as an officer. Usually, any patches on these models have sculpted New Antioch iconography, but as his were blank, I freehanded a harp on each. This is also where I’ll chime in on the basing – it’s my simplest basing ever, just being a texture paste (Stirland Mud in this case) with some rocks and tufts glued down, then a mess of weathering powder smushed in and onto the feet of the miniatures. It’s messier than I like to do typically, but I think it lends itself well to this setting.
While working on the Lieutenant, I also painted up the Trench Cleric. If the Combat Engineer had a Space Marine shoulder pad, this guy had one from a Zaku II. Conveniently, that served as a good place to put the emerald green I like to use for armor; richer and brighter than the more drab green I use on the uniforms. I painted him much the same as the rest of the warband, using the same bright orange from the Lieutenant’s helmet on the Cleric’s beard, and using a few transfers from my 40k collection in the book he’s holding. I could have slapped some on the hanging scrolls he wears as a sort of prayer-kilt, but I didn’t have any that would fit and wasn’t much in the mood for freehanding a bunch of scribbles on there. So sue me, I was getting lazy.
The Sniper Priests were an opportunity to reverse the scheme and add some visual interest. By flipping it around and painting their hooded shawls grey, they’d stand out from the Yeomen around them. For some color I got to incorporate some blue on the rifleman’s scope, and also paint their ammo cans in my typical emerald green. I was particularly enthused with this pair, as in my demo game at Adepticon I had a machine gun priest who aimed and summarily deleted an Iron Sultanate Janissary in one round of shooting. I’ve since seen people claim that the Aim risky action is a red herring and a bad idea, but it worked well for me!
There may have been a mistake here. The rules state Shock Troopers go on 25mm bases, but certain armor pushes them up to 32mm. I only read that first bit, and these models don’t really want to fit on 25s. I doubt the people I play with will care, but it bugs me ever so slightly. I wanted a darker look with my Shock Troopers, so leaned heavily into the greys and metals I’d developed so far. To keep their scheme at least somewhat recognizable, I also painted their pants green, with some very hard to see orange piping. I figure they’re more elite, so they’d likely get something a little flashier, hence the orange knee armor as well. I was steadily trying to incorporate that spot color more and more, even if I fear it gets somewhat lost in the weathering. I also stuck a spare shield on the zweihander guy’s back, painting it in my typical emerald green and effectively reproducing every Dark Souls character I’ve ever played.
The final models for this crew were also the most challenging. How do you take that much flat surface area and make it look interesting? The obvious answers are transfers and weathering, and as I wasn’t going to varnish these guys, I stuck solely with the latter. I also wanted to save these models for last, as with so much presence on the board I wanted to ensure they looked right. While most of my models are maybe a base, one or two layers, then an edge highlight, this much surface area required several more layers to get a cleaner blend. You can kind of see that I cut some corners on the white of their knee armor and only did three or four layers before doing the edge highlight, but that’s not where I expect folks to pay too much attention. I had to redo the orange in this process, but while it’s not as vibrant as the first pass, it looks less like the striations of the layered sand art I’d get at a craft fair in my youth. Those efforts in place, I’d finally made some dudes who were fully committed to the colors of the Irish tricolor, and I even dug up a few purity seal-type bits from my bits box to decorate these big, flat surfaces. Re-reading their rules, it seems like only the machine gunner will see regular play, as they’re better at shooting than melee, but the models look cool to me and that’s all that matters in the long run.
The Future
This will likely be it for the moment; there’s something deeply satisfying about having a project just be done, and as a longtime Space Marine player for 40k, that’s an unfamiliar feeling. I’ll likely return to this scheme if Éire Rangers-specific models come out, and the folks at Factory Forge have said they plan on models for all the subfactions at some point. Currently, a rogues’ gallery of weirdos and hangers-on is sitting printed and primed in my garage, waiting for me to get started and gather enough Glory to warrant their inclusion. Hype is also building in my local community, with trenches under construction, stls being thrown around, and various warbands starting to take shape. I’ll probably end up painting some dudes for these guys to fight in short order, as it’ll be far easier to teach people and get a community going if I can provide two forces for a game. Fortunately, with Trench Crusade being miniatures-agnostic, I can just use a couple of models from my other collections, but where’s the fun in that? The crusade goes ever onward.
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