As long as they planned to compete with GW they were doomed to fail, it's the equivalent of launching an IP with the intention of it being multimedia rather than giving it a foothold in some niche and expanding it from there.
Going with both 3D model support and logistics is the worst of both worlds since now the whales will print their models while they need to sort up the logistics for randos dipping in.
There are 20+ warbands in the game, why not start it with more manageable 4 unique ones and slowly add more once you see how the meta evolves?
Why have any sort of social media presence when it will inevitably fall into political cannibalisation? Also why the fuck go against right wingers when the whole Crusade shtick is their meme?
Also from what I read the plot is shit, grimderp that even worse than 40k, since it at least had the scale to back up the ridiculousness.
It would also make sense to start as a rpg or small skirmish game and slowly build up. Games Workshop started out as making minis for D&D. They made their own game but increased the scale to incentivize sales. A war game would need more models than a rpg so the evolution was natural.
A lot of the other companies aren’t directly competing with Games Workshop but fill a niche they won’t or can’t. Mantic makes cheap miniatures and intentionally aims at horde armies to shake things up or to provide cannon fodder. Mantic also aims at games or armies that were once supported but aren’t currently and they’ll pick up a lot of well known ips that can’t be bothered to make their own tabletop games like Halo, Walking Dead, Mars Attacks!, etc.
Wargames Atlantic covers a lot of niche fantasy and Sci-fi units. Wanting some catachan but don’t like the ancient sculpts because you have no taste? They got you. Need some Imperial Ogres? They have you covered. They sell minis that could fit into an existing Warhammer collection without standing out too much.
Max Mini provides a lot of value in a single box. If you’re looking to get an army of halflings in fantasy, ratings in sci-fi, or just need more orcs or goblins, you can just buy one of their army boxes and you are good to go. They don’t sell individual units but they provide a large coverage of minis for cheap and a lot of their sculpts are similar, hence they have multiple variations of halfling armies.
A lot of smaller mini producers focus on legacy armies that GW doesn’t support. The aforementioned Mantic did the space dwarves before squats were unsquatted. Victoria miniatures focuses on imperial guard factions that aren’t supported fully and likely never will. There’s too many regiments and realistically games workshop can’t do all of them. A lot of creators on Etsy focus on bits, redesigning unpopular molds, or factions that aren’t fully supported.
Trench Crusade bit off more than they could chew. Hype and marketing can only take you so far. It can’t will an IP into existence. Without project management, without proper supply chains, it was doomed. They likely know the phrase “amateurs talk tactics, but professionals study logistics” but it’s easier said than done. In some ways starting out as a project that got hyped made it harder to get the little things they needed to do first correctly. They might have been better off not getting as much excitement and hype and starting out as a small group of dedicated autists that slowly grew the IP, the infrastructure, and the hobby. Either as a small skirmish game or an rpg. I can’t help but see some of the parallels in other movements that spontaneously popped into existence but fizzled out. In another time and era these are the kinds of autists that would’ve ended up getting their asses handed to them in the Pauper’s Crusade or a peasant revolt that went nowhere. There are multiple miniature producing companies that specialize in working in other ips and for smaller companies in the US, UK, etc.
