So about a week ago, the Kickstarter campaign for the tabletop wargame Trench Crusade launched, and incidentally, also fulfilled its goal and then some. Created by artist Mike Franchina, with rules by Tuomas Pirinen and James Sherrif, Trench Crusade is set during a thousand-year-old war between heaven and hell, currently set around the same time as World War 1. In the Trench Crusade, the human soldiers of New Antioch fight against hordes of demon-worshiping humans and their inhuman masters, among multiple other factions. The artwork and visual design are dark and grim, aiming for mature audiences, with extremely muted colors, stylized armor and arms and gruesome creatures — it’s echoing both Berserk and Diablo, in equal measure.
Full disclosure, I did early playtesting for the game, and I know some people behind the project from other things. However, it has to be said that Trench Crusade isn’t exactly my jam. I am not a huge fan of the setting, Franchina’s art isn’t the type of thing I usually enjoy, and as exploration of grimdark, I find it lacking the things I believe are fundamental to it. Besides, I’ve already bought into a miniature game between human soldiers fighting against demons and other dangerous foes in a historical setting. And I did it 16 years ago.
Welcome, to Hell Dorado.
Okay, so what’s this about
Hell Dorado is a 2006 wargame created by Christophe Réaux aka Croc and Geoffrey Picard and published by Asmodee Editions — yes, that Asmodee -, later re-published by Cipher Studios. Originally published in French, the game reached English-speaking audiences via fan-made translations of the rules and accompanying cards used in the play, and that’s how I heard about the game! The game was played with warbands consisting of 8–10 troopers, with 32 mm models (so a bit bigger than regular 28mm stuff that Warhammer and Trench Crusade use) in a 9-grid playing field with scattered terrain which might or might not affect the game in some ways.
What is the game about, then? Well, set during the mid-17th century, in the aftermath of the 30 Years War, a portal to Hell is discovered in Europe. After the war, famine, and plague had all but collapsed the European states, many rulers turned their gaze to the lands Down Below. Soon, entire armies marched into the afterlife, founding the city of New Jerusalem there, and started to pillage the land for its resources. Hell was not empty, however; in addition to the hostile (yet expected) demons and their damned servants, there were other humans there; The Saracens had found their way to hell ages ago, and had mastered the binding of spirits, and even before them, the might of the Qin Dynasty had entered Hell under the protection of King Yan. There were also rowing bands of mercenaries, some formed of humans who had become powerful in hell, and the Lost, the original inhabitants of Hell who broke the shackles of hell and are now just another threat to the demon hegemony.
(The Lost were my faction, I loved my lizard & bird boys.)
These factions were all led by powerful hero characters, which were in some cases based on either actual historical people or facsimiles of them — or even fictional characters. The Saracens had Salah-Ad-Din, whose spirit was in Hell (hmm) but powerful enough to retain form and power, the Mercenaries had Gilles de Rais, the so-called “Bluebeard” as their leader, while Sammael led the Demons. Others were new characters, like The Lost warlord Bran Carnoth, and Imperial Bureaucrat Cheng Xiao-Chen. My two favorite characters were Don Quixote De La Mancha and his demon horse Rocinante, and Thirty Coins, a mysterious masked sharpshooter carrying a gun called Musket of Longinus. Who could he be, it’s a real mystery, that one!
The miniatures were pretty cool, 32 mm was a perfect scale for a game like this which allowed the designers to make some personable and well-detailed models. Models were all metal, which was a problem with few individual characters — I remember a lot of complaining about the Immortals faction leader Cheng and the naga Kuan-Yin, which had a lot of very delicate and fine-detailed pieces in gravity-defying positions. The Lost were a real mix-and-match of lizards, bugs, and birds of prey which made them look unique. Demon models were based on a few different sins, the lesser & greater Pride Demons were particularly fun and creative. The painted versions of these models in the rulebook and cards were consistently great, really bringing out the fun madness of the setting.
Game-wise…look, I’m not the greatest person when it comes to parsing down what are good rules and what are not, and I have not played Hell Dorado since 2012 so my memories of the game are shoddy at best. Each character or unit had a card representing their rules — stats like combat skills, movement, and faith were measured, and there were multiple keywords for each character and possibly multiple abilities, which might have different effects based on keywords. For example, Succubus defended better against units with the keyword [MALE]. Interestingly, the Hell Dorado had three genders; Male, Female, and….Asexual, which referred to few characters who were spiritual beings or animals. Yeah. Needlessly said, in many ways, Hell Dorado was a product of its time; the dreaded mid-noughties. I remember these dark days well.
The rules were somewhat granular. It was important to know what sort of weapons you used, and if they did slashing, piercing, or bludgeoning damage. There were four different range categories for firearms, which also needed to be reloaded! Changing status descriptions, magic, exploding demon familiars — this level of complexity made Hell Dorado fitting for people who enjoyed building their warbands and trying to find the most powerful synergy hidden behind keywords, abilities, and unit formations. My brother went to a Hell Dorado tournament at a local con in 2009, and the rule book mentions how there are certain standards for modeling and proxy use when being in competitive spaces. Hell Dorado was not, despite the MASSIVE background sections and rich flavor texts, a narrative wargame, but more of a tactical skirmish game with really nice models.
Sounds cool what happened next
Hell Dorado was originally published only in French, and the English version of the rules was circulated in various wargaming forums as a PDF. This obviously hindered its popularity, but I remember there being pretty active Hell Dorado circles in Finland back in the day. In 2007, Asmodee founder Marc Nunes started to direct Asmodee towards international markets, acquiring smaller companies and game store brands with the help of outside investment. Two years later, US-based Cipher Studios, makers of Anima Tactics, bought the license to make an English-language version of Hell Dorado. In an interview done in 2016, Cipher Studios founder Kai Nesbit said that when they contacted Asmodee, the company was about to discontinue the game. Nesbit managed to get them instead sell the rights to the game to Cipher. They stated that their goal was to produce English-language versions of the French products as quickly as possible so that they would catch up with Asmodee’s original production line. This is where troubles started.
In May 2010, Cipher released a blog post that apologized for the lack of news surrounding Hell Dorado but made a promise to release a new English-language version in August 2010. According to Cipher Studios COO David Freeman, it took a year for Asmodee to send the molds over to the US; this was a problem when planning new releases. At the start of August, a new blog post told that the new starter boxes would be available at Gen Con that year, but the book is not yet done. It must be noted that the new starter boxes were much smaller than the old ones, having 4–5 models instead of a full warband of 7–10 models. In October 2010, Cipher published “The Great Hell Dorado Scheduling Update”, which tentatively put the release of Hell Dorado’s new rule book around December that year. In January 2011, Cipher announced that the book was almost ready for print. It was finally released in July 2011, with the player base seemingly burnt out on Cipher’s track record already.
This was later followed by a Kickstarter campaign to publish the first expansion to the game, Inferno. Kickstarter campaign would also produce new miniatures for each faction, and backers would receive exclusive models, branded gaming aids, and starter set add-ons. Expansion itself added new scenarios, rules, and extra stuff to add to the depth of the game. The campaign was by all measures a success, gaining 129,000$ (with 15,000$ as their goal) and getting all their stretch goals fulfilled. My brother, a person who was always more into Hell Dorado than me, and who remembers the game fondly, backed the campaign. I still have some of the Kickstarter models hanging around in the Trunk Of Unpainted Models. So we have new English-language rules set on the market, new translated cards, and a successful Kickstarter that added stuff to the game — Hell Dorado seems to be finally on the roll, right?
Unfortunately, no. In 2015, Cipher released a statement that they would cease selling models, the Anima Tactics model line would be discontinued but the Hell Dorado model line would continue to be sold through Ninja Division/Soda Pop store, and more models were on their way. Those models never came out, as Ninja Division announced in 2016 that Hell Dorado was being discontinued. All models left in stock would be sold at 75% of the price. I vaguely remember this happening, and I think I made plans to buy some of the cooler models I never bought during my initial engagement with the game, but I didn’t. With Ninja Division filing for bankruptcy in 2024, it is anyone’s guess where the rights to Hell Dorado are right now.
Remembering small games
I am haunted by the memory of Hell Dorado. Sometimes I talk about the game in casual conversation with other wargamers, who are always confused about what exactly I’m talking about. I remember when Hell Dorado was popular enough that the Finnish wargaming forum Sotavasara had a pretty active discussion about it until 2015 and its discontinuation. I think the game could have continued; the rules were made for those who enjoy more tactical and small-scale wargame which gave more control to the player than to the dice, and those are all the rage now. It had a unique mix of aesthetics; from 30-years-war musketeers and military officers to horrifying demons with gaping maws and mangled bodies; “faith, steel and gunpowder” indeed. Despite its grimdark tendencies (some of the background texts are just uncomfortable, but not in any good way), the game had a contrasting colorful aesthetic, rising from more realistic painting styles on the models that embraced the natural vibrancy of the world. It was by no means perfect; there is a lot to be said about certain characters and how they portrayed people of color, Muslims, and women, but Hell Dorado is by no means alone with this problem; in many ways, it is a problem with games released even now.
A lot of games that I remember being a thing have gone this same route. Rackham was liquidated in 2010, and its game Confrontation (not that one, oldhammer guys) was discontinued. Anima Tactics we mentioned already, but another game that my brother used to play a lot was X-Wing, which was also discontinued alongside Star Wars Armada. A lot of these are tied to changing business practices and focus changes; according to Nesbit, Asmodee was changing their focus more towards board games which would have led to the game being discontinued in the same year me and my brother discovered it. Cipher, often blamed for mishandling the game, actually saved Hell Dorado and made it available for more people than ever before.
Games live only by their player bases. No amount of great rules, beautiful miniatures, or good production design can save you if you fail to find a large enough audience to support your game long-term. Hell Dorado suffered initially due to the game being locked behind the language barrier. It is a common practice in many wargaming circles to wait and see if there will be a player base for a new game. This is understandable; with the history of smaller wargames being filled with “dead games” (more on this later), discontinued model lines, and inactive player bases, there is a hesitancy to invest in a game before knowing if you can ever really play with anybody. With miniature game finance moving more and more towards crowdfunding, and with a few very public failures like Rivenstone and Ninja Division’s Starfinder, the hesitancy is even more understandable. Both of these campaigns were successful initially, but the problems started later.
If you think there is a shadow of something that I’ve failed to contextualize in this discussion, I am aware. The shadow of Warhammer lies over this whole discussion. Warhammer is designed to consume most of your time and energy, and with Games Workshop’s reach, budgets, cultural status, soft power, and actual market power, it is no wonder smaller games have a hard time flourishing in this space. I admit, I just flat-out prefer the Warhammer models to most models on the market, I like the worlds of Warhammer more than basically any other fantasy or sci-fi worlds, and I greatly enjoy playing games like Age of Sigmar and Blood Bowl. I am part of the problem in that sense. There are ways of flourishing (or making do) under these conditions as a smaller game. Model-ambiguous games that don’t require certain brands of miniatures to be playable, games with hugely simplified rules like One-Page Rules or F28 that don’t require much time or head space to learn, and (she said, begrudgingly) games with 3D printed models, that don’t have similar manufacturing requirements that games like Hell Dorado had — these games don’t get delayed because molds have not arrived overseas yet. There are even miniature games that are designed to be played on a virtual tabletop like Magnagothica: Maleghast by Tom Bloom of Lancer fame.
I almost called this post “Death of Hell Dorado” but it felt inaccurate, and most of all, petty. It did not die per se. The game was a not a failure. It just happened to exist in a economy where smaller games sometimes struggle to get a foothold, where word of mouth is usually the best marketing tactic, and it came out before such things as YouTube miniature game influencers were a thing. It did not receive free marketing on the same level many games do nowadays. But here’s the thing: analog games don’t really die the same way digital games do. No one is stopping you from playing Hell Dorado. If this text made you interested in the game, go for it! I found the rule book as a PDF by just googling it, there seems to be good number of Hell Dorado miniatures on sale in eBay (and for very cheap it seems) — or just use whatever you feel fit! Maybe those fun new Trench Crusade models could work as well. Whatever happens, hell awaits you.
I don’t really know how the end this ramble so let’s end it on a quote which in my way encapsulates how (in my opinion) well Hell Dorado worked as a GrimDark game and what made it fascinating in the first place:
“Hell Dorado is a dark dark place. To me, because of this, this makes the parts of Hell Dorado where light shows through have more meaning and impact. The exploration of Hell that is the central theme of Hell Dorado is a mirror to humans exploring what it means to be human. How do we do better tomorrow as flawed fragile creatures? How do we make our way in a world full of seemingly malicious intent? What does it take to be able to trust another and work together to make more out of your lives? ” — Dave Freeman, 2016.
Aasa T
References
Note: “Cipher Dave” is most likely David Freeman, but as I can’t really be sure, I credited him as such.
“Cipher Dave” (2009) Cipher Studios acquires the Hell Dorado miniature game license. https://web.archive.org/web/20100822015359/http://cipher-studios.com/2009/09/cipherstudiosacquireshelldorado/
“Cipher Dave” (2010) A Hell Dorado Update https://web.archive.org/web/20100516034548/http://cipher-studios.com/2010/05/a-helldorado-update/
“Cipher Dave” (2010) Gen Con 2010 https://web.archive.org/web/20100806002352/http://cipher-studios.com/2010/08/gen-con-2010
“Cipher Dave” (2010) The great Hell Dorado scheduling update of 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20101120155519/http://cipher-studios.com/2010/10/the-great-hell-dorado-scheduling-update-of-2010/
“Cipher Dave” (2011) Hell Dorado’s World-Wide Release Starts Now! https://web.archive.org/web/20110201213152/http://cipher-studios.com/2011/01/hell-dorado%E2%80%99s-world-wide-release-starts-now/
“Cipher Dave” (2015) Cipher Studios Announces Anima Tactics Discontinued. https://web.archive.org/web/20160214071939/http://cipher-studios.com/2015/02/cipher-studios-announces-anima-tactics-discontinued/
Nesbit, Kai. (2014). Hell Dorado Miniature Skirmish Game: Inferno Expansion. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1188790300/hell-dorado-miniature-skirmish-game-inferno-expans
Toennis, Nick (2016) Ninja Division Discontinuing Hell Dorado. http://web.archive.org/web/20160529034036/http://ninjadivision.com/hell-dorado-discontinued/
