Are there any Trench Pilgrim players here who are doing decently in their games? If yes, how on Earth do you make this faction work? We are 15 battles into a campaign right now and so far our friend who's playing Pilgrims (basic variant) had his ass seriously kicked pretty much every battle. We wanted to give him some advice, but honestly looking at their rules and stats I really feel like they just objectively suck compared to everything else, especially the infernal factions.

They are a melee focused faction, but the only actually powerful melee weapon they have access to is elite only, so even if your horde of regular grunts manages to reach the enemy they can't really consistently hurt him and have to rely on luck, doubly so if the enemies have a decent amount of armour, which they will if the oponent knows what they're doing

Meanwhile they can only field 2 guys who can shoot long range weapons any competently to actually take down key targets and deal some serious damage (the prophet and castigator). And you actually need those guys at the front if you want to make use of their abilities.

The bomb guys are an absolute joke, their one-time only suicidal explosion that needs them to be right next to the enemy is weaker than Artillery Witch or Murad bomber which can also both shoot from the other half of the battlefield every turn without fucking killing themselves and aren't even that much more expensive. Who the fuck thought that would be okay?

The Shrine is really powerful, but it's pretty much the only ace in the hole the Pilgrims have and every other faction barring Antioch also has a poweful big guy, so it hardly outweighs anything.

Sure, the Nuns, ressurected Pilgrims and Elites have some extra survivability, but compared to the offensive capabilities pretty much every other faction can have if built competently the Pilgrims get wrecked anyway and can hardly accomplish anything unless exceptionally lucky.