October is coming! The Raise the Black Kickstarter campaign is now less than a month away! Included in that Kickstarter is a brand new ship, the Bermuda Sloop. The Must Contain Minis blog recently did a spoiler article on this new ship and it looks beautiful! We now have spoilers for the full stats (subject to change) and it’s time for some hot takes on the hot new ship!

Joseph’s Hot Take

This is a remarkable ship! It’s extremely heavily armed but also very small and very fragile! I’m most excited about the possibility of 8 swivel guns! That’s a lot of death you can deliver off these decks! If you can keep the decks above water! This is a very fragile ship with 4/4 Fortitude/Integrity which is a weak as the Bark, Tartana or Corvette. Not only does it have a small number of hitpoints but it has Lightly Built which means it doesn’t afford its crew Heavy Cover. This is really a High Risk/High Reward style of ship. I see this as a great ship for Buccaneers and Pirates factions in the game. Any force that has the ability to re-draw their hand during the game for free has a high probability of taking the initiative at the crucial moment to get that heavy punch in before the opponent, hopefully crippling their cannon crew so this little ship doesn’t get blown to smithereens! The absolute best combo I see with this ship is sailing it under False Colors in the Pirate faction. It doesn’t matter how fragile your ship is if your enemy can’t fire on you! If you could sail this in close under false pretenses then let off 24 swivel gun dice, you could decide a game right there. Its a speedy little ship too! At 5″ speed and -1″ windward, it’s fast and aggressive. Pirates flying across the water under false colors! You can move from 12″ to 7″ away from your prey in one move, let loose 24 swivel dice at close range, then board to mop up the blood. So excited for this! Should make for some awesome games. 

Dan’s Hot Take

The new Bermuda Sloop is a fine addition to the smaller ships in the Firelock Fleet. With a great top speed, plenty of firepower (8 cannons and 8 swivels!), and easy to maneuver with the Simple Rig and Fore-and-Aft Rig special rules, this vessel will give the Corvette a run for its money in smaller games! While Lightly Built means it can only take Light Cannons, the current meta (as of September 2020) revolves around swivel guns, which this vessel packs a whopping 8 in total! If you plan on running this vessel, I would advise that you fly in for a quick broadside then board, as your durability is not good enough for a cannon brawl (especially since most of the other ships can take Medium Cannons). All in all, this will be a pirate or privateer’s dream Sloop, and will be the bane of any player who prefers to stay back and shoot while avoiding close quarters combat!

Guy’s Hot Take

I have thought for a long time that Blood & Plunder needs more ships like the Bark and Tartanna. It needs ships that are accidental warships. The Bermuda sloop was a coastal merchant ship and its traits lightly built, fore and aft rig, and shallow draft show this. This is a ship for wreckers, for smugglers, and for logwood cutters. This ship was not built for war, but that doesn’t mean it’s defenseless.

The Bermuda sloop can have eight swivels, four on each deck, and eight light cannons. This is twice as much as the bark, a ship near the same size, and represents the peculiar madness of the 18th century, where even civilian vessels start to out gun earlier Naval ships.

This will also be the first injection molded plastic ship we know about. The shift from resin is one that I am not altogether onboard, but It is a necessary change. Did you see that this ship will have included dead eyes and chains on the chain guard? Assembling a plastic model with plastic cement is the best way to assemble a model, it’s not as finicky as CA glue (super glue), you can’t glue your fingers to it, and it gives you a few seconds to a minute to position the piece. Injection molded plastic will also open up a whole new world of easier “kit bashing” then resin does, letting us all customize our ships with the options that come in the box. I still like the heft that resin has over injection molded plastic, but this will open up ship building and rigging details to everyone.

What do you think of this new ship? Do you plan on adding it to your fleet? Or maybe the better question is “how many do you plan on adding to your fleet?”

Rumor has it there will be a “more basic” version of this ship that isn’t as high performance and only costs 10 points. But that’s a preview for another day!

Keep an eye out here at Blood & Pigment for more previews and hot takes on new products coming for Blood & Plunder. Mr. Teach might be showing his face on this blog soon!

Spread the word about the October 6th Kickstarter. This is the perfect time to get your friends into the game!