Grab your brushes and get to painting! The Great Pirate Paint Off is live! This event is a friendly painting contest for Blood & Plunder and Oak & Iron players around the world. With the Summer of Plunder campaign event scheduled for June-August this year, we’re hosting this contest to inspire people to get their minis, ships, and terrain painted up and ready to game!

As of February 26th The Great Pirate Paint Off is open for business! Entries will be collected through the Blood & Pigment blog until May 14th. At the end of the contest, winners in our various categories will be awarded prizes, fame and plunder. Some prizes will be awarded by our panel of judges here at Blood & Pigment, some will be awarded by the Summer of Plunder Commanders, and some will be put up for a public voting contest which will last for two weeks during May.

As entries come in, we will posting updates here on Blood & Pigment, showing off people’s hard work and providing examples of painted minis, ships and terrain for the Blood & Plunder and Oak & Iron communities.

Let’s look at the prizes, rules, details, and sponsors for this event!

The Great Pirate Paint Off Prizes

For our biggest prizes, we have 5 categories that will be up for public voting for two weeks after the contest closes.

• Best Blood & Plunder Ship – Set of deluxe cloth Balandra sails from Seamon’s Quality Sails
• Best Blood & Plunder Commander – Custom Engraved Wooden Dice Tower from Doubloon Lagoon blog
• Best Blood & Plunder Unit – 3 Deluxe Fortune Coins from Blood & Pigment
• Best Blood & Plunder Army (25+ models) – Deluxe Army Carrier from The Deadman’s Chest blog
• Best Oak & Iron Ship – Winner’s Choice of 1 Oak & Iron Expansion Box from the Timber and Sail blog
• GRAND CHAMPION (the entry with the most total public votes) – Jumbo Blood & Plunder Commander of winner’s choice with winner’s name engraved on base from Firelock Games.

For our other standard categories, we have plenty more excellent prizes from this year’s contest sponsors:

• Most Entries – Blood & Plunder Engraved Storage Box from Things from the Basement
• Best Entry by a New Painter – Pair of fine Winsor & Newton miniature painting brushes.
• Best Kitbashed Custom Miniature(s) – Box of Plunder Sprue from the Firelock Games’ Raise the Black Kickstarter
• Best Terrain Generic Terrain Piece – TBD from The Plunder Den
• Special Plunder Den Challenge – TBD from The Plunder Den
• Best Entry from Each Nation Within the Games – The Pirate, Spanish, English, French, Dutch, & Native “Commanders” from the upcoming Summer of Plunder event will pick their favorite entry from their nation’s entries to award a storage box with their nations flag on it from Things from the Basement.

We will also have some random drawings from entries through the contest. You have a shot at these even if you’re painting for the first time!

• 3 Random Blood & Plunder Ship Entries – Double sided wooden engraved ship movement template
• 3 Random Blood & Plunder Commander Entries – Set of 2022 Promo Commander Cards
• 3 Random Entries – Deluxe Metal Fortune Tokens of Historical Coin Restrikes
• 2 Random Terrain Entries – Custom Terrain Pieces from Tales of the Sail
• Random Oak & Iron Entries – Set of 3D Printed and Painted Wake Tokens from Timber & Sail

The Great Pirate Paint Off Contest Rules

• Miniatures must be painted by entrant or commissioned work must include the painter’s name.
• Entries must have been painted after November 30th 2022
• Subject must be official Blood & Plunder miniature or ship, or Oak & Iron ship. Kitbashing is allowed and encouraged, but it must be primarily Firelock material.
• Terrain entries can be from any manufacture or scratch built.
• Entry categories include:
  • Commanders/Characters
  • Units (4-6 models)
  • Full Forces (25+ models and can include models previously entered as Units & Commanders)
  • Blood & Plunder Ships
  • Oak & Iron Ships
• With some miniatures, the models could be technically used as several different units, but please select the unit that most closely fits your paint job or what you intend to use them for most.
• Models must be painted to at least a “tabletop standard” level (e.g. not one solid color).
• Entries must include 1-5 photos. Please take well-lit photos that fill the frame so details and paint job are visible. Subjects should be posed on a battle board, in a lightbox, against a background, or any other suitable setting.

Contest Fine Print

• The upcoming national Commanders for the Summer of Plunder event will be awarding prizes to their favorite entry representing their nation. This applies to Commander, Units, and Force entries. This is a great way to start supporting your favorite nation or faction for the Summer of Plunder!
• Please mention in the comments on the entry form that you’ve been painting miniatures for less than a year to be considered for the “New Painter” prize.
• Entries must be made through The Great Pirate Paint Off entry form on Blood & Pigment between February 26th and May 14th.
• Public Voting for the the appropriate categories will run from May 15th until May 28th.
• Prizes for non public voting categories will be awarded May 15th and the publicly voted categories will be awarded on May 29th, 2023. We will contact winners via email.
• Prizes will be shipped anywhere in the world for free.
• Blood & Pigment would love to be able to use pictures of your miniatures in an upcoming gallery feature we are working on. Please indicate on the entry form if you would rather we not use your contest photos for this purpose.
• There is no limit to the number of entries an individual can enter.
• Miniatures you have commissioned out for paint jobs may be entered, but you must provide the painters name and they will share the glory. You will have to choose what to do any prizes won!
• Depending on the level of participation, we reserve the right to change categories and prize structure as needed. We have plenty more prizes we could thrown on the loot piles! The more entries we get, the more prizes we’ll add!

Contest Sponsors

The piratical Firelock community is constantly growing and we’re honored to have a great list of content creators and companies sponsoring this contest through prize support, advertising and ideas.

Firelock Games

There wouldn’t be a contest without Firelock Games! In addition to promoting this contest, Firelock has donated some unique jumbo commander with winner’s names engraved on the base as prizes.

Things from the Basement

The folks over at Things from the Basement have been supporting Blood & Plunder for a long time! They have a great line of accessories including storage boxes, miniature trays, and great terrain options. Things from the Basement also had a huge hand in design work for 4Ground terrain. The folks at Things from the Basement have offered us a great discount on their line of Blood & Plunder Storage Boxes that will be awarded by our Summer of Plunder Commanders to the top entries from each nation represented (Pirate, Spanish, English, French, Dutch, and Native).

Timber & Sail

Jason has been the community leader for Oak & Iron and has created an amazing resource for the Oak & Iron community with Timber & Sail. Jason has not only donated all the Oak & Iron prizes for this contest, but he has been helping out in a massive way at Blood & Pigment!

Seamon’s Quality Sails

Our own Guy Rheuark’s mother Mary Seamons, is a quilter extraordinaire and has been offering deluxe, hand made cloth sails for all the ships in the Blood & Plunder line. Each set is carefully hand made using several layers of material for excellent visuals and functionality. Mary Seamons has donated a set of sails for the new Bermuda Sloop.

The Dead Man’s Chest

Tyler Stone has recently started up a blog covering several of Firelock’s games, including Blood & Plunder. The Dead Man has donated a deluxe army carrying case that will have enough slots to safely carry your favorite Blood & Plunder army to games stores and conventions.

The Doubloon Lagoon

Tyler Carlson, brother to Pigment Crewman “Iron” Dan, has recently started up a Blood & Plunder blog. This year, The Doubloon Lagoon is donating a custom engraved Blood & Plunder dice tower as a prize.

The Plunder Den

Dexter has built up a massive amount of great miniature painting and terrain crafting and painting tutorials on his Plunder Den YouTube channel. He’s always working on something awesome and he never runs out of great ideas! He can make amazing terrain with a random bag full of dollar store materials. We’re lucky to have The Plunder Den sponsor the Terrain part of this contest. Watch for details for his special terrain project challenge on his channel soon!

Tales of the Sail Podcast

Tales of the Sail has been a huge part of community building in the Firelock community over the years. They are providing some custom 3D printed terrain pieces as prizes for the Terrain category.

If you are interested in helping sponsor this contest or helping out with the Summer of Plunder Global Campaign, please contact us!

Thank you for your interest in this event! We’re hoping for a fun time of sharing the community’s painting efforts this Spring. This could be a good opportunity to get Blood & Plunder and Oak & Iron out in front of more eyes as well through the public voting at the end of the contest. But this it won’t be anything without entries! So get to painting! You know you have a pile of plastic and metals minis to paint up. Start chipping away at that pile and start bringing that army to life with those pigments!

You can enter using this entry form.

Additional Recommended Reading

• For more info on the Summer of Plunder Campaign, visit the Summer of Plunder HQ
• For painting inspiration, check out this long list of painting guides and tutorials.