The Plunder Den – Sponsor for Terrain Category

If you need some inspiration for making some terrain for your Blood & Plunder (or any other wargaming table), you got to check out The Plunder Den YouTube channel. Dexter is a master of terrain building and faithfully puts out great videos with crafting and painting instructions for a wide variety of accessible projects. Examples of projects you can find on his channel include Fences, painting ships, stone bridge, roads, frontier fort, docks, forest stream, Pirates of the Caribbean style house, an ancient jungle temple. and a blockhouse. His videos are tight, concise, well edited, and the projects are elegant, affordable and made by a gamer for gaming.

You’ll learn something new from each video and you can make some valuable terrain pieces on a very small budget. Dexter is a National Treasure among the Blood & Plunder (and Blood & Everything) else community!

Prize for the Terrain Category

This year Dexter has donated one of his custom terrain builds as the prize for the Terrain category of The Great Pirate Paint Off contest. The winner will receive this set of 2 Port Fortifications pieces.

There be a crafting video on this project on The Plunder Den YouTube soon!

Huge thanks to Dexter for his support and contributions to the Blood & Plunder community and for his donation of this terrain piece for this contest! Subscribe to his channel and check out his fantastic videos. You can support him by purchasing some of his Plunder merch as well!

Timber & Sail – Sponsor for Oak & Iron Category

Timber & Sail is the online source for great Oak & Iron information, analysis, news fan content. Jason Klotz (now “on staff” here at Blood & Pigment as well) founded Timber & Sail in 2022 and has added a ton of great content for the Oak & Iron Community.

On Timber & Sail you can find nation guides, a full set of ship analysis, custom scenarios, rules for a Kraken, rules for a Native faction, guides to rules updates, and a full product guide. So many great articles for Oak & Iron players!

Not only does Jason work hard to provide great online content, but he has put together and run large events and tournaments at various conventions. Jason will again be running the Oak & Iron tournament at Adepticon 2024, and hosting an epic Wager’s Action event. BTW you should register for that event, and see the mighty Galleon in action!

We’re very thankful to have Jason supporting both the Oak & Iron and Blood & Plunder communities. In addition to running Timber & Sail, here are some other things he regularly does for the :

• Plan and run events at conventions
• Coordinate and network Quartermasters to provide terrain and loaner forces at conventions
• Write articles for Blood & Pigment
• Proof Read for Blood & Pigment
• Provide SEO and IT support to us luddites at Blood & Pigment
• Spend hours and hours planning, playtesting and setting up Summer of Plunder
• Do all the brainiac work for the Summer of Plunder spreadsheets
• Create the Summer of Plunder Map
• Help with the Firelock Games Player Map
• Pick fights on Discord (occasionally)
• Design useful STL’s for both Iron and Plunder

Prize for the Oak & Iron Ship Category

For this contest, Jason has contributed some of the big ships as prizes! The winner of the Oak & Iron Ship category can choose to either receive the Ships of the Line expansion that contains a 3rd, 2nd and 1st Rate Ship of the Line, or any two of the newly released SiOcast ship miniatures (Galleon or alternate 3rd Rate). These big ships just got a substantial price drop, making that much easier to fit into some moderately sized fleet battles.

The SiOcast models are so highly detailed, they are a true pleasure to paint and that Galleon is a beast! Heavy duty monster on the board! Both the Galleon and 3rd Rate individual expansions include both a standard generic stat card and a unique ship card representing a specific ship in history.

Thanks to Jason for all he does in the Firelock Games communities, and thanks for providing these prizes for this contest!

Oak & Iron Ship Entries in the Great Pirate Paint Off

Oak & Iron ships are an entirely different project than Plunder minis or ships. 1/600 ships ranging from a tiny sloop to a massive 1st Rate Ship-of-the-Line, these small ships offer very different challenges and opportunities.

While we focus on Blood & Plunder on this blog, we love Oak & Iron, we include it in the Summer of Plunder Campaign, and we’re happy to have a category for these little masterpieces in the Great Pirate Paint Off again this year.

So far, as of 2/18, we have 9 entries for Oak & Iron Ships.

First up here we have the new “full” Galleon model, painted very precisely by Josiah Huss. This is amazing work! These colors are straight from the French colors from the Firelock Games Oak & Iron painting guide. This new sculpt is really a beauty and Josiah did an amazing job with it.

Next we have a very piratical Queen Anne’s Revenge, painged by David Dueck. With some French blue, great pirate flags, and a weathered figurehead, there’s no doubt which ship is the pirate’s flagship when this 6th rate is on the table!

Next we have a fully rigged English 2nd Rate from Rob Berends. Anyone who rigs their Oak & Iron ship gets respect!

Next we have a cheeky contribution from myself (Joseph Forster)! These siocast sculpts are a joy to paint (once you’ve cleaned them up a little). The detail is so great, and I discovered a new gold paint that I enjoyed using on the stern. I’ve been reading on the Anglo-Dutch Wars and I used an English color scheme from paintings by Willem van de Velde the elder. (btw, I enter just for fun and to show up in the galleries and I’m ineligible for any prizes).

And we have a piratey fluyt with some custom sails from Hans Sprenkle!

Check out the Oak & Iron Gallery for more great Oak & Iron entries in the Great Pirate Paint Off!

Terrain Entries in the Great Pirate Paint Off

Terrain is a very diverse category as there is no requirement to be a Firelock Games product. This category usually is just as much about crafting as it is about painting. As of 2/18, we have 18 entries in the Terrain category so far. Let’s a take a look a couple!

On of my favorites so far is this island by David Cecil. With several levels, this would make for some very interesting gameplay! And the other side is every cooler, but you’ll have to check the Terrain Gallery for more pictures of this epic entry.

Every land or amphibious table needs trees. Always more trees! Here’s a hand crafted Tree by Riley Faulk.

This next piece is massive, a great centerpiece for a battle in the South American jungles! This Aztec Temple Ruin by Jason Ropp is amazing! Again, you have to check out the rest of the photos in the Terrain Gallery.

And for something completely different, we have Ft. Matanzas, a classic 18th century Spanish fort in the clean Spanish colors, by Daniel Perkins. Fort Matanzas figures large in Firelock Games’ origin story, so it’s great to have it represented here!

And finally, I’m going to sneak another one of my projects in here because I’m really excited about the STL file that Jason Klotz made here! The Watchtower fortification has been part of the game since day 1, but with no official model, it doesn’t get played a lot. But Jason has done a fantastic job with this STL and I’m already really enjoying using this on my tables! Shameless plug: you have purchase this STL from cults3d for $5.

The Plunder Den Special Terrain “Flash Challenge”

In coordination with this contest, Dexter is running a special “flash challenge” again this year. The idea is that he provides an instructional video and a materials list and contestants all work on the same project. It’s a great little contest and always fun to see different people’s take on the same project. This year the subject is a little less pirate focused but the Natives always need some more love!

Check out the instructions for the Terrain Flash Challenge here:

The winner will receive the example set of terrain from Dexter (plus maybe some more bonus terrain).

Here is an example of an entry in the Flash Challenge last year:

Changes in Winner Selection

One more update regarding the contest: we have switched up our system to a panel of 6-7 judges selecting winners instead of a full-on people’s choice system. The people’s choice voting is fun and exciting, but it has proved problematic and we’re going to try a judges panel for the foreseeable future. Thank you for understanding!

Final Thoughts

Thank you for participating in The 2024 Great Pirate Paint Off! Get your Terrain and Oak & Iron entries in before March 1st! In March we have the major category of Blood & Plunder Units so you can start painting for that as well.

Update by Joseph Forster

Additional Recommended Reading

• Check out all the 2024 entries in the Contest Gallery
• Or look at just the Terrain or Oak & Iron Galleries
• Explore the world of Oak & Iron at Timber & Sail
• Immerse yourself in awesome terrain videos at The Plunder Den
• Check out the basic contest rules at the Great Pirate Paint Off Home Page
• Check out all the contest Sponsors and Prizes here
• Submit your Terrain and Oak & Iron entries here!