The second month of the Great Pirate Paint Off contest has concluded and we have winners to announce and some prizes to award! In February, the painting contest focused on wargaming Terrain pieces and Oak & Iron Ship entries. Our contest sponsors for these categories are The Plunder Den (for Terrain) and Oak & Iron (for Oak & Iron). We also have a winner to announce for the special “Terrain Flash Challenge” from the Plunder Den.
We changed up the awards selection process a bit this month, by having a panel of 5 judges vote for winners instead of running a people’s choice contest. Each judge selected 5 entries with their first choice receiving 5 points, second choice receiving 4 points, etc. Our 5 judges are prestigious persons from various parts of the Firelock Games community, all well-qualified and unbiased!
We had wonderful participation in these two categories and we wish we could highlight each and every entry, but we can only look at a few here. But please check out the full galleries of the Terrain Entries and the Oak & Iron Ships categories using these links.
Let’s look at the top 5 entries in each category, along with some Honorable Mentions.
Painting Contest Winners – Terrain Category
We had a total of 44 entries in the Terrain category. This category is very diverse, with no restriction requiring the entry be a Firelock model. We had a lot of amazing scratch-built models, plenty of great scatter terrain, some natural area terrain and some great buildings and fortifications.
Terrain Category Sponsor
Dexter Heide, from The Plunder Den YouTube Channel is our category sponsor this year, providing a custom terrain piece as a prize. If you’ve been living under a rock (scatter terrain or otherwise), The Plunder Den offers excellent resources and terrain-building tutorials on YouTube, The videos offer building material suggestions, step-by-step instructions, and painting guides. All of these can help you take your wargaming terrain to the next level and have your tabletops looking like they were professionally built.
Terrain Honorable Mentions
Before we get to the top 5, we have a couple of honorable mentions.
First, congratulations to Patrick Tozer for submitting the most entries for the terrain category. With 11 entries, Patrick represented a full 25% of the terrain entries this year! Check out some of his scatter terrain and house entries.
A selection of Patrick Tozer’s Terrain Entries
Another honorable mention goes out to Mike Anderson for his “dilapidated timber house” entry.
Our final honorable mention goes out to Brett Yardley for this massive and amazing ship! He indicated he intended to use it more as terrain to fight over instead of a ship to sail, so he entered it under the Terrain heading instead of the ship category (coming in April). Modified and printed from Ian Lovecraft’s 6th Rate Frigate STL, this is a beautiful piece! With full rigging and fantastic detail, this is truly an impressive entry! That rigging is very well done and the removable deck is a great touch so you can really access the gun deck. Well done Brett!
5th Place Terrain
Coming in at 5th place we have an epic Spanish Church submitted by Matthew Doerr.
Built on a 2×2′ board, this is a massive piece! Amazing work. This should work really well for the upcoming Port Royal game that is intended for tabletop game boards just this size. This is truly a glorious Spanish church, but if I know Matthew, his Dutchmen are destined to BURN THIS DOWN more than once during this year’s Summer of Plunder (Matthew is the Dutch Commander this year).
4th & 3rd Place Terrain
For third and fourth place we have a tie between David Cecil’s Skull Island and Jason Ropp’s Aztec Ruin entry. Both are large-scale entries that could be a centerpiece of any board.
With rock texturing, ladders, steps, skull sculpting, and plenty of foliage, this is a complex project. Amazing work.
Jason’s Aztec Ruin is no less ambitious! A massive piece with plenty of texturing and foliage, this piece adds some great height interest to a game of Blood & Plunder.
2nd Place Terrain
Coming in at second place we have a Native Wigwam from Wayne Burton.
We aren’t certain, but this piece appears to be scratch-built as well and would be perfect for many of the Native Factions found in Fire on the Frontier and Raise the Black. This great paint work which immediately reminds me of the style of Dexter Heide, our category sponsor!
1st Place Terrain
And that brings us to the WINNER! In 1st place in the Terrain category, with a clear majority of the judges’ votes, we have a fantastic Longhouse entry from Brent DeVos. While the Native Americans may struggle to take a top spot in the Summer of Plunder Campaign, in the terrain category of the Great Pirate Paint Off, they have claimed first AND second place!
This is a beautiful piece, both in function and style. With a detailed and painted interior and removable roof, and built at full scale, this is a great piece for a North American battle board for Blood & Plunder. As a big fan of the Native Americans in Blood & Plunder, I’m personally thrilled to see some great terrain built for them this year! Congratulations to Brent DeVos! Brent has won a handbuilt piece of Terrain from Dexter Heide, the master terrain builder himself.
While not really the same, this Longhouse reminds of the Longhouse model built by Dexter, our category sponsor! Check out his Longhouse video for some inspiration!
Terrain Category Prize
The following picture shows the prize Brent won for his entry. It’s a defensive position designed as a sea wall (though, it could be used on land as it lacks a specific water feature). Dexter shows off this fortified sea wall terrain piece on his YouTube channel with a painting tutorial.
Thank you everyone for entering your great work in the Terrain category, and thank you Dexter for sponsoring this category and donating the prize! Make sure to check out all the Terrain entries in this gallery and stop by The Plunder Den and say thank you for their sponsorship and efforts to help the community.
Painting Contest Winners – Oak & Iron Category
Oak & Iron ships an entirely different painting project! At a very different scale, painting these ships takes a LOT more care and patience than you might guess! With highly detailed models, they can lots of tiny bits requiring a bit more dexterity than your average Blood & Plunder pirate miniature. We had a total of 29 entries in this category this year and these painters have some great work to share this year!
Oak & Iron Category Sponsor
Jason Klotz from the Timber & Sail blog is our category sponsor. Timber & Sail is a fansite dedicated to the game of Oak & Iron, a 1/600-scale pirate miniatures game produced by Firelock Games. The game focuses on the sea combat aspect of the era and is a great supplement for anyone interested in Blood & Plunder or the Golden Age of Piracy. Timber & Sail has sponsored some of the newest big ships for Oak & Iron as a prize this year (more details in a bit).
Honorable Mention Oak & Iron Entries
Before we get into the top 5, we have some honorable mentions.
First, we have a pair of French ships, painted in a style so neat it’s incredible! This little fleet of a Sloop, Light Frigate and Galleon from Josiah Huss closely follows the scheme for French ships in the Firelock Games painting guide for Oak & Iron (available on Timber & Sail).
Honorable mention #2 goes to Werner Pluta who submitted a great set of ships, well staged and photographed.
A final honorable mention goes out to Patrick Tozer who submitted the most Oak & Iron entries with a total of 9 ships painted during this contest.
Especially notable is his intricate paint job on this Light Galleon. While less historical in nature and a bit more whimsical, it is very well done! The scheme is based on the “Triumphant Sea Dog” ship skin & sail set available from the hugely popular pirate-themed video game Sea of Thieves.
5th Place Oak & Iron Entry
In 5th place, we have a sweet little Brigantine painted by Daniel Collison. These small ships are more difficult to paint neatly than seems reasonable. Excellent job!
4th Place Oak & Iron Entry
Contest organizers (Joseph Forster) are not eligible to win a prize, but I did enter a 3rd Rate Anne model just for fun, and some of the judges didn’t get the memo, so my entry got some votes. I’m flattered.
I’ll just use this opportunity to sing the praises of the Vallejo Metal Color line of paint! Their Gold paint, shaded with some Games Workshop washes, really made me happy when used on the stern of this sweet SiOCAST model.
3rd Place Oak & Iron Entry
Now we get to the top placing entries! In third place, we have one of the new Galleon models painted by Erich Goebel. These new models are sharp and extremely intimidating on the gaming table!
I love the subtle but effective work on the sails on Erich’s entry here!
2nd Place Oak & iron Entry
Fiercely competing with himself for the top spot, we have two entries by Rob Berends. In second place we have an English 2nd Rate Frigate painted and rigged by Rob. Anyone willing to rig an Oak & Iron ship gets serious respect! That’s more rigging than a “normal” sane person would put on a Blood & Plunder ship!
1st Place Oak & Iron Entry
And in our top spot, winning the prize from Timber & Sail, we have a beautifully painted and rigged Dutch 1st Rate Frigate from Rob Berends. The rigging and flags are superbly well done!
Great colors, a very tidy paint job, great flags, and that rigging puts it over the top.
Congratulations to Rob who can choose to either receive the Ships of the Line expansion for Oak & Iron (contains a 3rd Rate, 2nd Rate, and 1st Rate Frigate), OR two of the newest ships for Oak & Iron (English 3rd Rate or Galleon models).
Thank you to everyone who entered their ships in the Oak & Iron category! Make sure to check out all the entries in the Oak & Iron Category Gallery. And don’t forget to stop by Timber & Sail or visit their Facebook page to say thanks for their prize sponsorship and for supporting the game of Oak & Iron.
Terrain Flash Challenge from the Plunder Den
Dexter at the Plunder Den also hosted a special “Flash Challenge” during this contest, focusing on a specific project. This category pushed the envelope a little for Blood & Plunder this year, but was a great project! Dexter provided an instructional video with a materials list and some instructions in this video.
With a shorter timeframe for entries, there was less participating this year than last year, but we had some great entries!
Terrain Flash Challenge Entries
Terrain Flash Challenge Winner
And the winner of the Terrain Flash Challenge is Wayne Burton with his fully based Teepee model.
Really great work! Another win for the Natives in Blood & Plunder!
Final Thoughts
Thank you to everyone who has participated in The Great Pirate Paint Off so far this year! We are really impressed with the quality and quantity of entries this year. Very inspiring!
Congratulations to all the top winners of these categories, and to Rob Berends, Brent DeVos, and Wayne Burton in particular. Fantastic work. These prizes will ships out shortly and we will move on to Blood & Plunder Units for March. But the Great Pirate Paint-Off isn’t over!
March Category for The Great Pirate Paint Off
March starts the next phase of the painting contest – Units! This is obviously a big category and we already have some great entries! Get to painting! We have some great prizes for this category, including some entries chosen at random again in March.
Here’s a sneak peek of some of the unit entries we’ve already received:
I need someone to clearly explain what Cover does.
There are two forms of Cover in Blood & Plunder. Standard “Cover” and “Hard Cover”.
Cover = anything that cover 1/2 the model but leaves the torso exposed. It can be vegetation, low walls, etc.
A model in Cover uses it’s standard Shoot Save when hit. So a Zeeliden would need a 7+ to survive a Hit.
A model out of Cover saves on a 9+, regardless of it’s stats.
A model in Hard Cover such as stone walls, stacks of wood, ships that don’t have “Lightly Built” attribute has a -1 bonus to its Save. So a Zeeliden would need a 6+ to survive a Hit.
There are more nuances to Cover discussed in the Terrain section of the newest rules book starting on page 56.