Please enjoy this guest post by Dylan Craig, looking at his Maroon Force he used at the Land Tournament at 2024 AdeptiCon.

Force Overview

• Faction: Maroons, using the Suriname Maroons Force Option (Faction found in Raise the Black)
• Commander: Untested Standard Unaligned Renegade Commander
• Points: 150
• Theatre: Land
• By: Dylan Craig

Here is a link to the force on Blood & Plunder Force Builder. (The recent Character cost adjustment pushes this force to 153)

• Untested Unaligned Renegade Commander
• 7 African Warriors with Bows swapped for Muskets
  • Sharpshooter
  • Musician
• 7 African Warriors with Bows removed and Pistols added
• 3 Warrior Archers
• 3 Warrior Archers
• 6 Warriors with Heavy Melee Weapons swapped for Thrown Weapons
  • Grizzled Veteran

Intro to The Maroons

In all of pirate history, there isn’t a group I find more fascinating as a “what-if” than the Maroons. What if other Maroon groups had been as successful at holding off colonial forces as Queen Nanny and Cudjoe were? What if colonial powers had been more interested in working with (and arming) freed slaves, like the Spanish were at Fort Mose? We can’t know, but every time I line up my forces I certainly imagine that this time – THIS time – we’ll send those pasty imperialists packing for good. 😉

The Maroon faction makes for an interesting list. After my first tournament, I had a sympathetic fellow player (who’d just tabled me) suggest that maybe, as a beginner, I might want to go with a less complicated pick.  He had a point: Maroons are an inarguably hybrid force with a LOT of key mechanics to keep in mind. But with a little practice, I started really enjoying the synergies of those mechanics, and I was happy to come away from Adepticon ’24 with a 2-1.

There are three key mechanics to the Maroons, as far as I can tell.

1. Role as Attacker or Defender

First off: it REALLY matters whether you’re going to be the Attacker or the Defender. As Attackers, Maroons get to declare that the fighting is happening at night, which puts a 12″ cap on visibility. AMAZING for facing down shooty lists. Or, as Defenders, you can put half your units into bushwhack mode via Lie in Wait. Depending on the scenario, this can pretty quickly change things in your favor.

Defenders in a Take-and-Hold scenario, for example, can start right on the objective! So, if you’re playing Maroons, read up on the scenarios you’ll be playing and start thinking how you’d tackle each scenario from an Attacker or a Defender’s point of view; then, after you get your opponent, decide whether it’s worth switching out the lights on them or whether you want to push from ambush into close combat as quickly as possible. Take special note of any units with matchlocks or torches in their force, as you’ll be able to snipe those guys even in the dark – very satisfying.

2. Fighting Men

Second, consider your Fighting Men mostly in light of your subfaction special abilities. Suriname Maroons get Ruthless, so that pairs well with a Musician to help you pick on a 1 Fatigue unit right out on Turn 1. Jamaican Maroons are shootier, so there you might want a Sharpshooter. Regardless of subfaction you’ll likely be pushing a lot of extra actions to make surprise long distance charges, so if you can lay in a Grizzled Veteran for your assault squad, that’ll help them manage Fatigue. You don’t have many options here as far as Fighting Men go, so really your choices are less “which should I get” and more “should I get any”.

Your high-resolve unit is the African Warriors (Resolve 5), and they’re also the only ones who can pack muskets as a main weapon, so either pick a Commander who also has a musket and can snipe with them, or put someone Inspiring in with the Warriors and make your peace with a having a 6 Resolve and rerolls.

3. Know When to Fire the Glass Cannon

Third: the list I run tends very much towards the “glass cannon” mentality. Multiple small squads of Warrior Archers give great long-range harassing fire – with a Ruthless bonus and no fear of accumulating Reload tokens, I regularly let loose on enemies 20 inches away just hoping for those 10s, and their Skirmisher ability means that it’s possible to always be 4″ closer to them than you look.

For night attacks, sitting at 20″ or 16″, ducking in to fire from 12″, and then ducking back out is a lot of cheeky fun. And all the while that’s happening, I’m feeding my Diamond and Club cards to my African Warriors (with muskets) and my Warriors (with pistols) to get them in position just behind the Warrior Archers. With a push (or CP) and the Quick ability, you can charge these guys through the archers and 12″ right into combat; both units hit hard (6s and 5s, respectively), which when combined with Ruthless and/or the Warriors’ heavy weapons, gives you a good likelihood of messing the enemy up badly enough that they can’t do much back to you. That’s really the core Maroon cycle: harass with bows from cover, draw the enemy out, then charge enemies once their Fatigue is so high they can’t Defensive Fire you. It’s a waiting game, and you’re hoping to be able to play it better than your opponent.

Don’t Get Too Greedy

That last point is the most important one, for me. Greedy Maroons, in my experience, quickly become dead Maroons. With relatively expensive, single-purpose troops you can’t really afford to lose more than a single Strike Point’s of fighters throughout the game, so you need to play like your little guys are the most valuable thing around. And it’s so easy to forget to do that. For example, thinking back on my 3 Adepticon games (shout out to Jeff, Andrew and Matt, my excellent opponents), my easiest win was against French militia on a table where a huge hacienda right in the middle of the board FORCED me to take it slow, let the enemy come to me, and then roll up his exposed units with a night charge out where none of their buddies could rescue them.

My hardest win was against Central American natives, where I struggled to get anything for the “cannon” part of “glass cannon” to get a grip on; what I should have done is hang back at the objective and force them to come to me. And the game in which I got utterly wiped out by Church’s raiders was the one in which I made the HUGE mistake of charging my assault troops into a battle where they could get countercharged by other, nearby forces: against the hard-hitting raiders my Warriors simply didn’t have Fight saves to survive two fresh-unit charges. Still not sure how I should have handled that, but I definitely know that the greedy charge was not the smart play.

Final Thoughts

So, that’s my experience with Suriname and Jamaican Maroons. If all of that sounds like a fun way to play a pirate wargame, then give the Maroons a try at your next battle!

Additional Recommended Reading

• Overview of the Maroon Faction
• Yamasee Tournament List from Historicon 2023
• Spanish Tercios Tournament List from Easter Island Event
• Submit your favorite Force to be featured in an article on Blood & Pigment!