INTRODUCTION

The Raise the Black expansion for Blood & Plunder has greatly favored the Spanish Land sub-factions. We can now field an elite force without the need to rely on cheap militia. While Tercios were available previously, they lacked finesse, and their subfaction rules were lacking. Now, Spain boasts access to the game’s top soldiers: Soldados Reformados. While not necessarily the absolute best, they reign supreme on a per-point basis. Moreover, the Spanish Army faction possesses a crucial and unique ability: the deployment of an extra support unit. This allows for the inclusion of two units of Grenadiers, the epitome of elite troops. In a 150-point game, this is crucial.

In the forthcoming paragraphs, I will explore my approach to list-building and in-game strategy for the Spanish Army sub-faction. If you find my insights compelling, I encourage you to consider acquiring one or two boxes of Firelock’s plastic soldiers and joining the ranks of the most formidable and entertaining faction in Blood and Plunder: Spain. After all, my victory in the tournament speaks for itself.

Before moving forward, I must be transparent and acknowledge that this list was significantly influenced by an article in Dead Man’s Chest. If you wish to complement and enhance your understanding of it, I recommend reading said piece after going through this article. Tylor also compares the Spanish Army faction with the army factions of other competing nations. This provides a broader perspective on what makes the Spanish Army unique within its context.

Here is the composition of the Adepticon 2024 Land Tournament winning list:

Spanish Army

• Five Trained Soldados Reformados with plug bayonets, with an Inspiring Experienced Commander and a Surgeon (Advisor character).
• Six Trained Soldados Reformados with plug bayonets.
• Six Trained Granaderos with Socket Bayonets and NO explosives.
• Six Trained Granaderos with Socket Bayonets and NO explosives.

list Philosophy

In my experience, aiming for a minimum of four units is beneficial in standard-sized games, especially on land. At sea, it’s more context-dependent. Access to four activation cards offers a significant advantage over three, enhancing flexibility to leverage drawing Spades or Hearts for special abilities. This is crucial in competitive list construction. Elite lists, with high point-cost units, were previously avoided due to inability to field “full-sized” units. Consequently, extra caution is needed in managing losses.

The Spanish Army faction stands out for its unique perk of an additional Support Unit, giving a valuable advantage from the start. Blood and Plunder’s list-building requires twice as many Core Units as Support Units, adding distinct flavor to subfactions. Having equal numbers of Core and Support Units is crucial; in the No Peace Beyond the Line expansion, the English and French Expeditionary Forces emphasized this as their main selling point, with no other extra special abilities.

The Spanish Army’s ability is slightly different, although it is technically more constrained by allowing only one extra Support Unit. In 150-point games, it essentially translates to the same: two Core Units and two Support Units.  In our case, we are taking advantage of deploying two units of the best unit in the game: the Grenadiers. More about that will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

The Core Mechanics of the Army Faction

The essence of an Army faction, distinct from Militias, lies in its composition of professional soldier units that operate with discipline and unity under the command of their leader. Thus, Blood and Plunder has endowed them with two features to embody this:

1) The Commander can utilize two Command Points to issue an order to all units within its Command Range bubble that possess the Expertly Drilled ability;

2) The Commander can transfer the action points of their attached unit to gain one more Command Point.

Hence, the Commander can issue fire or march orders to all their commanded units simultaneously, providing them with increased mobility or firepower. However, this capability is limited to soldier-like units. Therefore, while theoretically, you could choose to deploy non-soldiers, it would undermine the purpose of selecting this army faction. Non-soldier units would be unable to fully exploit the army faction rules to their fullest potential.

Unit choices

These three features narrow down our unit choices to three options:

• The European Regular
• Soldado Reformado
• Grenadier

I’ll delve into the European Soldier shortly. For now, let’s concentrate on the other two. Both units share several characteristics. They are both Ruthless, possess Fast Reload, and are, naturally, Expertly Drilled. Additionally, their fight, fight save, shooting, and resolve stats are identical. However, the main point of differentiation lies in the Grenadier’s superior shooting save (6 instead of 7) and its possession of the Unwavering ability. While this difference may seem insignificant, it is not. It significantly enhances the Grenadier’s survivability, making it a 50/50 chance to survive any successful shot fired at them (while in cover, of course). Given that we are already deploying units with less than the full complement of eight men, any improvement in survivability is valuable.

The Soldado as a Unit Option

However, all benefits must be considered in terms of the unit’s point cost. There are numerous point combinations available since both units can be customized.

The basic configuration of the Soldado starts at 6 points per model, but this can be reduced by opting for Plug Bayonets instead of Socket Bayonets, resulting in a decrease of four points per the whole unit. Bayonets must be attached to the units with a free action during activation and offer useful advantages during charges or when being charged, similar to lances.

The primary distinction between Plug and Socket Bayonets is that the former prevents shooting altogether, while the latter only disables shooting at long range. This difference is significant, but in the heat of battle, if you have already reached the point of using bayonets, the ability to shoot may not be as relevant.

Therefore, choosing to decrease the unit cost by four points for a small-sized unit is an option that I willingly embrace.

Grenadiers as a Unit Option

The basic configuration of the Grenadier is quite costly, at 8 points per model. However, this cost can be reduced by one point if we opt for a Trained status rather than Veteran. Personally, I don’t find Veteran units to be worth the extra expense, so this decision is an easy one for me.

Now, we are faced with two alternatives: we can either embrace the role of the Grenadier as an explosive-throwing unit, or we can view it as a more traditional professional soldier. Explosives are restricted to 1 model per four in a unit carrying them and possess interesting characteristics in the game.

They are limited to a range of five inches and require a throw test with 3 dice per model carrying them, with an unmodifiable shoot test of 7. Consequently, they are unlikely to cause damage. However, if they do hit, the receiving unit counts as being in the open, thus having a shoot-save test of nine.

For a full 8-man unit, I may consider taking the explosives to test the viability of the strategy of getting close and throwing them. However, in a small-sized man unit, I can only carry one, and I don’t believe the odds favor this approach. Therefore, opting for the Grenadier as a more skilled Soldado is preferable to me.

What is even better, and makes Grenadiers viable is that if explosives are not taken, the cost of the unit decreases by four points.

European Regulars as a Unit Option

Now, let’s consider the European Regular. It shares the same stats as the Soldado Reformado but possesses different abilities. It forfeits Ruthless and, in return, gains both Battle Hardened and Unwavering. This theoretically makes it a more resilient unit due to its “improved” Fatigue management abilities—although, in my opinion, Battle Hardened and Unwavering are not the most effective Fatigue management abilities available. The issue, however, is that it costs one additional point. Therefore, I don’t believe this unit is worth the extra expense.

After combining all the information gathered about the faction with my idiosyncratic tendencies (such as needing four units to get four activation cards), the list practically writes itself. We require two units of Soldados Reformados equipped with plug bayonets and two units of Granadiers without explosives. Two questions arise: What commander and how many models per unit?

Commander and Finetuning the details

One significant difference between Tyler’s original advice in his article and mine is his advocacy for a Commander with no cost. In his approach, the Commander is limited to just one Command Point. However, since he can convert his unit’s activations into Command Points, he effectively has two Command Points, allowing him to issue platoon-like commands. This strategy makes sense. However, my concern is that Untested commanders only have a command range of 4 inches, which is impractical for forces of four units—it’s too restrictive in terms of unit placement. Therefore, while minimizing the cost of the Commander is essential, a viable Command Range is also crucial. An eight-inch range works better for me, so I opted for the Experienced Commander.

How many models per unit? We are aware that we need to compromise in this regard. But what about having one full-fledged unit and distributing the remainder among the others? Unfortunately, this isn’t feasible. One of the key constraints is that most of the point reductions in both the Granaderos and Soldados do not scale, meaning they become less effective the more models per unit we take. This, combined with my other idiosyncratic tendencies (such as preferring an even number of models per unit) and my belief that having four models per unit is not worthwhile (as they don’t inflict enough damage and are more susceptible to being disabled after sustaining a few losses), indicates that we need units of six men which gives exactly 150 points.

Characters

Now, here’s something that falls on me, and I could be mistaken. Since the Commander essentially adopts the same characteristics as the unit to which he is attached, we can reduce the number of base models by one in one of these units and explore the possibility of adding a special Character.

The default choice, and perhaps the obvious optimal one, is the Grizzled Veteran. However, I opted for the Surgeon. I had six points remaining after making adjustments, and the Surgeon costs exactly that. Additionally, although the Commander’s primary role is to issue Platoon Command Actions, I anticipated that I would eventually start issuing individual Command Points.

The issue was that I had four units but only two Command Points—three if we consider the Army’s special rule that allows transforming unit’s activations into Command Points. The Surgeon provides an extra Command Point for rallying (which is an essential action for all lists) and also offers a slight chance of reviving a model (20% chance after a successful rally test, so the odds aren’t particularly favorable). In my games, I only managed to revive a model once, but the mere possibility of recovering one of my costly models is enough to boost my confidence pre-game. That’s why I chose to have him.

Piloting the list

Well, once you grasp the Army rules, the strategy is pretty straightforward. The key mistake to avoid is misusing your command actions to Shoot. The units are equipped with both Fast Reload and, obviously, Expertly Drilled. However, the specific benefits from them are only triggered when the units are activated. So, if you use your platoon-like command points to make all your units Shoot, they won’t reap those benefits. Therefore, refrain from doing so. Utilize your Command Points for mobility, which is what makes this army powerful. It’s fast because the Commander can increase everyone’s movement by four inches per turn. Additionally, it frees up your units’ activations to do something else, if necessary, like start shooting earlier. In general, the strategy should be aggressive.

Seize the initiative, advance, capture objectives (if the scenario demands it), and attack. I often found myself using one unit as bait, being extremely aggressive while keeping the others slightly behind, ready to counter-attack. The fighting stats of these units is impressive (5/6) . Therefore, avoid engaging in pointless shooting. Move, even if it means leaving cover, shooting, fixing bayonets, and charging. But be strategic. Deployment is crucial: you need to stay close to your Commander, and you must accurately assess the threats posed by your opponent’s units. Understand which units are their key assets and prioritize targeting them.

Focus on Maximizing Ruthless and Expertly Drilled

What simplifies piloting this list is that you only need to keep in mind two rules: Ruthless and Expertly Drilled, which complement each other. Ruthless provides a bonus to your shoot/fight tests when your attacking unit has less Fatigue than the unit being attacked. Meanwhile, Expertly Drilled can inflict extra Fatigue when shooting upon activation of Spade and Heart. Additionally, you have Fast Reload, although it doesn’t compound with Expertly Drilled, meaning you need to prioritize which to use. Given my preference for melee and the ruthless strategy, prioritizing the Expertly Drilled trigger is a given.

conclusion

Altogether, this results in a straightforward list that frees up mental space for focusing on in-game strategy and positioning. With other lists, I often found myself struggling just to remember what my units do or don’t do, but with the Spanish Army, that’s not an issue. They are all soldiers.

I trust that my description of my victorious list at the Adepticon 2024 land tournament has been both helpful and enlightening. Hopefully, I have also persuaded you to consider Spain as your primary game faction, as we now have concrete evidence that it is indeed the top faction. Thank you for reading!

Additional Recommended Reading

• Check out Tyler Stone’s Army Faction review on The Dead Man’s Chest Blog
• Read about this Maroon Land Force, also played at AdeptiCon 2024
• Read all about this explosive 3rd place Tournament Sea Force from AdeptiCon 2024
• Submit your own Blood & Plunder Force for a spotlight post like this!
• Check out Fernando’s previous triumphant Spanish Tournament lists here and here.

Related Products

• Blood & Plunder Soldiers Unit Box
• Raise the Black expansion book that contains the Spanish Army Faction