The 2024 Great Pirate Paint Off painting contest has concluded and we have some winners to announce. Thank you everyone for participating in the contest over the course of this winter and spring. We have more than 300 entries, including great work in Commander, Character, Unit, Terrain, Ship and Oak & Iron categories. The contest has run from January 1st through April 30th with deadlines for different categories hitting at the end of each month. If you’re just finding out about the Great Pirate Paint Off contest, we’re sorry you missed it but we will be running it again in 2025!
Final Winners!
We have the two final categories to award prizes for, then we have some special awards, and an entry from each Nation, selected as a winner by each national “Commander” for the Summer of Plunder Campaign. The Ship and Force winners were selected by a panel of 5 judges, selecting their 5 top choices with a weighted voting system where 1st choice gets 5pts, 2nd choice gets 4pts, etc.
Winners For the Best Blood & Plunder Ship
Blood & Plunder ships are major hobby projects. We had 35 entries this year, ranging from the lowly Longboat to the gargantuan Galleon! Here are the top 5 ship entries and here is the link to the full gallery of all the ship entries this year.
Ship Honorable Mentions
Receiving votes but not enough to make it into the top we a Bermuda Sloop by Donald Varner, a Balandra by Ricardo Leon, a Bermuda Sloop by Jacob Newcomb, a Light Frigate, Balandra and Piragua by Riley Faulk, a Light Frigate by Erich Goebel, and a Barco Luengo by Gregory Padilla.
5th & 4th Place Blood & Plunder Ships
With a tie for 4th and 5th place, we have Mark Benson’s Balandra and David Manley’s Sloop of War/Brigantine.
Both this English Balandra and Dutch Brigantine are rigged with great cloth sails, and painted cleanly and cleanly. Nice work!
3rd Place Blood & Plunder Ship
In third place we have another Balandra painted by Daniel Broaddus.
These plastic sloops paint up real nice with some care and attention to detail! Excellent work.
2nd Place Blood & Plunder Ship
Only edged out of the top spot by 2 votes, we have a beautiful Light Frigate painted by Robert McFarland.
The gold over blue is striking and provides a solid contrast with the woodgrain on the rest of the ship. With sails set and flags flying and a great backdrop, this Light Frigate is both painted and presented well!
1st Place Blood & Plunder Ship
And now we come to the winner! In first place we have a Brigantine painted by Ryan Peterson!
With a beautifully smooth paint job, reefed mainsails, some bonus rigging including a staysail, great flags, a figurehead, and some extra details like opening gun hatches and an anchor, this is fantastic ship! Congratulations to Ryan Peterson. Word has it he submitted it 2 seconds before midnight in the IDLW Time Zone.
Sponsor & Prize for Best Blood & Plunder Ship
Our prize for Best Ship is a set of Limited Edition Black Sails for a Balandra from Seamons’ Quality Sails. You can see a set of these on Riley Faulk’s Balandra entry.
Mary Seamons has made so many great sails for the Blood & Plunder community over the past several years and we want to thank her for her service and her donation of this prize to the contest! Mary has just recently decided to retire from her sail making, but she still has a couple sets of these black sails in stock if you’re interested!
Winners for Best Battle Force
This category is for full forces of 25+ Blood & Plunder models, or a fleet of at least 5 Oak & Iron Ships. Finishing a project of this size takes some hard work and dedication of the course of several weeks or months! We had 24 Force entries, with two of those being Oak & Iron fleets. Check out the full gallery of Force entries here.
Force Honorable Mentions
Winning votes but not placing in the top 5 we have a Pirate crew by Ricardo Leon, and another Pirate force by Jerry Kegley.
5th & 4th Place Forces
With a tie for 4th, we have an Oak & Iron fleet and a Dutch Blood & Plunder army.
Painted very neatly in the French style, this Oak & Iron fleet by Josiah Huss is an excellent entry!
Tied for the same spot is Ron Allhouse’s Dutch army of 33 models, including Kapers, Soldaten Latere, Jewish Militia, all led by Piet Heyn.
Ron entered more than one full force in this contest! Great looking armies.
3rd Place Blood & Plunder Force
In 3rd place we have a Spanish force by Daniel Broaddus.
Part of the fun of playing the Spanish is their wide variety of units and we see that on full display here! Using all multi-part plastic models, Daniel has a 5 very distinct units ranging from some snappy Soldados Reformados to some Native auxiliaries. All led by a wild Spaniard, Roberto Enseñar.
2nd Place Blood & Plunder Force
As the second winner, we have Mark Benson with his English Buccaneer force, led by Henry Morgan.
With a good mix of metal and plastic minis this crew looks ready to redistribute some Spanish wealth!
1st Place Blood & Plunder Force
This is a remarkable moment in this contest. This final winner received a PERFECT SCORE of 25 points. Being selected as the top entry by all 5 judges, we have Julian Nault’s Spanish Militia Force. Julian is truly a master painter! A Spanish starter set never looked so good!
These minis looked so clean, I thought they must be the new resin minis that have that extra bit of detail beyond the metal models. But no. These are metals with paint jobs so fine, they transcend metal’s usual limitations! Amazing job and a worthy winner!
Sponsor & Prize for Best Force
This category was generously sponsored by TABLEWAR. The prize going out to Julian is a 4×3′ Caribbean Battle Mat. This Caribbean series of F.A.T. Mats by TABLEWAR has been a major boon to the Blood & Plunder community. You’ll see these mats at every Plunder tournament all year long!
Thanks to TABLEWAR for sponsoring this contest with this donated prize. Look for another mat from TABLEWAR as a prize for the Summer of Plunder event later this year! Congrats to Julian for the win, and next year we can expect to see his minis posed on something more high brow than a humble paper mat!
Extra End-of-Contest Awards
We have some extra categories to award before going on to “best of nation” prizes. Here we have winners for the best entry from a “new painter,” and a prize for the person entering the most entries.
Best Entry from a New Painter
The requirement here is that you have to have started painting miniatures to earlier than some time in 2023. Painting miniatures is a complex hobby and takes time and resources to master. We had some really fantastic entries here by folks that had just recently picked up the brush. New Painters in this contest this year include Dylan Craig, Patrick Nix, Samuel Leamer, Hans Sprenkle, Daniel Perkins, and Mike Anderson.
This prize goes out to Mike Anderson. Mike entered several of the Legendary Pirate Commanders, along with a great building terrain piece. And he really pulled off some fun photography work!
For this winner we have a pair of the finest brushes out there: the size 0 and a size 00 Winsor & Newton Series 7 Kolinsky Sable paint brushes. Well done Mike and keep up the good work!
Most Entries in the Great Pirate Paint Off
We have a great prize for this category and we have a CLEAR winner.
If you’ve been following the contest at all, it may come as no shock that our winner is Patrick Tozer! With an astounding 64 entries, Patrick painted up 16 Commanders, 6 Blood & Plunder Ship, 9 Oak & Iron Ships, 12 Terrain Pieces, and 4 entire forces, totaling well over 100 models. Hats off to Patrick Tozer!
We want to thank Feldherr for donating a great mini storage box that holds up to 200 Blood & Plunder models. Feldherr is a big name in the gaming industry and we’re thankful for supporting the Firelock Games community with some of their awesome products.
This big case should be able to hold another couple months of Patrick’s output, then he’ll need to pick up another!
National Prizes
And finally we get the prizes for each nation. Commanders for the upcoming “Summer of Plunder” campaign event each selected their favorite entry from their respective nation. As prizes we have Blood & Plunder accessory storage boxes from Things from the Basement. Thank you Things from the Basement for supporting this contest again this year!
Make sure to check out the details for the 2024 Summer of Plunder campaign! Join the Campaign Discord Server and jump into channels with your fellow players from each nation.
Best Pirate Entry
For best Pirate entry Captain Dan Carlson has chosen moody Blackbeard model painted by Mike Anderson.
The Pirates for the Summer of Plunder are already numerous and Captain Dan is active in the Discord channel. They appear to be a force to be reckoned with this year!
Best Spanish Entry
Spanish Commander Gerardo de Guale (Garrett Swader) has selected Julian Nault’s Spanish Commander as the top Spanish entry this year.
The Spanish cleaned house under Garrett’s leadership last year and they appear to be planning on continuing that pattern this year! Finely painted minis should always roll high. With Julian’s minis on the table and with Garrett scheming, wheeling and dealing, the Spanish have no reason not to win again this year! Unless…. Julian is more tightly aligned with the Bourbons… but more on that later.
Best English Entry
English Commander Jayden King chose a ship for the top English entry. Ryan Peterson’s Brigantine entry, with those English flags flying is a worthy winner!
The English Discord channel is hopping as well. With history-nerd and super-aggro Jayden at their head and power-gamer Erich Goebel serving as second-in-command, I’m sure the English will have a good time and be in the running for masters of the land and sea this campaign. Make sure to catch all Jayden’s campaign updates. They were a real treat last year.
Best French Entry
You may recognize the name Julian Nault by now! Commander Andy Hodges and his Second, Tyler Stone have selected this De Graff paint job by Julian as the top French entry. Which way will Julian lean in the upcoming campaign? With prizes from both the French and Spanish, I sense drama in the future!
Speaking of drama, the French (in addition to being OVERPOWERED) have a charismatic commander in Andy Hodges. I suggest you consider joining the French this year during the Summer of Plunder. But Andy is much more eloquent so take a listen to his 2023 Call to Arms.
You can also listen to a full interview with Andy after last year’s campaign. Drama, deception, adventure, catastrophes, and strong ending for the 2023 French efforts!
Best Dutch Entry
Matthew Doerr, this year’s new Dutch Commander, has selected Brett Yardley’s Dutch Commander model as the top Dutch entry. This is really a fantastic paint job by Brett and I’m sure we’ll see him in some Summer of Plunder games this year.
The Dutch always dominate the Oak & Iron scene in the Summer of Plunder, partly due to Matthew Doerr’s efforts. The Dutch also have the genuine Dutchman, Maarten de Kruif, returning as Second-in-Command this year.
Best Native American Entry
Selected as the top Native entry this year we have a pristinely detailed set of Braves painted by Jake Farris. Bartosz Nowicki is serving as Native Commander this year, and his painting work was right up there with the best of them in the contest this year as well.
Jake had several great entries in this year’s painting contest but he really knocked it out of the park with these Braves.
The Native Americans have always have a bit of a difficult time having a chance at a win in the Summer of Plunder campaign but I’m happy to report, they will get a fair chance this year! The new campaign system avoids penalizing lower players counts and focusing on rewarding player-commander communication and coordination instead. This year is a great year to play as the Native Americans during the Summer of Plunder.
Best Unaligned Entry
Some units don’t necessary fit into one of the big nations represent in Blood & Plunder. Liam Smith, our renegade Unaligned Commander for the Summer of Plunder campaign chose Kurtis Fraley’s European Militia Cavalry entry as the top Unaligned entry this year. Cavalry are always impressive and the paint job on these is excellent! Congratulations to Kurtis for this and his several other great entries this year.
That’s a Wrap!
Thank you for participating in the 2024 Great Pirate Paint Off! Congratulations to all the winners, and congrats to you all for all the work you got done! It’s great to see miniatures get paint and come to life! We were really blown away by both the quality and quantity of entries this year.
If you were named as a winner here, you will be contacted via email promptly and we will get your prize(s) in the mail.
I’d like to extend a special thanks to our panel of judges for their hard work! It’s very difficult to rank entries of this high caliber! Our judges this year were Lily Fig Stone, Niguel Vega, Liam Taylor, Dexter Heide and Nate Zettle. Thank you for your service!
Thanks to all our contest sponsors as well. Every Pirate contest needs plenty of Plunder and these companies, individuals and organizations really stepped up. Most all of these sponsors have also donated prizes to the Summer of Plunder campaign. Support these folks!
- Firelock Games
- TABLEWAR Game Mats
- The Plunder Den YouTube Channel
- Seamons’ Quality Sails
- The Dead Man’s Chest Blog
- Feldherr
- Things from the Basement
- Timber & Sail
- Blood & Pigment
We experimented a little with the schedule of the contest with staggered deadlines for different entries. We would love feedback on that particular choice so please drop of a note if you have thoughts on how that worked or didn’t work this year.
You all have a month to prepare for the Summer of Plunder event and it’s shaping up to be a great event this year! One of the most exciting developments is a fully produced Organized Play Kit from Firelock Games which should be available to order in mid to late May. You can already check out campaign details, rules and another hefty prize list here at the Summer of Plunder HQ page.