Article by Joseph Forster
Part of the Blood & Pigment Team was recently able to attend Enfilade!, a regional wargaming convention in the Pacific Northwest and we wanted to publish a quick report on the event!
Enfilade!
Hosted in Tacoma, WA, by the Northwest Historical Gaming Society, the Enfilade! event is advertised as the largest wargaming event west of the Mississippi. The convention has been a regular event on the Memorial Day weekend for 20+ years in the Pacific Northwest and has become a regular meet up for historical gamers from Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. I didn’t get a solid number on attendance but if forced to guess, I would estimate there was about 500 people there on the Saturday and maybe 6-700 for the total weekend.
Enfilade! General Convention Report
This seemed a busy and thriving convention! There was an unexpected venue change only 3 months before the event, and it felt a little cramped in the Conference Center of a La Quinta Inn & Suites in Tacoma, WA, but that made everything easy to find!
The convention has a simple event structure where there is a regular cycle of 3 events at every table on each day.
- 9am-1pm
- 2-6pm
- 7-11pm
Most “tables” were about 7×7′ but there were a couple exceptions where smaller tables were used for skirmish games and larger areas were used for the most grandiose of setups. Most of the gaming all happened in one large conference hall, but there were two smaller (and quieter rooms) available for special events (like the Flames of War Tournament).
There was a good variety of Vendors present as well, squeezes into the halls around the central conference room. We were able to pick up some great resin terrain from “Company B” at very affordable prices. The “Bring and Buy” flea market was pretty impressive as well, refreshed every day with good deals to be had!
The “Theme” for the 2024 Enfilade Event was “The New World,” so many of the games run at the event leaned into the conflicts in the Americas. Perfect for Blood & Plunder!
Blood & Plunder Events at Enfilade!
We registered and ran two events at Enfilade! Watching registration for these events, they were only half full of their 10 player capacity the day before the event. They kept paper sign ups available for events during the convention and by the times our two events came around they were all full with a waiting list!
Learn to Play Blood & Plunder Event
Having had some contact with several Blood & Plunder players in Washington State, it sounded like there was a large number of gamers that had bought into Blood & Plunder and might have played a game or two, but weren’t player regularly. So we decided to run an event just to teach (or refresh) people how to play Blood & Plunder.
With our large table, we set up 4 different 3×3 boards with 2 forces of about 100 points each, enough to teach up to 8 players at a time. And we needed all that space! Most of my local Oregon City club attended the con, hoping to meet up with some players from Washington and get in some casual games during this “Learn to Play” event while I did some demos. But we needed all hands on deck! Our event filled up and we had unregistered people drop by for a learning game and all 5 of us from the Oregon City club were teaching folks how to play Blood & Plunder!
Huge thanks to:
- Bryan
- Brian
- Don
- Riley
You guys did awesome! We got mats out, terrain set up, armies out, cards, dice, markers and everything set to go, then started helping people run through games on land, sea and even amphibious mats!
Paul T and Adam H from Seattle area jumped in and helped folks out as well.
I thought it would be a laid back relaxing time to demo to a few people and throw down some casual games with the WA players, but everyone who knew how to player Blood & Plunder was busy teaching people for most of the event. It hectic but great to see high interest in the game!
Paul brought an entire Blackbeard vs. Maynard Starter Set to give away in a drawing at the end of the event. Congrats to Jennifer for winning!
With a 4 hour timeslot, we had some extra time after running a good, solid ~100pt Learn to Play game and we were able to engage with people passing by. We talked to a lot of people who said they bought into the original Blood & Plunder Kickstarter and they painted up a ship and some minis, but never got plugged into a regular group and found it hard to find local players. The Seattle metro area just needs an ambitious Quartermaster to lead up the charge and get a group meeting regularly! There’s lots of people interested!
Our tables looked great, and turned plenty of heads! We even got awarded the “Best of Theme” game prize for that portion of the day.
Charles Vane Escapes Nassau Blood & Plunder Event
For the evening session we ran the “Charles Vane Escapes Nassau” event we designed for AdeptiCon this year. This was a an epic game, but pretty crazy and chaotic! It was an eleven player game including 6 people who had never played before. It was an overflowing event again and we tried to include everyone who wanted to play. We naively thought the same folks would come to this event that attended the “learn to play” event, but it didn’t really work out that simply.
So we did a quick run down of the basic rules, handed each player a 200 point ship and we were off to the races! We spaced all the experienced folks out between the new players so everyone had some support.
The scenario features a blockade of large British ships, led by Woodes Rogers. Attacking that blockade, with a deadly fireship in the lead, is Charles Vane and an entire fleet of pirate ships! When we had everyone set up the forces looked (something) like this:
- British
- 300pt Royal Navy 6th Rate Frigate
- 150 Woodes Rogers Militia Force (on 6th Rate)
- 200pt Royal Navy Light Frigate
- 150pt Royal Navy Light Frigate
- 200pt Royal Navy Brigantine
- Pirates
- 200pt Charles Vane Brigantine
- 75pt Fireship
- 150pt Dutch Privateers Brigantine
- 200pt Pirate Barco Luengo
- 200 Point Pirate Sloop
- 150pt English Buccaneer Bark
Even with 11 players, we kept it moving and got through a full 5 turns in 3 hours before calling it at 10:30pm. Thanks to Riley and Bryan from my local club for serving as Commodore’s for the British and Pirates respectively. And to Paul and Mark, and Brian who actually knew how to play the game and coached the new players who were thrown into the deep end in this massive game!
The fireship caused a lot of terror! The scenario forces the British players to make a choice between manning the cannons and raising the sails and attempting to get away from the fireship. The British flagship, under Mark’s command, did a bit of both but it was hit by the fireship and caught fire! Mark kept control of he crew and was able to cut free but the fireship rammed again! After cutting free and putting out the fire it ended up ramming the frigate a 3rd time before the end of the game!
It was firey chaos!
The game split up into different sectionalized fights with the British Light Frigates getting overwhelmed at both ends of the blockade. Both frigates were double-teamed by two pirate ships and were eventually captured. And in the middle, Vane sailed straight for Woodes Rogers’ flagship and ended up getting double-teamed by the powerful frigate and a well-armed British Brigantine.
The cannons from both ships tore Vane’s ship to PIECES. But Suffering over 15 Critical Hits over the course of the game, it was a miracle that Vane didn’t actually die or his ship explode/sink. The player playing Vane’s ship had never played before but he was a great sport about the hail of cannonballs tearing his ship apart.
The game ended in a narrow pirate victory. The British lots two entire Light Frigates, but Vane was floundering while his greedy pirate underlings swarmed the easy pickings and the stronger British ships escaped, leaving a couple pirate ships looking suspiciously like piles of matchsticks. While the fire caused lots of terror and consternation, the British players focused on keeping it under control and saved their most valuable ship.
It was great fun. A little crazy and chaotic, but I hope everyone had a good time. I kind of regretted the level of complexity thrown at people who had never played Blood & Plunder at all before. It would have been prudent to scale everything down, or make the event clear that you needed some prior experience. Trying to teach the basics AND manage a massive game with some bonus rules was a little ambitious.
Sea Dogs on the Spanish Main – The Other Blood & Plunder Group
We weren’t the only people running Blood & Plunder events at Enfilade! Unknown to us, another group had scheduled a massive scenario using slightly simplified Blood & Plunder Rules.
They had their event at the same time we were doing Learn to Play Games, so none of our group got to participate, but it looked epic! Utilizing their entire table and using 7+ ships, and island and a landmass in one corner, they had a lot going on!
It looked like an ambitious game! There were large forces of Spanish and English on ships and it appeared the Spanish held the island and English were attempting to take it.
I didn’t get a chance to connect with the game master, but he was doing a great job and had done a TON of prep to make it easy for players to pick up. Each ship, run by a different player, had a full, double-sided, laminated piece of paper with all their ship stats, unit stats, and turn sequence and basic rules. It was brilliant and must have made life much easier for players just jumping into the ruleset. Impressive work and great to see Blood & Plunder out there!
Most of their ships and minis were homemade or proxies, but it was a beautiful table and looked like a well-run event!
Blood & Plunder at a “Historical Convention”
The “historical gaming” crowd has a unique approach to convention gaming that seems to focus on simpler rulesets customized/streamlined for easy play for large scenarios. Blood & Plunder doesn’t exactly perfectly fit into that mold, and this event kind of helped me understand how different Blood & Plunder is compared to most “historical games.”
I’ve heard people say this but now I understand it: Blood & Plunder is a fantasy game in a historical skin. It’s not a fantasy game at all, but it uses a deeper, richer ruleset more appropriate for crunchy, competitive game play that most “historical games” that often lack things like point costs for building forces. Blood & Plunder takes the best from both worlds! It has a comprehensive ruleset that rewards repeat play and allows for competitive and convenient sit-down-and-play sessions while honoring history with its attention to detail and accuracy.
Final Thoughts on Enfilade! 2024
It was a great con! Being a smaller regional convention, it felt a lot different than the mega-events like GenCon or AdeptiCon or even HistoriCon, but it was a ton of fun. Our events were busy and filled past capacity and folks seemed to really enjoy learning to play.
My “team” of 6 players from Oregon really stepped up and worked hard to make the event enjoyable for attendees and I was really grateful for all the professional help running these events. We plan to attend next year and with this experience under our belts, we have ideas for making next time better and easier!
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, you should consider attending Enfilade! It happens every year over Friday-Sunday on Memorial Day weekend and it sounds like it will be held again in Tacoma next year. If you’re in the Seattle metro area, you should work on getting a regular play group going! We met so many people from the area who wanted to play Blood & Plunder but just hadn’t connected with others players.
If you’re in the Pacific Northwest and are looking for a Blood & Plunder session during the Summer of Plunder event, we have a long Saturday session planned at my home store of Geeks & Games in Oregon City on July 6th. Use the Contact Page here on Pigment to let use know if you’re interested so we can make sure we have enough Organized Play kits for everyone!
Go to Your Local Cons!
The big conventions are flashy and cool, but attending your “local convention” within driving distance might be as good or better! Your smaller, local convention might provide you with more opportunities to build your local gaming community.
If you enjoy Blood & Plunder and have a nice table of terrain and a couple painted forces, consider running an event at your local or regional gaming convention. It’s a bit of work, but lots of fun and very satisfying! You might be surprised how fast you connect with people that either already own and have played Blood & Plunder, or who are interested in the game. If you’re wanting to grow a community of players, the local level is where it really happens!
Additional Recommended Reading
- List of Blood & Plunder Events
- Blood & Pigment at AdeptiCon 2024 Video
- Learn more about the Firelock Games Quartermaster Program
- Get some tips from Tyler Stone on running a learn-to-play/demo game on The Dead Man’s Chest Blog