Oh man… are you excited to see the results yet? Is your suspense at level 11? I know mine is! This is the FINAL Campaign Map Update from the 2024 Summer of Plunder. We’ll discuss the final outcomes of the campaign combat and announce the nation that emerged as a final winner.

This has been one of the most suspenseful and back-and-forth campaigns. It’s been exhausting, but gratifying and fun to keep up with on a week-to-week basis. Hearing the stories from the community. seeing all of the battle reports and watching the community expand and grow has made all the late nights and hours invested worth it.

Week 9 Objectives – “On the Home Stretch!”

The theme of this past week was determined by the national commander so they varied based on the nation you played AND the game system you played. As this is the final campaign update, if you want like to review them in detail check out the 2024 Summer of Plunder Weekly Objectives article.

Week 9 Campaign Map Level Combat Results

This week’s combat resolution was fierce. Several attacks overlapped, resulting in ties that affected the outcome. There are so many “what if” scenarios where the player votes or commander’s actions could have pushed things in a different direction by even 1 point it would have resulted in a completely different outcome for the campaign. From a designer perspective, I LOVE THAT. It means that things are working as intended.

Week 9 Campaign Map Combat Results

Here are the outcomes for the week:

• Antigua: = Dutch beat the French and claim Antigua (Dutch 3 – French 1)
• Aruba: = Pirates manage to fend off the English and French to keep Aruba. (English 2 – French 1 – Pirates 2)
• Campeche: = Pirates beat the Dutch and claim Campeche (Dutch 2 – Pirates 3)
• Guyana: = Dutch beat the Pirates and claim Guyana (Dutch 3 – Pirates 2)
• Missisquoi: = The Natives manage to tie the French in Missiquoi and hold the Location. (French 2 – Natives 2)
• Onondaga: = French beat the Dutch and claim Onondaga (Dutch 1 – French 3)
• Port Royal: = Natives beat the English and claim Port Royal (English 1 – Natives 3)
• Rhode Island: = Pirates beat the Dutch and claim Rhode Island (Dutch 1 – Pirates 2)
• Saint Eustatius: = English beat the Pirates and claim Saint Eustatius (English 2 – Pirates 1)
• St Augustine, FL: = Natives beat the Pirates and claim St Augustine, FL (Natives 2 – Pirates 1)
• St Thomas: = Spanish beat the English and claim St Thomas (English 1 – Spanish 3)
• St Vincent: = Dutch beat the Pirates and claim St Vincent (Dutch 2 – Pirates 1)
• Trinidad: = A 3-way battle occurs in Trinidad resulting in a 3-way tie and the Pirates maintaining control. (English 2 – Pirates 2 – Spanish 2)

Trade Actions During Week 9

• The English tempered their risk of Raiding with a single Trade for guaranteed points.
• With a potential of a solid 6 points from owning 3 capitals, the French with the strategic play of earning a guaranteed 3 points from trades, putting them in a solid position and at the mercy of raids and their offensive combat success.
• Unable to win by Trading, Spain broke from their pattern and went with all raids this week doing zero trading.

Raid Actions During Week 9

Four Nations conducted Raids and several raided multiple times. In this final week being able to reduce an opponent’s points to keep them from winning was as important as selecting the proper locations to attack or defend.

In the early weeks, I rolled a literal die to resolve results, but in the last half of the campaign, to help increase accountability, I swapped to a digital format and asked Google to roll the appropriate number of dice to be able to take a screenshot. At that point, I organized all the Raid actions in alphabetical order by nation and then just started in order at the top left and worked down the list applying the results.

Raids were crucial in determining the victor. Again there are so many “what ifs” here such as:

• If the Dutch had succeeded in their raid on the Pirates they would have broken the tie and may have had a definitive victory.
• Had the Pirates succeeded against the Dutch in their draw, they may have won.
• If Spain hadn’t Raided the Pirates with a critical success of a 10, the Pirates would have won.

Well played all, well played! Sometimes dice games come down to… well… dice.

Current Standings at the End of Week 9

Oy, the resolution of this week’s points has been intense. The final point for “The End is Nigh” was previously reported in week 8 but it’s been moved to 9 since it was applied in week 9.

At the end of Week 9, the outcome was A TIE! The DUTCH and PIRATES both finished with 64pts. Based on the previously announced tie-breaker criteria, the Dutch are the FINAL VICTORS! But beyond that, there was a 3-way tie between the next 3 Nations at 62 points and Spain was only behind by 1 at 61. What a finish!

Congratulations to Matthew Doerr and Maarten de Kruif and the whole Dutch team of 50 players for a glorious victory! Well done!

• The Dutch rode out the storm. From behind the scenes in the Discord chats, everyone expected someone else to hit them, and instead, were largely unmolested. The French captured Onondaga, but only the Pirates took a big swing at them.
• The English had a rough week after the dust settled from Native and Spanish raids. With the heavy hit on territories in Week 8 it was an uphill fight in the final week.
• French performed admirably. Owning 3 capitals I think everyone expected them to turtle and defend. Instead, they went on the offense with a power play to carry them to victory. A bold and solid strategy! Unfortunately, they were denied victory in Missisquoi by an equal force of Natives. The Natives further drained 2 points preventing a 3-way tie at 64pts. If both had succeeded, they would have won!
• The Natives had their best week to date. They mildly failed a second time in raiding the English giving away 1pt to the English. They made massive gains in territory finishing with 9. Their raids affected the final outcome. This is the best the Natives have done in the Summer of Plunder. If the debacle of only getting 3pts in week 5 had not happened, they may have been in 1st place!
• The Pirates continued their come-from-behind sprint to the finish. They captured 9 territories, won the bonus prize victory point, and succeeded in 2 of their 3 raids. The only thing preventing their victory was the Spanish!
• Spain went into the final week needing a miracle to pull off a victory for first. Invoking all the patron saints they could, they pulled off about the best week possible considering their circumstances. Raiding the Pirates and earning a critical success result was enough to deny them the victory.

Points changes for the Week

Actions and Votes for the Final Turn

Here is the final actions and votes submitted by all commanders and players. It was a wild time!

Current Location Ownership by Nation

Here is a breakdown of where the ownership of locations ended after the final round of combat. We somehow managed to make it through all 9 weeks with an Unaligned Location surviving till the final round.

Miscellaneous Photos from the Final Week’s games

A Look Back At Previous Campaigns

• 2021: This was the inaugural campaign. It spanned 13 weeks with seven different objectives. The event was largely just playing games, telling us that you played and maybe passing on photos via email. The entire campaign logged 288 games. This year we’ve had 4 of the 6 Nations break that record on their own!
  If you want to see how far we’ve come, check out 2021 Campaign Rules and the Final 2021 Campaign Newsletter.
• 2022: After a successful inaugural run the campaign expands to 14 weeks with 14 unique objectives. During the campaign, 155 players played 1,690 games, 1,469 of Blood & Plunder and 221 Oak & Iron
• 2023: We introduced a Campaign Map and rules set created by Jason Klotz. The new campaign system allowed nations and commanders to vie for control of the Spanish Main rather than just collecting points in buckets for each nation.
• 2024: Learning from the 2023 campaign system the ruleset was refined, redesigned, and improved to adjust some of the issues in its initial release. The game rebalancing has led to a near 5-way tie going into the final week.

Comparison of Games Played by Year

Special Thanks to our Global Campaign Supporters

Many thanks to the many, many people helping make this an excellent event.

Thank You to Our Commanders

These fine gentlemen don’t get enough credit for what they do as volunteers. Every week they help herd the cats in their nations, help guide national strategy, and join in the chats regularly. They spend many an hour discussing political deals with fellow commanders and time writing updates for weekly articles.

Logo	Nation	Commander	Lt. Commander
	Dutch	Matthew Doerr	Maarten de Kruif
	English	Jayden King	Erich Goebel
	French	Andy Hodges	Tyler Stone
	Natives	Bartosz Nowicki	David Boern
	Pirates	Dan Carlson	Gregory Padilla
	Spanish	Garrett Swader	Josh Shivak

Sponsor List

• Firelock Games for making great games and supporting the community with some prize support
• All of our Sponsors provided great prize support and helped the “plunder” portion of the event!

Final Thoughts on this Year’s Campaign.

Thank you all for participating in this year’s global gaming campaign! It was a lot of work, but it was an amazing experience! Thank you so much to all those participating in our Discord, submitting pictures and battle reports and all the Quartermasters running Organized Play events.

We have one more post coming in a day or two where we’ll announce the winners and award a BUNCH of prizes, so stay tuned! We’ll also dive into some fascinating stats and data from the campaign.

Please make sure to fill out the Summer of Plunder Participant Survey to help us improve for next year.

If you enjoyed the event and want to support Blood & Pigment, consider contributing to our Patreon. Your support helps us continue creating great content for the community.

Once again, thank you for being a part of this year’s Summer of Plunder!

Article by Jason Klotz

Additional Recommended Reading

• Summer of Plunder Updates Hub – all of the updates from previous weeks.
• All the Info and Rules for the 2024 Summer of Plunder Event
• 2024 Summer of Plunder Entry Form
• 2024 Summer of Plunder Map
• Call to Arms! posts from Summer of Plunder Commanders
• Objective List for 2024 Summer of Plunder
• Prize List for 2024 Summer of Plunder