Rackham, Bonny, & Read’s Last Battle – Special Blood & Plunder Scenario

/ josephforster86

Last Updated on October 7, 2024

A while back Firelock Games published a special Blood & Plunder scenario in the Game Trader Magazine (GTM) and it appears it snuck under the radar! In issue 284 (October 2023), you can find Rackham, Read, and Bonny’s Last Battle on p.20.

Let’s take a look at this fun historical scenario!

Coming in at 115 points, this is a fairly small scale scenario but it closely reflects the actual numbers present in this fight.

The full page spread includes:

  • A short historical write up on the battle
  • Setup, scenario rules, deployment, and scenario objectives
  • A exclusive release Jonathan Barnet commander
  • Suggested Force Lists for British and Pirate Forces

The Scenario

The scenario is designed for 115pt forces and is a fun, asymmetric, and thematic little battle. Rules are simplified a little bit to make it very accessible. The scenario is similar to the Anchored scenario in the Raise the Black expansion book.

Occurring at night, this scenario has an additional limit of all ranged attacks being limited to 12″. To best represent the historical events, all the Pirate units start under the Drunk rules, which makes them very poor shooters but fairly decent at melee if it comes to it.

Deployment puts the pirates leeward of their hunters, and anchored, enjoying the fruits of their latest raid well into the night. The British ship deploys upwind, 24″ away and moving cautiously toward their prey at their lowest sail setting above 0″.

This gives both forces some ability to alter their situation before the battle opens. With the Limited Visibility effect in play, and ships anchored or moving slowly, the first turn will be taken up with maneuvering and preparations for battle!

The British are able to quickly raise sail and quickly sail downwind on this hapless pirate crew. But the pirates have a bit of a harder task. Being anchored, they have to both raise anchor and raise some sail before they can really take control of their ship and get moving. Being Drunk won’t help this process since it applies a penalty to their Change Sail actions, now with a 6 target number. Luckily, their ship has the Easy to Handle Trait so they can more than one once on an activation if necessary.

The Objectives

The Objectives are slightly simplified in this scenario as well, making it a very easy scenario to pick up and play. The scenario forgoes the usual Strike Points and Strike Test system in favor of simple win conditions for both sides.

To win, the English must eliminate Rackham, Bonny, and Read. This essentially means they must take down the entire pirate crew since each of these Characters is attacked to a different unit. With the Historically based forces given in the scenario, the likelihood of of eliminating the entire pirate crew with ranged attacks is possible but not high. The English really need to bear down on the inebriated pirates, board them and capture or kill them all!

For the Pirates to win, they must simply get away. But as we mentioned, it isn’t that simple! If the pirates survive to the end of turn 3 or later, they may immediately win if they are 12″ away from the pursuers. This is possible, but difficult since the English have the weather gauge and have a considerable speed advantage at the beginning of the game.

The Forces

The two forces based on the Blackbeard vs. Maynard Two Player Starter set, but they require some additional models, or one set per player, along with the Pirates of Legend box for Rackham, Read and Bonny. The two ships listed in the forces are from the starter set as well, one Bermuda Sloop for the Pirates and a Balandra (or more substantial ship if available) for the English.

Overall the crews are evenly matched, set at the same points total of 115. But the British Militia (Pirate Hunter Force Option) have better stats, less small arms, and more great guns than the Pirates.

The Pirate Crew

Led by the cheap, but lackluster Jack Rackham, the pirate crew consists of 20 souls, with Bonny and Read. While they lack Command Points, Read and Bonny really steal the show here, adding both defensive and offensive buffs to the crew. Their combination of the War Cry Special Rule on their Pirate units and their ability that forces any unit they charge to roll and extra die on their Fatigue check is deadly. If they are able to rouse themselves from their drunken stupors, they can mount a terrifying charge! Rackham is attached to a unit of 6 standard Pirates, Anny Bonny to a unit of 7 (counting herself), and Mary Read is attached to a smaller unit of 6 Pirates (counting herself) equipped with Buccaneers Guns in addition to their fearsome Brace of Pistols.

CalJac10324Download

Their Bermuda Sloop is equipped with 2 pairs of Light Cannons and 2 Swivel Guns and has the advantage of Reinforced Bulkheads (which is kind of counteracted by the Drunk penalty…).

The pirates have to decide to either man all their cannons and swivels with Rackham and Bonny’s units and leave Read to get the ship moving, or forfeit the use of their larger guns and get their ship under way faster. Assignment choices during Deployment will be very important!

The British Crew

The British Pirate Hunter crew is slightly larger at 23 models, but have less fearsome weaponry.

JonBar10324Download

But before we look at the crew in detail, let’s look at this brand new, exclusive new Commander! Jonathan Barnet, Privateer, Merchant Captain and Pirate Hunter of opportunity! At 10 points, he’s pretty low cost, but his limit of a single Command Point is hard to stomach (while the 10pt Standard British Commanders have 2). But he makes it for it with his Special Rules! Experienced Standard Commanders generally comes with 1 Special Rule and Jonathan Barnet has 2, one of which is not an option you can select on Standard Commanders.

Unwavering helps manage Fatigue and keep the Commander’s unit in the fight, even if they’ve Shaken and retreated. When activated, Barnet’s unit will immediately remove one point of Fatigue if the unit is Shaken at the beginning of their activation. If that brings them down to 2 Fatigue, they will activate normally instead of being forced to Rally and lose valuable actions.

Barnet’s other Special Rule is Aggressive Commander which grants all his men within his Command Range the Hard Chargers ability, providing a bonus on Charge actions. This is a great callback to the Force Special Rules from the Pirate Hunter faction in the No Peace Beyond the Line expansion for Blood & Plunder. But now Barnet’s force gets the considerable bonus of the British Militia faction rule (option to re-roll a Fatigue Test once per round without spending a Fortune Point) and essentially get the universal Hard Chargers rule on his men as well.

Since most of his crew is made up of Sea Dogs, they get to benefit from that Hard Chargers rule along with their standard Brawlers rule, making them doubly deadly in melee combat. Their sweet 6 Fight Save does a good job keeping them alive in melee as well.

Barnet’s Command Unit of 8 Sea Dogs retains their pistols, giving them an option for either a ranged attack, a possible defensive attack, or a powerful Fight test in melee. The second unit of 8 Sea Dogs is meant to be assigned to the 3 pairs of Light Cannons. These cannons can be shot on the way in to board, but it can slow down the approach since you have to present a broadside to get a good shot.

The final English unit is a unit of 6 English Militia. With muskets, these models can start firing and reloading as soon as they get into that 12″ visibility range, and they aren’t too shabby when it comes to melee when they are boosted by Barnet’s leadership.

Their Balandra ship isn’t as fast as the Pirate vessel, meaning they would lose in an evenly matched race, but with the advantage of sobriety, spread sail and the weather gauge, they should be able to catch up to the pirates if they get all hands on deck.

Rackham, Read, and Bonny’s Last Battle printDownload

How Does the Scenario Play?

The scenario is asymmetric, but very entertaining and pretty balanced. My local game group played three tables of this scenario recently, with each set of players playing the scenario twice, swapping forces after the first play. We had some Pirate wins and some British wins, and some dramatic games.

The English have a significant advantage with their cannons, but the 12″ visibility makes it hard for them to take advantage of it. They need to close the distance fast so they can shoot, but they don’t want to get too close so the pirates can board.

The Pirates are pretty helpless at the beginning but luckily the Bermuda Sloop can get under way very quickly.

The Drunk rule really hits hard in this scenario with all your units under the influence… There’s a penalty for raising sail, there’s a penalty for swivel gun fire, there’s a penalty for your great guns, there’s a brutal penalty for your Shoot Saves! The Pirates feel very…. drunk.

But when it comes to melee, they can hit really hard! That Drunk rule gives you a bonus to Fight tests, and that’s just what the Pirate unit needs.

Bringing their Fight down to 6 with their Brace of Pistols re-roll and their War Cry and Read and Bonnie’s extra terror! If these pirate units get a chance to charge, they wreak havoc!

My two recent games with this scenario had the pirates pretty well outnumbered by the time ships were grappled. But when it came to melee, the Bonnie and Read evened the odds! And Rackham cowered like a dog!

Final Thoughts

This is a fun little scenario that’s easy to set up and play in 90 minutes. Forces can be assembled fairly easily using the starter set as a starting point. And it gives you a good introduction to some of the pirate characters from the Pirates of Legend set!

If you’re looking for the GTM magazine that includes this scenario, you can find it on eBay for about $5 (284, October 2023). You’re welcome to just print off the pdf from this post as well.

I highly recommend you pull up this scenario and give it a run at your next Blood & Plunder gaming session! It will give you some solid pirate gaming!

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