by Garrett Swader

And the winner is… please hold…

The Pigment crew are back from Adepticon 2025 and we have a lot to report on. It’s taken a while to recover and gets content organized, but here is a report on the epic Blood & Plunder Land Tournament.

This was the 2nd annual Blood and Plunder land Tournament at Adepticon and top level players from around the US and Canada fought tooth and nail for the title of best land Blood & Plunder player.

Tournament rules

The big rule change this year was an increase in points from 150 to 200 in a force. An extra 50 points is huge for list building! Increasing the point cap gave extra space for named commanders (even some legendary commanders!), and extra space for a possible 2nd Support unit in some forces. I think the data shows that this was successful. Here are some highlights of the rules of the tournament.

• 200 Points or less
• 3 Rounds of Swiss Pairings with random starting tables
• ~100-Minute Rounds
• All official Blood & Plunder content is legal
• 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place awards of Firelock gift cards
• Scenarios were Encounter, Breakthrough, and Take and Hold
• Wins score 3 Tournament Points, Losses score 0, and Draws (very rare) score 1 Tournament Point with ties broken by Strike Point Differential first.

Game Scoring

Games were very competitive and Strike Point draws were plentiful this year. To resolve this to a definite W/L players count up the total points of their lost models. The player that had the fewest points removed won. 

Tables & Terrain

Last year I was not impressed with the way tables were set up as a player. I went from a table with lots of area terrain during my first game and then nothing but large buildings for my second game. This year since I was in charge I wanted to make the tables as uniform and fair to all lists as possible. Buildings were on the flanks and area and scatter terrain was in the middle. I didn’t want buildings to be near objectives as that would allow for a less dynamic game and camping in a building on an objective. However I wanted buildings to be a strategic option for players who wanted a covered firing position on the table. I think the tables were very fair and I don’t think anyone can say that they lost because of the table that they played on. A big thanks to Jason (and myself) for bringing all the terrain for all 12 tables this year!

Tournament Participation

We went into the week with only 16 players registered for the event, but it ballooned to 23 players which was amazing. But please do preregister for the event as that helps us receive more fancy medals to hand out. Adepticon gives more medals to larger events and if everyone had preregistered, we could have had 3 medals instead of 2!

I saw lots of lists that were designed to perform well on land. Some standouts were Maroons, Miskito Zambo, Portuguese, and Church’s raiders. There were a lot more named commanders this year as well. In my opinion this is a positive change due to the increase in the point limit. We even saw some oddities like field guns one player even brought a heavy field gun!

At the top tables there were intense games all around. People were getting sweaty, and it seems some could barely handle it (see below). 

Force Lists

Nations, Factions and Commanders used in the tournament were pretty diverse. Here’s some of the stats we were able to gather.

Nations Represented

Each nation within the game was represented with English being the most popular.

• 1 Pirate
• 4 Spanish
• 6 English
• 3 French
• 3 Dutch
• 2 Native American
• 4 Unaligned (3 of them “native style”)

Factions Represented

There was a remarkable spread of factions played at this event. In fact, there were only two factions that were played by more than one player. Three players played the Dutch Caribbean Militia, and two players played the Spanish Mission Garrison, but all other factions were unique in the event.

Factions represented included:

• Dutch Caribbean Militia (NPBtL x2, RtB x1)
• English Buccaneers
• Morgan’s Buccaneers
• Church’s Raiders
• British Raiders
• British Army
• North American English Militiai
• French Caribbean Militia
• French Buccaneers
• French Raiders (non confirmed)
• Wabanaki
• Creek
• Blackbeard’s Men (or a similar Pirate faction)
• Spanish Tercios
• Spanish Mission Garrison (x2)
• Spanish Army
• Brazilian Portuguese Garrison
• Miskito Zambo
• Maroons (Suriname)
• Scottish Militia

Commanders Used

We didn’t receive all the force lists so we have incomplete data, but here is some info from the 12 lists we did have.

We saw commanders ranging from the 0 point standard commander all the way up to the 32 point legendary commanders! The average point cost for a force commander (from the 12 lists we have) was 19pts.

Notable Commanders present included:

• Henry Morgan
• Blackbeard
• Benjamin Church
• Queen Nanny
• Red & White Chiefs
• King Jeremy II
• Jose de Zuniga y la Cerda
• Jeremias van Collen
• Several Seasoned Standard Commanders

The 200 point level really brought out the bigger commanders! Several lists also have the basic 0 cost commanders, and the top placing lists had a mix of both cheap and high value commanders.

Winners

Not much separated the top tables this year! Players were well matched and there were some very close games. It was a nail biter till the end. We actually had a dead heat tie for the tournament winner this year. Erich Goebel and Tyler Stone both played through three games spectacularly and both brought fantastic lists. We only had one first place medal to give so after much deliberation, we had them both draw a card and whoever won initiative got the first place medal. But with all the deliberation, we failed to get a good picture of the winners!

Top placing players included:

• Tyler Stone (tied for 1st) playing Miskito Zambo
• Erich Goebel (ties for 1st) playing Church’s Raiders
• Jayden King (3rd) playing British Raiders
• Matt Cwick (4th) playing Wabanaki
• Jake Farris (5th) playing Brazilian Portuguese Garrison
• Jake High (6th) playing Suriname Maroons
• Robert Montgomery (7th) playing French Buccaneers
• Kurtis Fraley (tied for 8th) playing Creek
• Charles Young (tied for 8th) playing Spanish Army
• Jason Klotz (10th) playing Dutch Caribbean Militia

Managing the Tournament

This was my second year running an event like this and I plan to run another tournament at Gencon this year. I learned a lot from 2024’s sea tournament event and tried my best to apply it to this year’s event. 2025 brought new lessons to learn and apply to next year to keep getting better and more experienced. While fun and satisfying, it can be a little stressful managing tournaments when so much is on the line for these players.

We used the official Firelock Tournament set or tournament rules as our basic template for this event, but it became apparent we need another level of tie breaker!

Intended improvements for next event include:

• Additional levels of tie breakers, including Strength of Schedule and Points Lost
• Requiring pairs of players to turn Rounds Sheets in together so results can be confirmed

Final Thoughts

It was a intense event with a lot of great gaming happening! There was a wide variety of skill levels, and it was fun to see both the newer players learn a lot from their set of games, and the veteran players hammer out some super intense and close games at the top tables. There was lots of great sportsmanship on display and it looked like people were having a good time!

Be on the lookout for articles from the top players about their forces. I hope everyone had fun and enjoyed their games. I hope to get the “green light” to run this event next year as it was enjoyable even though we ran through a few rough patches. See you next year!