The people’s choice results are in for the final two categories in the 2025 Great Pirate Paint Off! In this post we look at the top voted entries for Blood & Plunder Ships, and army forces, either force of 25+ Blood & Plunder models, or 5+ Oak & Iron ships.
This post will be followed by a final update with additional prizes and winners finishing out the 2025 Great Pirate Paint Off.
Blood & Plunder Ships
We will look at the top 3 results starting with 3rd place. The top three ships are all incredible pieces, but all very different styles of painting this year.
3rd place – Dutch Barco Luengo by Ryan Peterson
Ryan has been a long time participant (and winner) in the this yearly painting contest, and this is a beautiful ship!
2nd Place Fluyt by Jake Farris
This is another beautiful ship! The freehand work and the stern is especially amazing. Jake competed with this ship at the 2025 Adepticon Tournament so we got to see it on the table (and he won Best-Painted award there as well!).
The cloth sails, the wolding on the masts, and the reefed main sails are all great touches above and beyond the excellent paint job! Fine work.
1st Place – Voodoo Sloop by Brendan Born
And our first place winner is a real eye-catcher! Congratulations to Brenan Born for winning first place with his voodoo themed Bermuda Sloop!
We got to see this ship in person at Adepticon as well so I included a couple extra pictures below. Beautiful work and something out of the ordinary as well!
Brendan even had a complete crew to match.
Congratulations to Ryan, Jake and Brendan, and everyone else who submitted great ship projects this year. If you want to see all the ship entries from the contest, check out this gallery.
Force Entries
This category includes forces of 25+ Blood & Plunder models or fleets of 5+ Oak & Iron Ships. Let’s look at the top people’s choice 3 results, starting with 3rd place.
3rd Place – English New Model Army by Ret Talbot
Ret dug deep into some nerdy history here with a great description of his force.
Originally sent by Cromwell to Barbados to deal with Royalist hold-outs, this squadron of Parliamentarians from the New Model Army, now under its own colours, is garrisoned on Antigua, where they await Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland, the Pirate Prince.
Featuring seme of the new Character models, a nice flag, and a great set for the photo, this is impressive work.
2nd Place – French Buccaneers by Justin Rodriguez
In second place we have a fine French Buccaneer force led by Laurens de Graaf.
Its fun to see the Boatswain in there with all the other bruisers.
Justin did a great job of starting the contest with his commander, working through the contest on all his units, and finally entering the whole force at the end of the event. Great work and looks like a deadly force!
1st Place – Dutch Force by Julian Nault
The JuggerNault is back! Check out this expertly painted Dutch force by Julian Nault. This is truly great work!
Another highly deserved win by Julian. And if you want to learn to paint like this (like I do), Julian has started a YouTube channel and has two painting tutorials up.
Well done and congratulations to Julian!
Final Thoughts
Congrats to the winners of these final categories this year. Inspiring work. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Force and Ship categories. Stay tuned for the final 2025 Great Pirate Paint Off update coming out soon with final winners and prizes!
Additional Recommended Reading
- You can peruse the entire gallery of Force entries here.
- You can peruse the entire gallery of Ship entries here.
- Full rules and info on the 2025 Great Pirate Paint Off
- Rules and info for the upcoming 2025 Summer of Plunder
- Full Gallery for the 2025 Painting Contest
- List of Prizes and Sponsors for this year’s Painting Contest