Intro

Commander Reports

Now, here are some important messages from your brave commanders. Each week our 6 volunteers will donate a bit of time to add some narrative flavor to the game and pass on some information regarding their nation’s goals. If you haven’t yet joined, the best way to interact with the commanders and players in your nation is to join our Summer of Plunder Discord server. This is different than the main Firelock Games Discord server. It’s a fun community to hang out with and there is a lot of plotting and planning going on in secret channels that only players of a nation can see.

Spain – Week 4 Commander Update

¡Valientes!

My congratulations to you! The glory of our victories is a testament to your devotion and resolve. Our triumphant cries sing the song of Spain’s indomitable spirit. This week is one of triumph and restoration as our forces have rescued Aruba and liberated St. Augustine from the hands of blood-thirsty Natives.

In Cartagena, the tides of fortune tested our mettle but do not let this setback dim your fire! They may cling to a fleeting victory but we will temper their pride with coldsteel. Cartagena will yet kneel before the Cross and Crown of Spain!

Soldados and marineros, you are the sword and shield of His Catholic Majesty. Refresh yourselves in the glow of victory, refit your vessels, sharpen your blades, and let the world tremble before the might of Spain! 

¡Viva España!

Enrique de Andrada,
Espada de la Frontera

England – Week 4 Commander Update

Hold the line! Get behind the cover! This week, the English were tasked by the Leftenant to create or play or terrain that provides hard cover or better. Submissions by player like Lt. Redgrave and Lt. Beetlebug proved the creative uses the English have for their board. Unfortunately, this week has been rough, but we still have 5 weeks to go!

Rally to the flag, yee salty sea dogs!

-Leftenant Riley

Letter from the Admiral:

Attention! Comrades underneath the English Flag – take heart. I pushed us to form potential alliances in the New World – which has all but blown up in our faces. After having agreed to a coalition to attack the Natives and Pirates, the Ruthless French Dogs massacred us from behind while we kept our word.

Dishonorable and Deplorable to take advantage of hasty negotiations over personal vacation and gentlemen’s agreements. This affront shall not be forgiven, nor shall it be forgotten. Over simple tavern and promotional trash talk, they have chosen brutality and going against their word – take heed, allies of the French – for there is no honor found under that banner.

I however, have gained new respect for several other factions for keeping their word to me and not while slipping a dagger into my gut.

For more context on the “promotional trash talk”, please check out the Arachne podcast “Raise the Black” Episode 4, which features Dr. D interviewing me about the English in the Summer of Plunder. Here, we do some light bantering of course, but my primary objective was to promote the game as a whole to the community. Also check out Episode 5 for a perspective from the Pirate leader!

In better news, we have several promotions from Lieutenant to Captain this week – these men have exemplified what it means to be English and have consistently participated in our paint nights, our special requests and by consistently playing and submitting games. Most of these men have also taught new players the game – bringing new Blood into the fold, the true Plunder of the Summer. If you haven’t joined us in the Discord, please do! We are using our promotion system for all of our prizing and have some exciting custom tokens, custom minis and more to give out as we approach the back of the Summer.

Id also like to remind you that the The New Settlement Bonus Event runs for one more week! Not only will you afford us a strategic boon but you can also win some cool TimberAndSail.com terrain – very suitable for Plunder or Port Royal!

Looking ahead, there are tough seas, but we remain focused on what we do best – fostering fantastic relationships throughout our community.

With Honor and Good Faith,

English Daddy.

France – Week 4 Commander Update

The Great North is all but ours, and with it come spoils. To celebrate our first week atop the leaderboard, the King has opened the coffers! This week, one French player who sends me a video of part of their game, enjoying French cuisine, or sporting national pride, will win the fortunes of the majesty! Videos can be sent to kylearpke@yahoo.com – please film your video horizontally. I will gather all of them up and present them to our beloved royalty.

May our victories never leave the lips of our dearly beloved back home. The New Settlement Bonus Event runs for one more week! Now’s your chance to bringing further glory to France and take home some of that sweet, sweet TimberAndSail.com terrain! 

Speaking of lips, to the English I say this: the idea of a truce with you was compelling, but after hearing your news reporters make such vile public remarks about the people of our dear country, I had no choice but to attack viciously and without quarter. The French will not tolerate offenses of any such nature. Now, we have your land. We have your pelts. I’m sure we have your full attention. We will see whose flag God favors to hang above the Atlantic. 

As for the Dutch, you have sold many-a-country a deceitful bill of goods. At times we have had to shift plans due to your treachery and so count our barrage of Rhode Island as your warning for acting like dogs towards everyone and for allying with stinky islander scum! It’s amazing that the one week you decided to be truthful is the week we decided we had had enough of your mustache-twirling ways and attacked you before harm was done to us. We don’t need to war with you any longer, but do need you to know that such buffoonery is reserved for pirates and primitives. 

And to that accord – pirates, natives… we’ve crossed paths maybe once or twice. I hope it stays that way. You’ve both done a splendid job of showing the world that kingdoms aren’t the only way of governing this new land… but as the leaderboard now shows, it is the best way! The Dutch and English may want our heads, but trust that we want no actual quarrel with you.

To our Spanish allies, thank you for defending our lands against the Natives. While we would appreciate control of Aruba let it be known to all that the New World is now blessed by the strength of our bond. Our network of missionaries is now vast. The Church has never been stronger. Glory to Spain, France and the Catholic Church! 

To our fellow Scots – congratulations on your high achievements! What you have done to shape the event this year is nothing short of amazing. Welcome to the Summer of Plunder! 

Our prize of the week goes to Robert Montgomery. Please reach out to my e-mail for your prize! It’ll help you keep track of your cannon balls and musket powder as we brace for the battles ahead! 

Finally, as we reach the middle of the campaign, I’d like to remind everyone that your time on the battlefield is important to The French Crown. Please continue to send me your battle reports so we can keep track of the heroics that shape history. Today I leave you with excerpts from the journal of Cpt. René Macquer, whose encounter with the British shows that they are not as innocent as they seem:

Mon intendant,

I write this as a prisoner aboard the English ship Fairfax. As you no doubt have already realized, though, this letter bears bad news. As you know, we were under orders to deliver much-needed Jesuit’s bark to the settlement on Ste. Estelle, where the inhabitants are much afflicted with the ague. There were reports of an English blockade on the island, and so we came prepared, with the veteran crew of La Sirène augmented by a group of marines picked up at Aruba and boarding pikes issued to all the sailors. The sloop La Railleuse was loaded with the bark, and given orders to deliver it speedily and avoid the engagement.

Alas, matters turned quickly. The English flagship Fairfax arrived. La Sirène opened a very heavy and coordinated broadside on it, damaging its rigging, but she shipped water over the lee rail as the heavy recoil shook the ship. The timbers were already rattled from the broadside she had taken from the fluyt, and then the broadside from the Fairfax proved too much. Her hull was pierced between wind and water and the high waves kept coming in, faster than the pumps could work.

As the Sirène sank, and the Panthère went up in flames, Railleuse—almost within pistol shot of the island of Ste. Estelle—struck her colours as the English corvette arrived. They took the Jesuit’s bark for themselves, as a legal prize of war.

A disaster, mon intendant. I hope to be exchanged, but I hold no hope that I deserve to be.

Grace à dieu, votre serviteur,Cpt. René Macquer

The Netherlands – Week 4 Commander Update

Gentleman,

I feel as if we are fighting the winds themselves! One step forward and two steps back.

As you are aware, we were approached by the French, to set aside our differences to deal with the existential threat the Pirates and Natives posed. We agreed. We agreed to launch a coordinated attack on the Natives, alongside the Spanish, while a French/English force dealt with the Pirates.

We all played our part… except the French masterminds themselves who, rather than meet on the glorious field of battle, decided to attack English and Dutch rear territories in the most cowardly act of self gratification imaginable. Then have the audacity to try to justify their actions!

Never have I seen such blatant cowardice, malice, and self serving gaslighting!

Well, we learned our lesson. We learned the french cannot be trusted. And we hope the other nations that have shared council with the french have taken note…. As your time is coming. We therefore urge those nations to set aside differences to crush the french empire! The land is better as ashes then as a possession of the french!

Ready for battle men! We will see the french cities burn!!!

• Matthew “Salty” Doerr

 Commander of the Dutch West Indies 

The Native Americans – Week 4 Commander Update

A tough week for the brave defenders of Turtle Island, but just like the forest grows out of the ashes after a forest fire we will return the lands back to the way things should be.

After a storm like the one we faced, the pack of wolves awakes and goes on the hunt.

Take solace braves, the war is long and our enemy is short-sighted in their ways.  We need to stay strong and united in the face of this challenge.  We are still well within striking range of the top spot.  Sometimes you need to take a step back to take a step forward.

While it was tough week, let us sit around the fire and reward some of our braves for their efforts.

The first prize this week in honour of playing expensive units, we are awarding a unit of 4 Pnieses. These are amazing units that hit as hard as anything in the game.  This unit is going to Bradley Meloy, who rumour has it played 300 points of Iroquois in a game.  That is awesome!!!  Keep up the good work.

The second prize this week is a beautiful small terrain bundle donated by Stone Temple Studios.   This bundle includes some wonderful scatter terrain sure to help your braves stay in cover as you defend our lands.  The winner of a small terrain bundle is Ramon Solhkah.

As with all of the sponsors, they provide the plunder that makes this event so great.  So please check out their various sites and support them if you are able to.

Winners of prizes will be contacted towards the end of the event to get mailing specifics and such.

Thanks again for all the efforts this week.  Go forth warriors of Turtle Island.

The Pirates – Week 4 Commander Update

Avast! How goes your gaming action this past week?

Keep up the pace with playing and submitting your games. I find a good plan is nice to have when playing during the Summer of Plunder campaigns. Setting-up and down can be a bit tedious, I know, as I’m also running a WWII campaign with my oldest son as well. A nice gaming nugget comes from our admiral Bgamerjoe (Joseph Forster), as we have played 146 Pirate games and all Pirate factions were played as well.  I see the Port Royal Jamaican Pirates are still holding the lead…nice!  

Our top three Pirate point leaders were, Christopher Regan, Greg Flynn and yours truly…Kraken Killer Padilla!; which they have done well representing the “Black”! I found myself using ships in a game really dials up more points, which equates to more points earned when you submit you games.

When planning your games, use the cool “Force Builder” on line. This is really nice tool as it calculates your points for you and keeps you honest in selecting your core and support units. I found this very helpful for this past week’s objective to crew members no less than worth 5 points.  That was a tough nut to crack. I found playing a big nation outside of the Pirates was little bit easier to do that.  Pirate units have a few good options for the upgrades. I know there is no way to get “Pressed Men” up to a 5 point status…makes sense. 

Captains, love all the “Aaargh” faces you provided for last week’s Pirate Objective and hopefully I was able to snag all them here. It’s important to get your games logged as soon as possible. Also, if you preferred to post pictures in Discord, that’s fine too. I look in there periodically all week and then more so on Mondays before the weekly deadline. 

Speaking of pictures, let get some Pirate flags (Jolly Roger) and or pirate-esk items in your pictures. I love to see the “Skull-n- Cross bones”…especially if you own the Pirate faction game cards.  

 Alright, let’s chat about “Special Mission” objective added earlier last week. You have to play the “Escort” scenario and have two groups of three civilians as the mission for the escort. I really enjoy this scenario, and love to play it on the amphibious table set-up. We played two games on the same game table, one was amphibious and the other, was land. With the Spanish rolling around on their horses really put the opposition under the gun to out maneuver them. Have you played with mounted troops before? 

Do you get the Blood & Pigment weekly email updates? If so, that’s great, I believe they are using your email address you entered when you post your games. Anyways, a quick note about the “Unaligned” factions and their new captain! This is a great opportunity to play those off-center factions, like the one I played last week called the, “Portuguese-Brazilian Tercios & Militia”. This was taken from the cool game played by the Firelock Games crew called, “Saving the Governor’s Daughter”. With that being played and posted, the drop down option appears and I was able aligned myself with the Pirates and choose a port to attack…which we already discussed in the Discord. So try out a different Unaligned faction and support you local Pirate crew! Oh, almost forgot, the Unaligned Captain has also set up some games objective for additional prizes too.

Keep those lines of communication open and flowing as our Captain Rum Runner Wray, post updates and additional information in the Discord Pirate channel. This is a very active channel which discusses strategy and voting for raids…so make you vote count for the next raid! 

Finally, get your games in, raise the Black and most of all…have fun!

Plunder update from Rum Runner Wray:

Most of last week’s winners have provided mailing addresses, but we have two holdouts.  Due to scheduling, prizes likely won’t get mailed out until sometime next week.   

As a reminder to Pirates (and Pirate adjacent neutral parties) participate at least once in the “New Settlement” bonus event, and earn a chance to win some Native Allies!   We are giving away a blister of Pniesis, Braves, and Young Braves to 3 lucky winners.   If you haven’t tried the event yet, there is still time!

As Kraken Killer said- check out the Discord! Make your voice heard- and we will conquer the Caribbean together!

Unaligned – Week 4 Commander Update

Fellow Unaligned Captains!

This week marks the beginning of our rise to fame and riches, though not only that!  I suspect for many of you it is a matter of national pride as well, that you cannot bear to see the flag of another’s flying in the wind above you.

They may brand us as misfits, rebels, marauders and many more names besides and perhaps we are! But, more so we are men who would never bow to tyrants!  

In front of us lies naught but the open sea, the songs they’ll sing and the tales they’ll tell of us — so let us be men of action, living lives worth telling!

So step forward and join us as new privateers as we enter the fray!

Josiah Huss
Unaligned Commander
Giver of Letters of Marque

Player and Campaign Updates

Read on for some fun numbers, stats, highlights and updates from this week in the Summer of Plunder campaign.

Participation Numbers

We are 4 weeks in and have 1,018 games logged so far. That’s a bit of an increase over last year, which totaled a bit more than 2,000 games in the full 9 week campaign. If trends continue, this year should finish with a good 10-20% increase over last year. But this week (weekly of July 4th) is always a bit slower, so it might be similar numbers this year.

Blood & Plunder continues to lead the pack in number of games played, but Port Royal is showing strong numbers! Oak & Iron is around 10% so far this year with 97 games played so far.

Nation Report 

Who is winning? The French have pulled ahead!

Which team has logged the most games? The English have a huge crew this year and they’re doing awesome.

The Dutch are trending higher this year, replacing the Pirates as the second most played nationality.

Bonus Event Update – A New Settlement

On June 21st we announced the first “Campaign Bonus Event” that has a prize opportunity of some great terrain and some bonus points for your nation. You can check out the details here if you haven’t already. The Event runs through July 6.

We’ve had about 65 entries participate so far with great shots of Civilians making their way to a new home (one way or another).

Individual Player Report

As of week four, 253 different people have participated in the campaign so far. Here are the players who have accrued the most points so far. Tyler Carlson leads with David Zelenka, Daniel Liswood and Charlton Mason close behind and ahead of the rest of the top 30 players so far.

Week 4 Player Report for Oak & Iron

Oak & Iron might be a smaller scale but it’s an important part of this campaign! There were over 20 Oak & Iron games logged, including the Spanish, Dutch, French, and Pirate factions most notably.

Week 4 Report on Port Royal

Port Royal has really blow up and is a huge part of this campaign this year. At this point, more than 250 games of Port Royal have been logged. Check out some of the scurvy crews below.

Photo Spotlight – BROADSIDE!

We got a lot of great shots of big ships firing impressive broadsides this week! I was at a tournament and those cannons just chewed through several ships! Check out these shots from around the gaming community this week:

Weekly Campaign Prizes!

OK, it’s time to start handing out plunder! This is one of the best parts of the community event and what helps make the event so great. Don’t forget to check out the full list of prizes for the Summer of Plunder campaign.

Best Photo of the Week

Our best photo of the week goes out to Paul Chouinard for his sequence of pictures of the Dutch in the far east.

Paul has won a reproduction of Spanish 8 Reale coin.

Random Player who Accomplished the Weekly Objective

Each week a random player who accomplishes the weekly objective will be selected at random among qualifying entries. This weeks’ winner is Ginger Monson, playing Oak & Iron for the Dutch this year.

Ginger has won a set of the Dutch activation tokens.

Random Entry for Week 4

Our random draw from the entire week’s worth of entries will receive some free minis! Either a pack of 4 Blood & Plunder minis of the nationality they are playing, or an Oak & Iron Ship.

This week’s random winner goes to Tyler Carlson, the Scottish privateer who took Tortuga single-handedly!

We’re sending Tyler a pack of Spanish Lanceros, per his request.

Second Random Prize of the Week 4

In addition to our recurring prizes each week, we have a unique prize for each week. This week we’re giving away a small scatter terrain bundle! This week’s winner is Dylan Dyer, the famous Dr. D!

Dr. D has been playing for the English this year, but also pumping out some excellent podcasts .Check out his recent episodes interviewing both the Commander of the English (Dr. D is guilty of coining the term “English Daddy” if you were wondering), and the Pirate Commander.

Trivia Prize Winner

In the week 3 update, we asked a trivia question based on Benerson Little’s most recent blog post. We got a lot of correct answers!

Holden Riley has been drawn as the winner of The Sea Rover’s Practice, an excellent book by Benerson Little, one of the leading authorities on pirate history, and one of the historians on staff with Firelock Games.

Big Prize Increase Update!

Firelock Games donated another $400 in prize support this week! So keep your eyes peeled for some more prizes getting added to the pile. More plunder never hurts! Thank you Firelock Games for generously donating $1,200 worth of prize support for the event this year!

Summer of Plunder on Tabletop Simulator

Tabletop Simulator has been a great resource for people to meet and play games this year. Some of the great folks from the community have been puttin gin work to make it user friendly. You can check out details in this article by William Oakley JR.

Final Thoughts on Summer of Plunder Week 4

The plundering continues apace! This week should be exciting with a little more tension building between national teams, and the first Bonus Prize Event wrapping up on Sunday.

We’re working hard processing pictures, shipping managing spreadsheets, and supporting commanders as they lead their teams. We hope you’re enjoying your hobby this summer we hope that Firelock’s cool games and this Summer of Plunder event adds a little bit of extra fun to your summer!

Additional Recommended Reading

• “The New Settlement” Bonus Event
• 2025 Summer of Plunder Updates Hub – all of the updates from previous weeks.
• Rules and Info for the 2025 Summer of Plunder Event
• 2025 Summer of Plunder Entry Form
• 202% Summer of Plunder – Campaign Map
• Weekly Objective List for 2025 Summer of Plunder
• Prize List for 2025 Summer of Plunder