We had a low key sea tournament for the Pacific Northwest folks in Oregon and Washington in late June. Today we have a quick report and some force lists to share with you!
Tournament Details
This was a 250pt sea tournament using the same basic rules as the Adepticon tournament this year.
- 3 Rounds
- 100 minute games
- 3 Random scenarios rolled from Breakthrough, Encounter, Escort, Take and Hold, and Wanted Man.
- Forces drawn from all published Blood & Plunder material
- We had 8 participants from Washington, Oregon and Montana
- Prizes in the form of Gift Cards to the hosting store, a red deluxe rulebook, and a trophy
Winning Players and Forces
Here are the top-placing forces for the event.
1st Place – Adam Horton with English Buccaneers
Adam Horton won the tournament with a perfect three wins with his English Buccaneers list in a Privateer Sloop.
- Experienced English Commander – Inspiring
- 8 Forlorn Hope
- 8 Sea Dogs with 1 Firepot
- 12 Sea Dogs without Pistols
- 10 Flibustiers
- Cook
- Master Gunner
- Privateer Sloop with Anti-Grappling Measures
- 3 Pairs of Medium Cannons
This is a great all purpose list with heavy hitting cannons, great melee, good defense against boarding, and good crowd control with the explosives. Strong fatigue management with the Cook and Inspiring. Not taking Grapeshot is notable, but musketry with the Flibustiers and Forlorn Hope cover the anti-personnel role.
I didn’t get to play against Adam and his Buccaneer force, but I heard a lot of “Critical Hit,” “2 Critical Hits,” and “roll 8 Critical Hits!” from the tables he was one. His cannons were crushing ships left and right! Those 3 Medium Guns can deal out the pain, especially when you line up a raking shot! Excellent force and play from Adam Horton.
2nd Place – Joseph Forster with Yamasee
My “Yamasea” list. Natives are weaker at sea than on land, but I was determined to play Natives and see how well I could do. This list focuses on dropping a lot of Fatigue with arrows, with an extended range from the Warrior Archers (5 Shoot) with a regular bonus from Ruthless if things are going according to plan. This idea can be pushed further with the South American Tribes faction – – I’ve done that and it’s dirty!
Here’s a more in-depth description of my tournament force and the games played with it.
This is a “war fleet” of canoes with a single piragua for a flagship. The units are fairly evenly divided so there isn’t a clear threat priority for the enemy to focus on.
The list consisted of:
- Piragua
- King Lewis (Lead by Example, Vendetta: English)
- 9 Braves w/Sharpshooter
- 7 Young Braves
- 7 Warrior Archers w/Officer in Canoe
- 7 Warrior Archers with Canoe Assault Expert in Canoe
- 7 Warrior Archers in Canoe
- 7 Renegadoes with Muskets in a Canoe
That’s 45 models in 5 boats with 3 Command Points available to issue Shoot actions on all those bows. The bows make sure there’s Fatigue on the enemy so the Braves can actually make some kill shots with Ruthless and Marksmen with their Muskets.
Here’s a quick rundown of how my games went playing at sea in the 250 meta.
Yamasee Game 1 – Chase’s End
My basic strategy of early swarms of arrows, followed by deadly musketry at closer ranges worked pretty well. The first game was a win as my Warrior Archers just wore down the enemy and deprived them of actions through Fatigue. The scenario set me up perfectly with Fatigue already on my enemy to set my up Ruthless Yamasee.
This game was against Riley and his “Searley Bark Bomb, ” but the lack of Inspiring on Searle made it hard to manage all the incoming Fatigue.
Yamasee Game 2 – Take & Hold
I lost my second game when the Fatigue game didn’t work out so well. An Inspiring French Commander kept the Fatigue off, then a unit of 12 Flibustiers just poured death into my Commander’s Piragua at close range. With 12 dice he got five 10’s which turned into more hits with Ball & Shot. The game was a tie with Strike Points at 1v1, but I had lost more models and was in a bad place.
This game was against Brad Horton and his OVERPOWERED FREEEEEENCH.
I did avoid losing my “flagship” Piragua, but it was a scary game.
Yamasee Game 3 – Escort
I was intimidated up against another French list with a killer captain controlling. Robert Montgomery has really been making the rounds at events and it was great to be able to play against in this event after seeing him do so well at the Adepticon Tournament this Spring.
But my Fatigue game was on point for this final game of the event.
I was the Defender in the Escort scenario which meant Robert just needed to hunt down my Dignitary and destroy the one boat. I couldn’t escape that Freshly Careened Privateer Brigantine coming down fast!
There was a very tense moment in the game where I couldn’t escape with my piragua. I was going to get hit, or get boarded. I was safer grappling and boarding him, no matter the odds, than getting hit and suffering the devastation that a collision does to a boat.
I came out super lucky on initative cards, coming in one pip ahead two turns in a row, and that was enough to get me those early hits in the melee and I was able to take the ship.
So my Yamasea ended with 2 wins and a loss. I think the “canoe swarm” throws people for a loop and they don’t know how to approach it. My expectation was to see people zoom in for ramming as fast as possible, but people were reticent to move into the middle of that swarm of canoes and models.
The Renegadoes were a weak point in my list. They have muskets and they gain Savvy which helps them drop the Slow Reload ability, but with a 7 Shoot, and 6 Resolve, and Inexperienced, they just don’t dish out many dice. And if they get any Fatigue on top of Reload tokens, they can just spend multiple turns trying to become semi-useful again. They have the advantage of being a <4 cost model, which helped me hit that 44 model count, but they were not very useful.
The Ruthless Warrior Archers are amazing and landing hits, but with that -3 bonus to Shoot Saves combined with Hard Cover, you don’t get many kills when units are Saving on 3’s or 2’s.
Since I have railed against Lead by Example before, but I have to confess I got it to work twice in my tournament experience which was fun to see. But in both cases, it triggered near the end of the game when the result was already pretty well decided. It’s a fun rule, but hard to make work!
But it was a fun list and did better than I expected against worthy opponents!
3rd Place – Brad Horton with French Buccaneers
The aforementioned OVERPOWERED FRENCH! This was a good list.
- Alexandre Bras de Fer (Iron Arm) (Lucky, Inspiring, Lead by Example and Broadside!)
- 8 Flibustiers
- 12 Flibustiers w/Cook
- 10 Kapers
- 6 Marins w/Master Gunner
- Balandra with Freshly Careened Hull and Reinforced Bulkheads
- 2 Pairs of Swivel Guns
I can tell you it hurts to get hit by that unit of 12 Flibustiers with Ball & Shot once you get up close.
The Cook proved his value many times over, rallying off Fatigue that my arrows lay down on the Commander’s unit before he activated. The Master Gunner was a a bit expensive for just the reload on the Swivel Guns, but it helped pull off several extra shots with those Swivel Guns when you consider the extra actions gained from the Heart activation cards from Expert Artillery Crew.
After beating me with this French list, Brad had to play his brother Adam at the top table! A Horton duel!
4th Place – Riley Faulk with English Buccaneers
The English Buccaneers strike again! Riley has been running a nasty “Searle Bark Torpedo” list every once in a while, and it’s nasty when it hits. Big bad commander, and three big bad units loaded into a Bark.
Riley’s list contained:
- Robert Searle
- 10 Forlorn Hope w/explosives
- 12 Kapers w/Sailing Master
- 10 Enter Ploeg w/explosives
- Bark with Freshly Careened Hull and Reinforced Bulkheads
- 1 Pair of Swivel Guns
This force is super intense once it grapples you and starts melee. With plenty of explosives, lots of pistols, and Brawlers and Hard Chargers benefitting nearly every unit, it just steamrolls everything in its path.
Riley earned two wins with Searle’s Torpedo of Death.
5-8th Place Forces
In no particular order we had:
- Don with a Golden Age Pirate Brigantine
- Wil with a Brethren of the Coast Tartana
- Robert with a OVERPOWERED French Buccaneers Brigantine
- Paul with a Dutch Navy Brigantine
Stats and Takeaways from the Tournament
It’s always fun to grab some data from a competitive event. What are people playing when they play to win? How are people building their forces? This is a small sample size, but here are some stats.
Factions Used in the Tournament
The forces people brought leaned heavily into the 17th century factions, with Buccaneer factions being dominant. We had 2 English, 2 French, 1 Unaligned, 1 Dutch, 1 Native and 1 Pirate force.
- 2x English Buccaneers
- 2x French Buccaneers
- Brethren of the Coast
- Dutch Navy
- The Flying Gang
- Yamasee
Ships Used
Overall, the ships used tended towards smaller vessels than what we saw at Adepticon, while still at the 250pt limit. The Brigantine was the largest ship present! No Fluyts, LIght Frigates or 4 deck ships!
- 3 Brigantines
- 1 Sloop
- 1 Tartana
- 1 Balandra
- 1 Bark
- 1 Fleet of Boats
The Freshly Careened Hull was a super popular upgrade! I saw it on all three of my opponents’ ships. Having that movement advantage is a big deal.
Force Size
We’re people swarming or playing more elite forces?
The size of force ranged between 29 and 45 models with an average of 35 models.
Commanders Used
We saw a lot of historical, and even Legendary Commanders! At 250pts, those options really start to be viable. Commanders included:
- Piet Heyn (36)
- King Lewis (14)
- Monbars the Exterminator (26)
- Jean Pinel (25)
- Robert Searle (25)
- Alexandre Bras de Fer (Iron Arm) (20_
- Experienced Standard British Commander (with Inspiring) (10)
- Henry Jennings (30)
But I guess I have to acknowledge that the Standard British Commander, the cheapest commander present, won the tournament under Adam’s skilled hand.
Characters Used
I don’t have complete data on this but here are the characters used in the 6 force lists I got:
- Officer
- Canoe Assault Expert
- x2 Sharpshooter
- Basil Ringrose
- William, Moskito Striker
- Unknown African
- Reformado
- Sailing Master
- x2 Cook
- x2 Master Gunner
That’s a pretty decent spread of characters. A notable absence includes the once-omnipresent Grizzled Veteran. The average Character count was just a little above 2 per force.
Books Drawn From
The Blood & Plunder books drawn from for the Faction lists leaned towards Core/No Peace Beyond the Line with a few from Raise the Black.
- 5 Factions from the Core Book (with updates in No Peace Beyond the LIne)
- 1 Faction from No Peace Beyond the Line
- 2 Factions from Raise the Black
As far as Characters go, we saw:
- 7 from No Peace Beyond the LIne
- 3 from Raise the Black
- 3 from the Buccaneer’s Companion Volume 1 expansion
Final Thoughts
I really enjoy a good tournament! It’s a great excuse to play several games in a day and really push your force building and play to a higher level. That said, I enjoy a causal approach to competitive play, and I think we did a pretty good job of keeping it low key at this event.
We plan to run another tournament during the Summer of Plunder here in the Pacific Northwest, so mark your calendars if you’re in the area! Speaking of, we have another Summer of Plunder gathering planned for July in Lacey, Washington. You can check out the event details on Facebook here, or join our local Facebook Group here.
It’s difficult to get a tournament off the ground because you need a critical mass of players to make the thing run and it’s just hard to get enough people available for a full day of gaming. Several of the regular locals couldn’t make it to this event due to scheduling reasons. But a big thanks to everyone who came out and played and made it an awesome event! A lot of these guys drove 3+ hours!
A big thanks to Geeks & Games in Oregon City for hosting the event and stocking Blood & Plunder, Port Royal, and Oak & Iron.
If you are interested in running a tournament event, don’t hesitate to reach out for a little help. Firelock Games has always been generous in providing prize support, and we would be happy to help with tournament organization tips, tournament packets, and a tournament spreadsheet to manage the event.
Article by Joseph Forster. I organized and competed in the event, but excused myself from winning any of the prizes.