The initiative activation system is one of the things that makes Blood & Plunder great. The card system controls player initiative, determines the number of actions for units, and triggers special rules on some units.  It truly is a stroke of genius. It is foundational to the game system, even down to how you build your army. In this article, we will take a look at how the card activation system can determine your force-building choices for optimal results on the table.

A Quick Review of the Activation System

Blood & Plunder uses a standard deck of 54 cards for each player. At the start of each turn, each player draws a new hand of one card per unit currently in their force, over the course of the game turn. Players will secretly select a card, then compare it with the card their opponent played. The card’s suit determines who plays first, with Spades activating first, down to Clubs activating last.

• ♠ Spade
• ♥ Heart
• ♦Diamond
• ♣ Club

If both players play cards of the same suit, initiative is determined by the higher card number. If the cards are identical in both suit and number, each player rolls a d10; the higher roll wins initiative.

Once the initiative is resolved, the active player selects a unit that has not yet been activated this round and activates it using the played card. The unit then proceeds to take its actions.

And then to make it more delightful, the three levels of unit training on Blood & Plunder units get a varied number of actions on each suit.

The final layer includes a good handful of Special Rules on units that grant special bonuses for activating on certain cards. For example:

This is a review, but we have to lay the groundwork.

Building a Force Around The Activation Hand

When you build your Blood & Plunder force, regardless of point size, efficiency is key. If you’re aiming to succeed in a competitive format, your goal is simple: extract the most value from the fewest points.

Force-building involves a cascade of decisions: starting with your chosen Nation, then narrowing to Faction, Force Option (if applicable), Commander, unit selection, and finally unit training and equipment.

One often-overlooked layer is the statistical makeup of your Activation Hand. Some choices inform the general odds of card combinations you’ll see in your activation hand every turn. Building a force that uses all activation cards efficiently is a bit of an art! I’m talking about playing the odds. You won’t get a statistically perfect Activation Hand every turn, but if your force is built to work with the most likely combinations, you’ll see more consistent results over time.

Let’s start by comparing unit Training Levels and the number of actions each receives per suit. Once that’s clear, we’ll look at Special Rules that offer actions at a tactical value depending on how your force is built.

Training Level and the Activation Cards

Higher training generally means more actions—but not always. There’s meaningful overlap between levels, and understanding that nuance can help you build a more efficient force.

• Clubs: Trained and Veteran units get 3 actions; Inexperienced units get 2
• Diamonds: Veterans get 3; Trained and Inexperienced get 2
• Hearts: Veterans and Trained get 2; Inexperienced get 1
• Spades: Veterans get 2; Trained and Inexperienced get 1

My basic thesis: You can maximize the cost-to-action ratio by building your Force with half of your units at the Trained level, and half in some combination of Veteran and Inexperienced.

Action Math: Training Level vs Activation Efficiency

Let’s do some quick and simplified math. We’ll make some assumptions, then run some numbers. We’re going to make a sample force with 4 units of the same size in the force and a typical Activation Hand with one card of each suit per turn as a simulation of a “perfect average.” Using those assumptions, we’ll see what happens to our action count as we fiddle with the training level.

• All Trained units:
  8 actions (1 ♠, 2 ♥, 2 ♦, 3 ♣)
• All Inexperienced units:
  6 actions (1 ♠, 1 ♥, 2 ♦, 2 ♣)
• All Veteran units:
  10 actions (2 ♠, 2 ♥, 3 ♦, 3 ♣)

Now things get interesting when you start mixing training levels. Even small shifts in composition can squeeze out better action efficiency per point spent. Let’s break that down.

Inexperienced Units Efficiency Boost

With all units at Trained, we net 8 Actions per round. But what happens if we downgrade two units to Inexperienced? Assuming you can allocate your four perfectly average Activation cards to optimal targets, you still get 8 Actions. Witchcraft? Not quite. But we do get a “magical buff” in the form of a -1pt discount on half the models in our Force and still get the same number of Actions. With two units of 8 models being 1 pt cheaper, you can save 16 points in your force. That’s a bucketload of points you can invest in more models, a better commander, or better weapons options.

Action Math: Finding the Veteran Sweet Spot

What if you want to run a more elite force with Veterans? You’ll get more actions—but only up to a point. Assuming that ideal Activation Hand (one card of each suit), Veterans gain extra actions on Spades and Diamonds, but not on Hearts or Clubs.

A force with 2 Veterans and 2 Trained units hits a sweet spot: 10 total actions. That means promoting more than two units to Veteran won’t increase your number of actions past 10. So where’s the best return on investment?

Let’s take a deep dive and break down every combination.

Action Totals Table by Training

So let’s run all the possible scenarios to find the sweet spot for the number of actions with different combos of training levels on your 4 units. Assumes 4 units, 1 card of each suit, and optimal card allocation.

Takeaways from the training mix:

• The Max actions of 10 can be reached with just 2 Veterans and 2 Trained
• Promoting more units beyond 2 offers no additional action and instead only increases the cost (and flexibility) of your force.
• Mixing tiers smartly gives you elite performance without overspending

The Most Bang for Your Training Buck

Building an optimal force isn’t just about maximizing actions—cost efficiency is just as critical. So let’s look at the return on investment by comparing total actions to total point cost.

For this example, we’ll use a force composed of four identical 8-man units. Assume each unit can be independently set to Inexperienced (3 pts per model), Trained (4 pts), or Veteran (5 pts). We’ll illustrate the math using this level of customization.

Below is a breakdown of total force cost and action output, assuming a free Commander and one Activation Card of each suit per turn.

Takeaways from the Points per Action Analysis

You can see the increasing efficiency within each group. A force of all Veterans costs 160 points and delivers 10 actions. But you can get the same output from a 2 Veteran, 2 Trained force at just 144 points. But the real sweet spot is even lower.

Looking at the math (assuming I did it correctly), the 2 Inexperienced + 2 Trained combo delivers 8 actions for only 112 points, which works out to 14 points per action which is the best ROI on the list. In contrast, any force composed entirely of one training level (all Inexperienced, all Trained, or all Veterans) clocks in at 16 points per action.

The takeaway is clear: mixed training levels are the most efficient, especially when you play the odds and allocate your Activation Cards wisely.

Free Action Efficiency

Now, let’s throw one more variable in there: Free Actions. Many units in Blood & Plunder have Special Rules that grant one or more actions at no cost. These can be performed as long as the unit isn’t Shaken, and crucially, they don’t count against the hard cap of three actions per activation.

Common Special Rules that grant Free Actions (or functionally similar effects) include:

Bonus Actions By Suit

And on the opposite end of things, some rules basically make you lose actions:

• Poorly Equipped ♣
• Slow Reload ♠, ♥, ♦, ♣

If you study the list of Special Rules that grant Free Actions, a clear pattern emerges. Most of them trigger on ♠ Spades or ♥ Hearts, which are high-initiative suits. In contrast, Poorly Equipped, the most common action-loss rule, triggers on ♣ Clubs, the lowest initiative suit. High cards tend to reward well-equipped units with extra efficiency, while low cards are more likely to penalize under-equipped ones.

Free Actions and Force Efficiency

There are two important considerations when factoring in Free Actions. First, most of these rules trigger on ♠ Spades or ♥ Hearts, which means only about 25% to 50% of your units will benefit in a typical turn. Giving every unit a rule like Quick doesn’t help the whole force every round. It only helps the units activated by the right suit. So from a cost-efficiency standpoint, stacking elite Free Action rules across your entire force is not optimal.

Second, Veteran and Trained units are usually the ones with access to these elite rules. So let’s revisit our top three efficiency combos using 8-man units and see how the math shifts when we assume that Veterans activated on a Spade get a free action. We’re still assuming a perfect hand of one card per suit.

Base Efficiency (No Free Actions)

Here are our 3 top efficiency combos from before:

Efficiency with Free Action on Veteran (Spade Only)

Now let’s say any Veteran activated with a ♠ gets a free action (and we’re still drawing the perfect hand of one card of each suit):

That makes that 1 Inexperienced/2 Trained/1 Veteran combo the most efficient combo!

Real Force Examples

Now, finally, let’s look at a couple of real forces and see how many actions we can squeeze out of those 4 activation cards:

English Buccaneers

• Freebooters, upgraded to Veteran -> ♠, 2 actions + a 3rd from Fast Reload
• Sea Dogs, Trained -> ♥, 2 actions + a 3rd from Expert Artillery Crew
• Kapers, Trained -> ♣, 3 actions
• English Militia, Inexperienced -> ♦, 2 actions

Adding 2 free actions brings that up to 11 actions in a mixed force of 1 Inexperienced, 2 Trained, and 1 Veteran units.

On the opposite end, the Poorly Equipped horde of Inexperienced Spanish Milicianos, gets worse:

Spanish Militia

• Milicianos, Inexperienced -> ♠, 1 Action
• Milicianos, Inexperienced -> ♥, 1 Action
• Milicianos, Inexperienced -> ♦, 2 Actions
• Milicianos, Inexperienced -> ♣, 2 Actions, with the Poorly Equipped Reload, net of 1 action.

That effectively reduces the number of actions to 5 for the round with all Inexperienced, poor-quality troops. Now, the mass of bodies counts for a lot, so I’m not saying a swarm of Milicianos is a bad list, but I am saying that when you’re considering the cost of actions, the homogeneous force is a bad deal in most cases.

Or another wildly different example with the same faction:

• Spanish Militia
  • Milicianos Indios, upgraded to Veteran -> ♠, 2 Actions, plus Quick and Skirmishers = 4 Actions
  • Lanceros, Trained -> ♥, 2 Action, plus possible Skirmishers = 3 Actions
  • Milicianos, Inexperienced -> ♦, 2 Actions
  • Soldados, Trained -> ♣, 3 Actions and no penalty

That’s a total of 12 actions with 1 Inexperienced, 2 Trained, and 1 Veteran. It’s clear that not all actions are of the same value, and some actions, like the Lancero’s Skirmishers move, won’t always trigger. But the basic concept is helpful to keep in mind.

Tyler Stone Brilliantly Pushes the Action Economy

Free actions can change the math a good bit, even without using any Veteran units. Tyler Stone ran a deadly sea list at the 2025 Adepticon Sea Tournament. Using Captain Daniel in The Last Buccaneers faction, all units get the Fast Reload ability. The force consists of all of Trained Sea Dogs and Inexperienced Jamaican Privateers. The Sea Dogs on the Swivels or Cannons get all the Hearts or Clubs (free Reload on ♥), and the Inexperienced Privateers get all the ♦ and ♠ (free Reload on the ♠ from Fast Reload). Everyone gets 2-3 Actions, and they’re all 3pt units (assuming you take pistols away from the Sea Dogs). Assuming you have 4 units using one of each card, you’ll get 10 Actions, which is pretty great! And it’s reliable. You never get a dud hand.

• Jamaican Privateers, Inexperienced – Activated on a ♠, 1 Action, plus free Reload action from Fast Reload
• Sea Dogs, Trained – Activated on a ♥, 2 Actions, plus a free Artillery Reload from Expert Artillery Crew
• Jamaican Privateers, Inexperienced – Activated on a ♦, 2 Actions
• Sea Dogs, Trained – Activated on a ♣, 3 Actions

That’s 10 actions with 2 Inexperienced and 2 Trained units. Those are cheap actions!

Pushing Units for More Actions

You can Push your unit to take an additional action beyond its activation card at the cost of taking 1 point of Fatigue. This can’t push beyond the limit of 3 Actions during your activation, but it can be useful, especially when combined with rules that can remove Fatigue (Tough, Indomitable, Lead by Example).

I find Pushing very tempting, and it really can help you gain the upper hand. But it can also come back to bite you if that point of Fatigue contributes to your unit becoming Shaken, or losing out on actions later in the game.

There are a couple of situations that I find that pushing is particularly effective and not too punishing. First, I love using a ♥ on a unit on my cannons with the Expert Artillery Crew Special Rule. They get to take a free Reload action, then 2 regular Reload actions (assuming they’re Trained), and then you can Push them to remove that final Reload marker (since the Free action doesn’t count against the limit. In this way, you can fully reload and fire your cannons every turn if you use a Command Point from an outside unit every turn. But the Pushing does catch up with you unless you have a way to counteract that Fatigue gain.

The best faction for this trick is the English Royal Navy or British Royal Navy. You can Push every other turn, then use their Tough ability to try to get that Fatigue off on the non-Pushing activations.

It’s less reliable, but can be awesome, if you spend a whole turn Pushing and then you’re able to trigger Lead by Example with your Commander’s unit and just remove it all! It’s an amazing move if you can pull it off.

Pushing with the Unknown African Character

The Unknown African Character in the Buccaneer/Brethren of the Coast factions (found in the Organized Play Buccaneer’s Realm campaign) is an amazing way to use Pushing as well. He grants the rare Indomitable Special Rule that automatically removes a Fatigue at the start of each activation!

Abilities to Help with Activation Card Sifting

You can play the odds to get a generally better result with your units, but there are also several ways to get through more activation cards or sift through activation cards in a game of Blood & Plunder. Sometimes you’re looking for something specific, be that a hand of high initiative cards, or high action cards, or even that perfectly balanced hand to give each unit what it can use best. And there are a handful of fun rules in Blood & Plunder that give you the ability to dig deeper into your activation deck.

Here are some of the rules in the game that can help you mess with your Activation Cards:

• Buccaneer Faction Ability (this core ability of the Buccaneer style factions lets you discard your hand and draw a new one without spending a Fortune Token once per game)
  • English Buccaneers
  • French Buccaneers
  • Brethren of the Coast
  • Logwood Cutters & Baymen (as Attacker)
  • Caesar’s Men
  • Blackbeard’s Men
  • The Last Buccaneers
• Superior Intelligence (a Special Rule connected to a Commander that provides a free mulligan once per game)
  • Benjamin Church (English)
  • Muttawmp (Native)
  • Jose De Zuniga Y La Cerda (Spanish)
• Tactician (every time you draw a new hand, you can discard a card to draw a new card)
  • Canonchet (Native)
  • Antonio Filpe Camarao (Native)
  • Miguel Enriquez (Spanish)
  • Francis Nicholson (English)
  • Robert Maynard (English)
  • Joseph De Monbeton “Saint-Ovide” (French)
  • Henri-Louis De Chavagnac (French)
  • Emperor Brim (Native)
• Fortune Tokens (can also take a mulligan any time by spending a Fortune)
• God’s Blessing or the Devil’s Luck (because it gives you extra Fortune)
• Felicitous (because it makes sure you have 1 Fortune every turn)

But, But, But….

Yes, there’s all sorts of variables. Not all actions are created equal. The quality of your actions is clearly super important as well. Not all units cost the same number of points. You won’t always draw the perfectly predictable hand. But it’s helpful to keep the basic principle in mind when you’re working on your force. Having a unit of Inexperienced models isn’t always a penalty.

But, on the other side of things, upgrading your veterancy is always helpful in one area and that is flexibility. If you min-max your force to best utilize the average hand of cards, you have to actually allocate those cards to the right units and that can be constricting. What if the Inexperienced unit really needs to activate first and you have to spend the Spade on it instead of your optimal Veteran Boucaniers? You’ll lose value. If all your units are Veterans, they all have the potential to be dangerous to your opponent.

The higher your unit’s overall veterancy, the more flexible your force becomes, but it’s still limited by what you actually draw. But your opponent won’t know what you have, so they will still have to consider what you could do with all those Veterans.

All Veteran forces can be effective. All Inexperienced forces can be effective. But that mixed force of half Trained and half not-Trained is an excellent choice for effective use of the Blood & Plunder card activation system.

Disadvantages of Homogeneous Forces

The same goes for not just Training, but unit types. The effectiveness of an unit of Cavalry in the context of a mixed force is pretty high if you can devote your Spade to that unit every turn. But if you run an all cavalry list, the average action count for your cavalry units will go down, because you aren’t going to get those Quick and Skirmishers abilities triggering on all 4 units in a homogenous force.

The same goes for Faction Rules that grant a force-wide Special Rule that could give a Free Action. It’s valuable, but the free action is usually linked to a certain activation card and will only trigger 1-2 times a turn even if you have 4-6 units with that rule. All units within the French Raiders faction get the Quick rule, but since that only triggers on a ♠, it’s the unusual turn when more than 25% of your units are actually going to benefit from it. Quick is a very powerful rule, but its value doesn’t keep scaling up when it’s applied to the entire force.

Final Thoughts

This has been a very nerdy article but I hope it helped you think about how to structure a force around the cards you expect to draw during a game of Blood & Plunder. You have lots of options when building a force. You’re trying to prepare for many possibilities, build in efficiency, and maybe provide a main theme or focus for your force. Everything costs points so knowing where can you invest in, or cut out veterancy in your units can help you build the most effective force.

You can build for flexibility (lots of Veterans), affordability (lots of Inexperienced), reliability (lots of Trained), or min-maxed (combining veterancy and abilities that maximize actions per point investment). They all have pros and cons and that’s part of the fun!

But I encourage you to think about building your force around the “average” hand of Activation Cards that you will be drawing every turn. Think about how you can select units that squeeze the most you can out of those cards! And have fun with the challenge of managing those actions in the game!

Product Recommendations

With all this talk of Activation Cards, I would like to recommend a Nation-based Activation Deck from Firelock Games. It’s not just a stylish accessory, it’s a fun way to champion your Nation. The quick reference of the suit-based triggers on these decks lets you play the game with clarity and speed.

Check out the Activation Decks from Firelock Games

By Joseph Forster
Edited by Jason Klotz

Additional Recommended Reading

• Read up on how to use Fortune Points in Blood & Plunder
• Complete Guide to Blood & Plunder Characters from No Peace Beyond the Line
• Ultimate Guide to Using Cavalry in Blood & Plunder
• Complete Guide to Blood & Plunder Characters from Raise the Black