We’ve finished the first month of the 2026 Great Pirate Paint Off and there’s lots going on! We’re wrapping up the Blood & Plunder Commanders and Characters categories and we have some prizes to give away!
We had huge participation in January with a total of 227 entries over the course of the month! For context, we had a total of 304 entries for the entire 4 month contest last year. In this post we’ll just be awarding the end-of-month prize drawings. You can now vote for your favorite entries for these categories here.
For full details on schedule and rules for the contest, visit this page.
End of January Prizes
We give away some prizes and the midpoint and endpoint of every month. Most of these prizes are drawn at random from qualifying entrants while the People’s Choice voting will determine the winners of each category. Today we are giving away:
- 2 Blood & Plunder Paint Sets from Monument Hobbies
- 1 Reale fancy Fortune Coin from St. Augustine Mint
- 1 Blood & Pigment d6 Turn Counter Die
- 1 Blood & Pigment d10 Dice Set (NEW!)
Finally, we will have People’s Choice voting up for both Characters and Commanders ASAP, and we will award prize medals for the top placing entry in each category. We have a panel of 4 judges narrowing the field of the top entries for the people’s choice voting process.
Blood & Plunder Paint Sets from Monument Hobbies
We are giving away 1 set of the Monument Hobbies B & P paint set to a random participant in both the Character and Commander categories. Each participating person receives 1 chance (regardless of how many entries they made in the category).
Paint Set – Commander Winner
For the Commander category, we had 44 different painters enter 85 entries. Make sure to visit the Commander Gallery for this year’s contest so you can enjoy everyone’s work.
And our winner is Montgomery M! Check out the six Commanders Montgomery entered.
Montgomery entered several characters as well, along with a beautiful Oak & Iron ship. Congrats on the great work and the paint set prize!
Paint Set – Character Winner
We actually had more Character entries than Commanders this year! Firelock Games has been putting out all those great new Character models over the past year and we’re seeing them here! There were 109 Character entries submitted by 31 different painters. You can see the full gallery of Character entries here.
Drawn from the 31 participants, our winner for the second Monument Hobbies paint set is Ben F! Check out his Sailing Master and Ship’s Wheel “Character.”
A huge thanks to Monument Hobbies for donating these two prizes! Please support them as an awesome hobby company.
1 Reale Coin Fortune Token
These next three prizes are drawn at random from all entries from the month. So the more entries you submit, the better chance you have of winning something! These are some fun little accessories from our Blood & Pigment shop.
Our first little prize we’re sending out is a 1697 1 Reale coin reproduction from St. Augustine Mint. This is a small but authentic and beautiful handmade coin that we love to use as Fortune Tokens for Blood & Plunder, Oak & Iron, or Port Royal.
Chosen at random from the 227 entries, Carlos MG is our winner! Carlos entered 12 minis including 7 Commanders and 5 Characters. Great paint work and very well set pictures on the ship there! Congrats to Carlos. May this Spanish silver (not actually silver) always bring you good fortune!
Blood & Pigment Turn Counter D6
We’re happy to have a couple fun Blood & Pigment branded items to give away this year! First we have a bone d6 turn counter die.
These are made of real bone and their extra large size makes them great turn counters for your 6 turn Blood & Plunder games. And the winner for this prize is Ben P! Congrats to Ben. He turned in some great work, especially on those Native models. Check out some of his entries below.
Blood & Pigment Set of D10’s
We recently worked with Baron of Dice to get a set of d10’s made with our logo on them. They make us feel cool and we hope you enjoy them!
The winner for this prize for January is Brendan K! Brendan was one of the first painters to get some entries in during the very first days of January. He’s really getting his French looking good this year!
Congrats to Brendan and I hope those d10’s roll high!
Final Thoughts
Congratulations to all the winners here at the end of the month. That’s all we’re going to cover in this post, but watch for more updates on the painting contest coming soon. Posts you can expect to see in the next couple days:
- People’s Choice voting opportunities for Commanders and Characters
- Another post spotlighting more of the great entries during January
- A post discussing the Terrain and Oak & Iron categories and detailing the prizes to be given out in February
Again, make sure to peruse all the entries in the mega gallery, or focus on the Commander or Characters in their respective galleries.