By Dylan Dyer

Filibustiers De Graff is a Legendary Commander specific faction that appeared in Blood and Plunder with the  No Peace Beyond the Line  expansion. This force recently got a bit of a revamp with the most recent errata that added Marins Basque! What a great time to go back and look at an oldie but a goodie of a French time. This is one of my favorite French forces since it adds value to classic French units that change up how to play the Nation as a whole. Let’s get into it then!

Filibustiers De Graff Faction Rules

Mr. De Graff’s force is, for sure, tilted toward being a sea-focused faction with rules that clearly represent that. Laurens brings superior French eyesight and gives you a +3 to your attacker roll, which is slightly more than the common +2 for sea-based factions. It’s not a huge bonus, but being the attacker in a sea game comes with many advantages. Never a bad idea to have a slight advantage for that roll!

Laurens De Graff was a (in)famous buccaneer in his day, so it only makes sense that his force would have the ubiquitous buccaneer hand mulligan. I find this is especially helpful for French buccaneer-style armies due to so many of their models having important spade free actions for their models. Spades especially pay off if you have a force filled to the brim with expert artillery crew. It is probably good for the other nations that marins don’t have that rule natively……..but wait…….

All men of ill-intent that are in Filibustiers De Graff gains the Expert Artillery Crew rule just for showing up. WHAT A DOOR PRIZE!

This little bullet point is the entire reason we are here talking about this force. (Other than Joe holding me hostage and forcing me to write for food….send help!) This force takes the already impressively violent Marin and makes them a Swiss army knife of pain. Marins love to run in screaming to bonk their enemies until their brains turn off, but now you have a fully trained gun crew that just gets bolted onto your force for free.

I would buy that for a dollar!

This means that your buccaneer hand mulligan has even more added value since you get extra action economy from spades and hearts! The only thing that could make this better is if you had a really cool commander with a great set of rules to help your force out even more…..oh wait…..

Commander Options – Laurens De Graff

You only get one option, so we might as well talk about it first. You get the man….the legend….one of the main inspirations for Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean….Laurens De Graff.

Laurens comes in at a hefty 34 points, but he brings some great rules.

Let’s just go top to bottom to keep it simple with a little theorycrafting about how it all comes together. He has 3 command points with a crazy range of 20. That’s already a great start, and means that you can go a little thin on fighting men since you will not have a lot of room for units that are not getting one of those command points.

He has a brace of pistols so he is always getting rerolls in combat and can always shoot with the unit he is in. Just make sure you don’t accidently shoot a musket with him since it’s easy to forget that he has a different weapon. Swordsman is one of those rules that will either change the course of history or won’t change diddly squat in your game. If your opponent charges in and misses half of their hits because of the +1 to the roll, you will see true sadness made manifest as they realize their all-important charge just turned into a stiff sea breeze that didn’t even move the needle. Thankfully, this rule applies to all units on a deck, which means you can gain some added value by keeping two units on a deck safer from melee.

Very Inspiring is one of, if not the best, rule in the entire game of Blood and Plunder. Nothing stinks more than having the unit you needed to get the job done deciding to lay down and take a nap because some punk with a bow grazed your unit. Anything that helps with resolve is super valuable, and this is a very consistent version of resolve management. Expert Broadside works right alongside the Expert Artillery Crew rule that the force gains and only helps make your broadsides more consistent. It won’t always make a difference every game, but it feels great to reroll that lucky hit into something more useful than nothing when you do roll that one. Just try not to forget it.

Sailing Master is a fantastic rule for any sea-based faction that hopes to rule the waves. It happens more often than not at 5+ or 4+ depending on the unit Laurens is in, but having the option to speed up or slow down slightly can make you less predictable. If your opponent is moving in a wave to board you or get an angle you don’t want, just increasing or decreasing your ships movement can help keep you out of trouble or open up a shot you might have missed. This is just one of those rules you need to have when you need it and it’s hard to stress how helpful it can be just on paper.

Felicitous is another GLORIOUS rule. This means that if you spend all of your Fortune on your first Broadside and/or to keep your models alive with a ranged save reroll, you get to have a free Fortune at the start of the next turn. Theoretically, you could potentially have nine Fortune over the course for your game. This doesn’t mean you need to spend your Fortune heedlessly, but it does mean you can be more liberal with rerolls where you know the odds are more in your favor of getting a better result. It’s a handy rule to have!

Ok, so how do we bring all of this together. Like most cannon lists, Laurens should be ordering broadsides to benefit from the Expert Broadside rule. This mean you can put him in one of the cannon crews to save yourself a Command Point for the broadside or make sure he is in a unit that doesn’t require him to spend his Command Points. I personally like to put him in a unit that is assigned to the sheets on the main gun deck so that his unit is doing other stuff, and his Swordsman rule gives some security in case your boat gets set upon by some nefarious pirates looking to touch your booty. Having Laurens nearby means you can spend your marins’s turns trying to fully reload the cannons for Lauren’s next turn. It can be a tricky dance to manage, especially when the bullets start flying, but it is effective. If you can get it going and keep up the momentum, you can turn your opponent’s ship into splinters quite quickly if the dice roll even statistically.

Filibustier De Graff Core Options

Marins

This is going to be the unit of choice for most Filibustier De Graff lists. The humble marin is known for the violence it can commit in the name of the Sun King. Their impr

essive fight value is supplemented with hard chargers which can be produce a truly staggering amount of violence if you let them keep their pistols or give them a brace of pistols. One of the things that keeps them back is that they are not as good at shooting cannons because they don’t have native Expert Artillery Cre……..OH MY GOD THEY HAVE THAT RULE IN THIS FORCE!!

This changes everything! Expert Artillery Crew means they are going to get more reliable free reload actions, and their proficiency for violence means they can hold their own if someone jumps onto the deck of your ship. If the rapscallions come aboard and hope to find a herd of sheep, they will be very sad to hear that the lions of Paris are gonna take their lunch. The biggest weakness of the unit is the 7 melee save, but having Swordsman around is helpful to reduce the sting of being stabbed to death.

Boucaniers

When you think of playing France, I would almost guarantee that most people think about this group of angry French hillbillies at least once. They easily take the position of one of the best shooting units in the games with an incredible 5 Shoot Skill with Fast Reload and Marksmen making their shots more consistent and faster. The upgrade to make them Veteran is mighty tempting since Boucaniers LOVE Spades. Having more actions with those Spades is even more betterer. On a boat, this unit can be a real boogyman as they plink away at enemy units at far range that gets even more oppressive once the enemy ship gets closer.

They are good and worth considering if you want a solid musket shooting unit. Just don’t let your enemies get within swording range.

Filibustiers

When it comes to modern-day Blood and Plunder (game has been around 10 years), people are going to inevitably compare units of comparable points against each other. Inevitably, it comes down to personal preference for what units you like the most, but I have to say that I think the Filibustiers are one of those units that has maintained its worth and reputation since the start of the game.

Filibustiers have solid stats for getting enemy models off the table and have the equipment and skills to get the job done. If you can accuse these guys of anything, it is that they are fragile with their 7 Fight and Shoot Save. I find the combination of Fast Reload and their Brace of Pistol means they can get work done no matter where they are and the situation they are in. My only word of caution would be, make sure they are not getting charged or shot out of position after they kill whatever unit they charged into since they do not handle the counter-attack very well.

Marins Basque

Next comes the French veteran sailor unit that came out in Raise the Black. This was just recently added to the force in the 2026 update, and it does add another layer of interesting to the force. The Marins Basque are useful for the same reason most of the other veteran sailors are useful, they have a solid Shoot Save and have some solid skills to move the boat.

The unit tries to disguise itself as a ranged shooting unit, but that Shoot 7 just puts them in the position of shooting for show and not for damage most of the time. They have a great fight of 5 with Hard Chargers and can lay down some pain when needed, but that classic French Fight Save of 7 rears its goofy head. Expert Sailors is great to have and provides you movement opportunities, especially with having the unit managing the sheets.

I think that this unit works great being on the same deck as the main gun crew while being assigned to the sheets, or being on standby to perform repairs and advanced maneuvers. Their shoot save means they can absorb some gunfire to keep it off of your gun crew marins much more gracefully than most other French units and if one does happen to drop, it’s not the end of the world. I would recommend downgrading their veterancy to save some points since they won’t need a ton of action economy for most of the game. If the marins basque are on the sheets, most of their contributions to the game will be with free actions and command points. Otherwise, they will be enjoying the sea breeze in the same place most game if your cannoning does its job correctly.

Support Units

Milices De Caraibes

It’s the French version of local yokeles with guns, it’s the militia! I like the French militia for a variety of reasons, and those reasons hold up on a boat. Having a Shoot stat of 6/7 on the unit means that they could reasonably occupy a deck, take hits for other units and shoot reasonably well. It’s another one of those personal preference type of units in this force, but I wouldn’t blame you for bringing them to be prickly meat shields. I don’t think they are going to define your game, but they are for sure a reasonable tool if you are trying to beef up your numbers. If you can get the bayonets set before your opponent charges, your opponent will need to stop and think before you give them the defensive pokes to tell them the Sun King knew they were coming.

Engages

Engages are another unit that got a pretty big change with the 2026 Unit Update. They lost Timid and even got their own model in the process. That’s a pretty good deal!

I like the new version of them and I think that gives them a place in any French list that wants to use them. Paying 4 points for a model with Shoot 6/6 certainly has some advantages.

Their 4 point pricetag with their stat line makes them competitive with the other “militia” type choices. I think I like Engages slightly more on a boat then Milices des Caraibes, but they serve very similar roles. You lose the advantages that come with bayonets, but your shooting exchanges are slightly better. Again, we are wandering into personal preference land, and I think the new engage’s have game. If you bring them purely to just take shots for a more valuable unit on the same deck, I think that alone justifies bringing them along.

Les Infants Perdus

Now it is time to talk about the shared model kit with the forlorn hope from the English faction. Les Enfants Perdus is a very atypical unit. They come in at 5 points and have saves that make you wonder where all those points are going. It’s an interesting unit that I don’t think do too much in this faction, but I think they could be useful elsewhere.

Looking at their stats, they feel like a unit that wants to be far away and shooting due to their poor saves, but have a great melee hit and brace of pistols. I think this unit just suffers from being difficult to use from being so fragile. The resolve 4 means that they won’t take a fatigue more often than not, but will you survive enough to actually make contact is the question.

I won’t say that the unit is good or bad, but I don’t think this is the force where they will shine. I think an argument could be made that they are great as a boarding party in a naval game, but marins by themselves are a great boarding unit. A typical De Graff list will be more focused on cannons or at least close range grapeshooting/muskets, and that turns this unit it a bit of a point liability when you could take something more consistent in your lists. If you want to try them and find success in using them, I would love to hear about it, and you might be able to see a strategy that I do not.

Zeelieden

Oh Zeelieden, how you manage to find yourself in so many different lists. I love Zeelieden and how they can be used for spotting a force with some of the best sailors in the game. I think in a De Graff list, they lose most of their appeal since your Marins are gaining Expert Artillery Crew from the force bonus. If you wanted to use them as a unit specifically for advanced maneuvers or manning the sheets, I could see your arugement, but the addition of Marins Basque as a core unit makes it less necessary .

If you want to include these spunky Dutchman, it for sure won’t make your list any worse, but that means you are taking less angry Frenchman and I am not sure you are thinking clearly from all the Bordeaux wine you are drinking.e

Enter Ploeg

The famous Dutch boarding unit makes its appearance yet again in such a fashionable way! They have been around for a while and any Blood and Plunder player fears the sharp part of their axes!

I have always loved the Enter Ploeg, and the recent errata to them lets them bring muskets! At a hefty 7 points a model you could have a unit with Brace of Pistols, a Firelock Musket, and a Blunderbuss. They have solid stats, solid rules for sailing, and a real go-get-em attitude with Resolve 4. All of that being said, I don’t think they are necessary in this force. I would say they are worth considering as a boarding deterant while they man the sheets and do repairs while the battle is going on, but I can see the discussion going both ways.

Honestly, that kind of discussion is what I love about this game since it reminds me how well balanced and designed the overall game truly is. An incredible unit like the Enter Ploeg never feels like an auto-include, but if I saw it in the list across the table I would nod my head in understanding. So, I think this unit is truly up to your own preferences since they can be very useful, but you are spending a good chunk of points on a unit that might never actually get into melee if your cannons are doing their jobs properly.

Force Lists

This 250pt force performed well at the Adepticon Sea Tournament in 2026 winning 2 out of 3 games and getting to the very top table in round 3.

Dr.D 2026 Adepticon 5th Place List 250 Points

Painting De Graff

Here are several De Graff models painted by community members.

Final Thoughts

What do you think of this marvelous application of French cannonading? Has it served you well, or do you prefer to apply it in different ways. Leave a comment and tell us how right or wrong we are.

Thanks for reading!

Article by Dr.D

Additional Reading Suggestions

• Great Guns – Focusing on cannons as a tactic in Blood & Plunder Sea Games
• French Buccaneers Faction Review
• Dr. D’s Tournament Winning French Caribbean Militia Force
• Morgan’s Buccaneers Faction Review

Featured Products

• Laurens de Graff Miniature
• French Nationality Box – Excellent place to start in building a crew for Laurens de Graff