By Jason Klotz, Sea Tournament TO

The Blood & Pigment team once again returned to Milwaukee for AdeptiCon 2026. We helped host a full schedule of Blood & Plunder events. The Sea Tournament remained one of the convention’s most active competitive offerings, drawing players from across the community. We had a solid turnout and a great time.

The Sea Tournament has always been the highlight of AdeptiCon for me, whether participating as a player or as the Tournament Organizer and Judge. The ships are what brought me to the game of Blood & Plunder. It’s part of what makes the game unique, and I love to see intense naval battles.

The variety of sea game strategies is wide enough that it’s hard to build a finely tuned competitive list that can handle everything thrown at it. And there are always unconventional fleets out there that are fun just to see how they fare. The ship models are a lot of work, and it’s always fun to see how people model their rigging and paint their decks. It’s a showcase of tactical skill, creative list-building, and awesome modeling all in one.

2026 AdeptiCon Blood & Plunder Sea Tournament Rules

This is a high-level summary of the tournament requirements:

• Lists were required to be 250 points, using forces from any expansion ruleset or time period.
• 3 rounds, with each round lasting 110 minutes.
• Strike Points followed standard rules, with occasional scenario‑specific bonuses.
• The first round is a random pairing, and then matches are determined by strength of victory/schedule so the toughest players have to face each other.

Victory Conditions

• Tournament Points are used to pick the winner per round:
  • 3 points for a victory
  • 1 point for a tie
  • 0 points for a loss
• The person with the most victory points overall was the winner
• Tie‑breakers, in order:
  • Strike Point Differential
  • Total Strike Points earned
  • Total points killed
  • Total models killed

Sea Tournament Scenarios

The scenarios were randomly drawn from the pool of 5 we picked before the event.

• Take and Hold (Core)
• Breakthrough (Core)
• Encounter (Core)
• Rescue (NPBtL)
• A Wanted Man (RtB)

I randomly rolled for the scenarios with a witness in every round (ignoring duplicates). The scenarios played were:

• Round 1: Breakthrough (Core)
• Round 2: A Wanted Man (RtB)
• Round 3: Rescue (NPBtL)

ADEPTICON 2026 Sea Tournament WINNERS

Sea Tournament Placement Prizes

• 1st Place = $100 + an Adepticon Medal + gold Adepticon custom dice
• 2nd Place = $75 + an Adepticon Medal + silver Adepticon custom dice
• 3rd Place = $50 + an Adepticon Medal + bronze Adepticon custom dice

Best Painted

During the tournament, there was a “secret judge” who wandered the tables to evaluate the ships to select a “Best Painted” Award. There were a LOT of good entries. The PLunder community is blessed with a lot of great painters. The chosen winner was Dr. D.

Top 6 Force Building Lists from the Tournament

Here are the top 6 players and the lists they brought to the tournament:

Crunchy Data from the Sea Tournament

We try to get Forcebuilder links for all tournament lists, but we always miss a few. This is some analysis of the 21 lists we had data on. It’s incomplete, but still interesting for the inquiring mind.

Nation and Faction Breakdown

Here is a breakdown of the forces by Nation and Faction

This faction analysis, along with Character choices indicate the “South Seas Adventure” characters are very popular.

Ship Breakdown

Here is some ship data from the tournament. The 250-point mark creates a lot of variety things up this year. A wide range of ships were taken, including several with multiple ships.

• 2x 6th Rate Frigate
• 1x Balandra
• 1x Bermuda Sloop
• 3x Heavy Bark
• 7x Light Frigate
• 1x Privateer Sloop
• 2x Sloop
• 2x Sloop of War
• 1 Fluyt + Brigantine

Archetype Breakdown

This is rather subjective, but here is an analysis of the different styles of lists present (as evaluated by the author):

• 2x Fast Boarding
• 2x Fast Boarding/Small Arms hybrid
• 3x Small Arms
• 3x Great Guns
• 8x Balanced
• 1x Rain of Fatigue (Arrows)

Misc Takeaways from the Tourney

Here are some other nerdy stats drawn from submitted force lists. This only draws from 21 of the lists since that’s all we got in digital form, so this is partial info, but interesting info, even if incomplete.

• Ship Upgrades from the 15 Force Builder links we have: Heavily Built 2x, Anti Grappling 5x, Freshly Careened Hull 4x, Improved Rig 1, Reinforced Bulkheads 1, Streamlined Hull 1, Sweeps 1x, Shallow Draft 1x, Ship’s Wheel 1x, Fighting Tops 2x
• Points spent on Commander: 0-34 with an average of 19.95 (22.26 in 2025)
• Number of Models: 29-53 with an average of 39.23 (40.26 in 2025)
• Number of Characters: 0-4 with an average of 1.85 (1.73 in 2025)
• Points spent on Characters: 0-25 with and average of 8.6 (9.2 in 2025)
• Points spent on Artillery: 0-84 with an average of 30.47 (45.26 in 2025)
• Nations represented: 5 Unaligned (mostly Brethren) being most common, and Pirates/Spanish/French all tied for 2nd place. Natives had 0 representation and Dutch had only 1.

Gallery of Images from the Adepticon 2026 Sea Tournament

There were so many good moments and lots of great photos from the event. We’d love to share them all but we had to limit things to some of the highlights.

Conclusion

I hope everyone had a great time out there, even if your ship ended the day as a smoldering wreck slipping beneath the Caribbean. I had a blast running the event, and it was a fantastic learning experience for me. Thank you to every single person who showed up, played hard, and brought their enthusiasm. This community is what makes these events such a highlight every year.

Call to Help with GenCon Events

Someone has stepped up to help with organizing a bunch of events at Gencon this year, but they need some more manpower! If you’re interested in helping out (and getting paid to do it!), please contact Shane Priddy at shane.priddy@family-time-games.com. The main help needed is running demo sessions. Shane also have 2 tournaments scheduled so sign up!

By Jason Klotz

Additional Recommended Reading

• Adepticon 2026 Sea Tournament
  • Floating Spanish Mission – Josh Shivak’s 3rd Place List
  • Dutch Santiago! 1st Place Winning List
  • Wait, Who’s in Charge Here? Garrett Swarder’s 2nd Place List
• Adepticon 2026 Land Tournament
  • Canadian Muskets: Adam Horton’s 3rd Place List
  • (Re) Building the Church – Erich Goebel’s 2nd Place List