Last Updated on November 5, 2026

Introduction

We are back to it with another Legendary Commander’s Force. Mr. Pierre Lemoyne D’Iberville was a very famous Frenchman in the 17th and 18th Century. Mr. Iberville was a well-known explorer, diplomat, lover of women, and solider for France in Europe and the New World. His influence can still be felt today with the strong French culture that pervades former French colonial areas in the United States. Pierre and his family would bring many Native Americans to the French cause all over the New World with masterful diplomacy and helped found major cities in the Louisiana and Alabama areas.

Pierre helped locate the delta of the Mississippi river to help facilitate trade with Canada and keep the English bottled on the eastern coast of what would become the United States. Pierre served with distinction in King William’s War and the War of Spanish Succession where he would pass of illness in Havana in 1706 (suspected Yellow Fever).

The point of looking at the history of Pierre D’Iberville is important because it actually informs why his Force is the way it is. Blood and Plunder is a game that is constantly informed by history, and Pierre’s overall military and diplomatic record shows that he was well versed in sea and land based warfare. His force is filled with Native American ally options, and it makes the Force itself very interesting to play.

I went into this Force unsure of what to focus on tactic-wise. In the end, I feel like that is actually one of its strengths. I learned a lot about how I like to play Blood and Plunder and my research will inform all my list building efforts from this point forward. So, let’s just get into it shall we?

Faction Special Rules

This Force adds +2 when determining the attacker in a scenario.
This Force may include 1 Support unit for every Core unit.
Once per game, this Force may re-roll the result of a Critical Hit or Lucky hit against an opposing ship’s Rigging or Hull.
Once per game, this Force’s controlling player may discard all the Activation Cards in their hand and replace them with the same number without spending a Fortune Point.

As always, a great place to start is the Force Special Rules. +2 to attacker rolls is pretty bog standard for any sea-based force, but it doesn’t hurt to have. This Force actually does pretty well on land, so that might actually be a sneaky bonus since a lot of land forces can be caught flat-footed. Not a huge deal, but it might come up.

Pierre was known for his use of all human resources throughout the entire French Empire to get the job done, and this force does a very solid job of representing that. The ability to bring one Support Unit per Core Unit is a surprisingly effective rule since it lets you really personalize a Force. It might seem like a simple line in the force description, but that right there is one of the biggest draws of the faction. You can really get the units you want since none of the units in his roster are poor performers.

One part of this force that I think is VERY sneaky is that third bullet point. Many of the French sea forces in this game have the benefit of you get to reroll Lucky Hits against rigging, but Iberville’s Expeditionary Force actually lets you do rigging AND hull. This means that this rule is going to come up significantly more often since it applies to any Lucky or Critical against the entire boat as opposed to just the top half. Obviously, not a force-defining rule per say, but it is much more applicable than other French force rules since it doesn’t only apply to a much smaller portion of the Critical Damage chart.

And of course, Pierre was a scallywag of the seas, so he gets the usual hand mulligan that is associated with the buccaneering element of humanity. Generically speaking, always helpful if you are trying to make sure you go first on a turn, but it becomes MUCH more helpful if you have units that like specific suits for abilities. In the case of this force, unless you are adding suit-trigger actions from something like a Local Guide, this force is not heavily dependent on suit-based abilities. You have your Artillery Crew on your Marins and you have some fast reload on your Flibustiers. Always useful, but not world-shattering in this force.

Commander

Pierre Lemoyne D’Iberville

With these reviews, the Commanders usually come at the end, but since this is a Legendary Force review, you don’t have a whole lot of options.

Mr. Lemon starts at 30 points for 3 Command Points at range 12″. Pretty solid. Command Points in my noggin usually come out to like ~10ish so he is pretty on brand for that. Range 12″ is solid, but its not the same as the Buccaneer commanders who are usually bigger with the same amount of points. Not usually an issue, but just make sure you are a little more mindful of placement if you need to spread out over the board for some reason. French units enjoy shooting, so sometimes a unit will fall behind when they are using most of their actions to reload and shoot instead of moving.

Pierre also switches it up as a Legendary Character, because he actually lets you equip him with a musket instead of only having pistols. That is actually kind of rare and should be called out. The man comes prepared for ALL occasions.

Lets talk abilities.

Scouts is a bit of an odd rule in this force since it includes a lot of Natives and Canadian units…..who all already have Scouts. Also, it’s only a rule that works for land games, so it can be useless if you are going to a sea-based event. This means the units that benefit from this in this Force are pretty slim. The unit that does get some use out of this is Compagnies Frenches de La Marine (17th Century), and honestly that might not be a bad idea. It’s a shame that the force has to use the 17th Century version of the unit since the 18th Century version is just slightly better in regard to equipment, but it’s fine. This rule is more useful in other forces that have Pierre.

Broadside! is a classic rule and is interesting to have on Mr. Lemon. Pierre is trying to be a cannon commander, a musket commander, and a melee commander all at the same time, and it creates the entire conundrum for this Force. This rule in combination with the Lucky Hit and Critical Hit reroll from the Force bonus means something is there. There is some kind of juice to be squeezed as they say. It just comes down to how you want to use him. Like I always say with Broadside!, good to have, but not a gamebreaker if it disappeared one day.

Commodore is a rule that he has. When you are using a 30-point commander, you have to be very mindful of where your points are going, and it is already difficult to bring a fully kitted out boat with this big of an investment in commander. I can see him using it if you are running some smaller boats with a musket-based force, but again, if this rule disappeared overnight, I am not sure anyone would really notice.

Inspiring is of course a VERY helpful rule to have for any Force, but especially helpful for forces with poorer Resolve traits like the French and Native Americans. Pierre is one of the few Legendary Commanders that doesn’t have Very Inspiring, and it actually creates a bit of a paradox that I will go over in the general overview of the commander. Thankfully, you can bring an entire force with Pierre that has Resolve 5, but some of the best units in this force are Resolve 6. It’s one of the rules you will be happy to have when you need it. Hurray for Inspiring!

Elan is a very fun rule if you want your Commander in the action or you are prone to getting him sucked into a melee. Elan is one of those rules where you are VERY happy to have it when you need it, and you will forget about it if you are not careful. As a review, if your Commander is engaged in melee, you can only give his own unit an order. Elan lets you shout another order out between his sword swings on whoever he is fighting. Insanely helpful for when the battle lines clash and you are fighting over something like an objective or you get attacked from an angle you were not expecting.

There is something especially disheartening when you have a 3-command point commander that isn’t allowed to use them because a unit of rapscallion pressed men decided they wanted to rush him for his autograph. Elan gives you a little grace in this regard, and you can make sure you are always getting more value from your big boy Commander.

Cold Blooded is the “weaker” version of faction-wide Ruthless, and is very frequently found in French lists since it works very well with muskets. This rule is probably the most defining part of his kit other than the Command Points because it takes your nasty French……ness and juices it up to higher levels. Ruthless is, arguably, the best rule in the game and it just makes your forces better, almost by accident. Cold Blooded lets you pretend you are playing Spanish, but with units that actually know how to use the boomstick in their hand. Any time I pull Mr. Pierre out of the case, this rule is the one that is swirling in my mind as I build the list around him.

I will talk about it more in the summary at the end. So you may want to skip down to that since it will include a specific summary of Pierre himself, outside of the force around him.

Unit Selection

Core Units

Iberville’s Expeditionary Force has 4 units in Core and 4 units in Support. The wonderful part about this Force is the 1:1 ratio you can use for your Support units, so make sure you keep that in mind when you are looking at your options.

Marins

French people are made in a place called France. It’s wild….I know. And this mythical place, called France, has a lot of this stuff called….water…….touching the land at these places called beaches. Ancient Frenchmen would get together on these beaches and mush themselves together and create something that we would call a boat by today’s standards. They would use these boats to sail over to England and knock over all of their trash cans and heavily interfere in their succession altercations like how Prince Louis did during the Baron’s war.

The Marin unit in Blood and Plunder continue this tradition by being the sailor unit for the French. I have always believed that Marin are the weakest base sailor unit in the game, but this means that you get MAXIMUM benefit out of any Fighting Man you attach to them since they always get a new rule. This means that the benefit of Hard Charger and Fight 5 is ALWAYS something you will have over Sailors in other nations. It might sound like I am just trying to cope…..but I LOVE Marin.

The French are not a faction that are set up to be the best cannon-shooting lists in the game since their sailors don’t come with Expert Artillery Crew. This can be easily remedied once you give them a Master Gunner, and they keep the benefits they have over something like a Sea Dog. They don’t have Expert Sailor, but they do once you give them a Son of Neptune. Due to how Fighting Men work in this game, they are some of the best recipients of Fighting Men attachments because it just makes a solid unit even better without any worry about paying for something that you are already have. I might still be coping though……

As far as violence goes, Marins get the job done. If you are trying to board a ship, give them a Brace of Pistols and watch them shred something alive once you go over the gangplank. They don’t take the hit back very well, so try and make it harder for your opponent to charge them if you want them to last the entire game. A Brace of Pistols upgrade can give you some opportune Defensive Fire, but I wouldn’t expect them to hold a line very well. Just be thankful that they get to keep the HIGHLY coveted Resolve 5 in a French force.

They are also the only sailors that can be given Buccaneer Guns, and at a surprisingly cheap rate. I have been testing hordes of Marin with this upgrade, force down below, and I have to say it works surprisingly well. With Pierre’s access to Cold Blooded, this is actually one of the best forces to do it in. I believe they are in direct competition with the Canadian units for this role, but if the units are large enough, I think Marins are slightly cheaper so you can squeeze in a few more guys.

It’s a silly list idea, but I have had fun doing it and I will include the list I was playing at the end for completion’s sake.

Milice Canadienne

The French colonized what is now Canada. The people that made a life in this harsh new land had to survive on shooting God’s smaller creatures and selling their meat and furry bits for money. They used this money to buy things they needed like doilies and handcranks or whatever people need in the inhospitable frozen wasteland of Canada use to survive. They learned to survive in these terrible conditions by learning from the local Native Americans and through the grit of knowing they are superior to the English with their warm, fleur-de-lys shaped red blood cells that float around in their body.

I am not a Canada scientist, and Ostrowolf needs to stop yelling at me about it.

Anyway, Milice Canadienne are your typical French militia unit. Amazing shoot score with meh stats everywhere else for 4 points. For 4 points you get Elusive and Scouts on a Trained chassis. It’s peak efficiency and I love them. Plant them in the woods, shoot out of it, and watch as your opponent realizes that musket shooting is not going to budge this unit very well. This means they NEED to run up to them and force them out, getting shot the entire way there.

Resolve 6 makes me sad, but it actually stings much less with a unit sporting Elusive. If you can keep your casualties down, you don’t have to roll as much resolve in general, which is very productive for keeping your unit on their feet. Like every other French militia unit, they are super solid and get the job done on land especially. Even on a boat this unit is solid since it shoots well, but doesn’t really stand out all that well. Never feel bad for bringing them since they are always a solid option.

Compagnies Franches De La Marine (17th Century)

Some of the coolest models in the Firelock range. I love their little hats and their altered uniforms. These gentlemen are essentially French marines that the government left in Canada to do police action stuff. They were left to their own devices most of the time, so they learned from the environment around them and become one with the ice cubes and trees around them. Very hardy and adaptive people in history and for sure worth every ounce of respect that is thrown their way. They bring an interesting blend of army man rules mixed with Natives.

Solid Fight and Shoot value with the French classic 7 Save values. I don’t see many situations where I don’t at least exchange Expertly Drilled for Elusive for land-based games, and that is only because Elusive is useless on a boat. The distinction of Thrown weapons vs Bayonets is an interesting one. At Fight 5, getting a reroll sometimes seems like overkill, but it’s always best to be sure your hits are going to land. It might seem like I favor Thrown Weapons over the other option, but I love Bayonets for reasons people often overlook. The penalty to saves when you Charge with a Nayonet is fantastic, and on a boat, I have found a little pikewall is an interesting deterrent to someone boarding you. You have to make sure you time your bayonet attachment perfectly, but doing a Defensive Attack is sometimes the difference between a win and a loss in this game. I currently lean more towards the Bayonets since I think lances are criminally underrepresented in this game.

This is one of the main reasons the 18th century version of the unit is better since they just come with Socket Bayonets.

I love the unit, but I do think they are slightly too expensive. 6 points for a Trained unit that doesn’t have a REALLY banger rule like Fast Reload or Tough is hard to fully endorse. This is compounded by the issue of a model that is going to die on a Shoot and Fight Save of 7. They are perfect for regular games between buddies, but if you are really trying to min/max for your tournament games, this unit might get left on the shelf. Which is a shame, because the models are just…so….good.

Braves

I will fully admit, before I started playing this force for this review, I had never really touched any of the Native American units for this game. I didn’t really fully understand how they worked and I had only really played against people playing the Carib lists. I thought there would be cross over between Caribs and Northwestern Tribes, and I was right, but they for sure feel different.

Now that I have been playing Braves and Young Braves for this force review all I gotta say is, got dang, these guys are fantastic!

Blood & plunder birchbark canoe full of Native American braves

Braves have amazing stats and rules for a, probably unfair, price of 5 points. This unit can do dang near anything you want them to do. The only thing they don’t do exceptionally well is hold ground since that was historically pretty accurate. I think Braves are an excellent objective clearing and assassination unit for land games, but I do think Young Braves are more useful on a boat. More on that later, but I think Braves shooting muskets or bows from a boat works very well. Oddly enough, one of only two units with Ball & Shot in a French force, but we take those wins.

I think if you include a unit of Braves in your Force, no matter what, they are going to get some work done and look good while doing it. I have totally fallen in love with bringing Native Americans in my French forces and braves are at the forefront of my list building. Equip them for the job and don’t expose them to unnecessary pain, and you will be well rewarded for your efforts.

Support Units

This expedition has 4 Support Unit options. All of them good.

Flibustiers

Time for one of my favorite units in the game. The humble Flibustier is one of those units that I just love to pay for and enjoy. For 6 points you get a unit that has the stats you enjoy and the skills to pay the bills. This is one of those units I would for sure consider making veteran since they have Fast Reload and love to get Spades. I think in this force, they have a little run for their money due to having other excellent shooting units in the core spot, but I would never poo-poo someone for bringing my favorite buccaneers.

Their advantage over Canadians is that they will shoot slightly faster, but will take wounds more consistently. I think preservation is a much stronger metric in this game than just raw killing power, so I do think I tend to favor Canadians in this particular force with everything considered, but again……I LOVE FLIBUSTIERS. They can do some spot sailing for you in an emergency and that can pay off in dividends if the opportunity comes up, but its not something to put the fancy feathered cap on. So, take whichever one you like more and it will even out pretty close in the end I think.

Regardless of everything I just said, Flibustiers are one of those units that I think is exactly where it needs to be and just gets the job done. I will always say that they are the BOAT (best of all time) in Blood and Plunder and no one can convince me otherwise.

Coureur Des Bois

When you look at the entry for Milice Canadienne, do you wish there was a unit that was the same, but just slightly better for about 1 point…..well do I have news for you.

Coureur Des Bois is French for people of the woods, and it is a very good summarization of these guys. They are Milice Canadienne but have better Fight, Shoot Save, and Resolve. Well worth the point to upgrade them, and the Iberville Force rule about Support units means that you can easily slot them into your force for all of your French-speaking, musket related needs.

Plant this unit in the woods and shoot out of it and watch as your opponents gets frustrated at how annoyingly difficult they are to get rid of. Shoot Save 6 in the woods with Elusive is a great way to break up your friendship with a childhood best friend. They are difficult to remove and will be shooting back with the best of them. I would say if you bring them, make the unit real big and just unload over and over into a unit you want to charge a unit of braves into. Give your opponent the ol Sacre’ Boom.

Miliciens Artilleurs

This is one of those crazy units that you don’t see often, but can make some serious waves when they do manifest. It is a 2-point unit with terrible stats…..that you don’t need to care about because you always shoot a cannon at value 4. You can do some really odd things with cannons on land, especially with swivels that I am going to leave out of this article since it would be difficult to fully explain. Most of it is degenerative.

At sea, especially with the Force support bonus, provides you with an insanely cheap cannon crew that can man your guns and use the Lucky/Critical chart reroll without breaking the bank on an a more expensive cannon crew option. They also have the Artillery Crew rule, so you can attach a master gunner and make this bare-bones unit even better for barely any increase in price. They are very good and very useful as long as you can keep them off the deck due to their poorer Resolve value at 6. These are going to be a consistent user of Pierre’s Inspiring rule.

Artillerymen by Paul Chouinard — Artillerymen painted by Paul Chouinard

Young Braves

As I said above in the Braves entry, these guys are sort of off-the-chain good. 4 points for a unit that can put an arrow in someone’s noggin from a very respectable distance and can run in and bonk very well. I have truly come to appreciate the bow weapon in Blood and Plunder since I started to experiment with this unit. I bring a small unit to just plink away in order to get some cheap fatigue on units for Pierre to capitalize on with his Cold Blooded. Only real downside is the inexperienced, but it’s much easier to manage on a boat since you don’t need to spend actions on movement.

The lack of Reload markers from a Bow is a very significant since you can fairly reliably get 1-2 Resolve checks on a unit from hitting them. Especially at sea, the Ruthless engine just needs a small crack before you can start really pounding away on a couple of units. This unit is fantastic at creating that opening due to its excellent Shoot skill. The Sidearm Musket only being 4 points also means you can get one round of shooting that will much more reliably put a few models down. Great for turns where you are able to just order 3 separate units to shoot with Ruthless on Pierre’s turn.

Unit is amazing for Ruthless engines, which Pierre wants to be doing if you go the musket-base forced route. Big fan of this unit and have really been enjoying the customizability of the native units in a French force.

Tips & Tactics for Playing Iberville’s Expeditionary Force and Summary of Feelings of Force

Pierre Iberville’s force is a very interesting force in regards to options because it is very open to a few different approaches that might not be hugly noticable.

Let me start with my feelings on Iberville’s force as a whole before I start talking about how to build lists for it.

Unlike other Legendary Leader Forces, like Flibustier Nau or Morgan’s Buccaneers, I think Iberville’s Expeditionary Force isn’t as obvious with what it is trying to do. This Force is trying to play the entire game at the exact same time and that makes it really, REALLY cool for narrative gaming and for any format that requires you to keep the same force for a set number of games. Narrative campaigns and something like an “All Force Event” will be when a force like this REALLY shines. If you wanted to only pack a single force for every event at Adepticon, this would do the job and you would have a grand time since everything in this force is at least GOOD on the worst of days.

This strength, I believe causes the biggest weakness of the entire thing. It’s just good enough at everything to be good, but its not SO good at one thing that it can dominate a competitive environment. If you are reading this and you just want to play with your friends around the kitchen table, you will be in FANTASTIC company as this force will do exactly what you want and you won’t have a problem in the world switching up your lists and keeping it fresh. If you are trying to dominate a big event like Adepticon, I think you will start to run into issues because you won’t be able to score the Strike Points you need to climb to the top.

OK, so lets talk tactics. French units tend to favor shooting, and as soon as you add a way to get Ruthless in there, it will become a list that writes itself. Having access to things like bows and easy Fatigue generation will really get the force to start going hogwild on Pierre’s turn when you order everyone to shoot into a single unit. This works on land and sea, and musket lists are effective, fun, and relatively easy to run as long as it doesn’t start raining. Most of your unit’s actions will be reloading so that you have a very action-packed turn when Pierre starts throwing out orders.

I have always said that France is not the first nation I would go to if you wanted to run a cannon list, but Pierre does bring some advantages that offer benefits you can’t really find elesewhere in France. Marins are naturally killy, so if you get boarded they can defend themselves fairly well if you manage it right. Marin and Milicen Artilleurs can be given a master gunner to get Expert Artillery Crew on a big gun deck and the hand mulligan that the force brings can help if you NEED to have the Spade for the other unit to get the extra Reload. The reroll on the Lucky and Crit chart can be very valuable if you get a result you don’t really care about, but its not something you should overly rely on since it MIGHT just never come up.

Canadians are great shooters, and they pair very well with Native American allies since one can shoot, and Braves can really hurt something in melee and move WAY faster than you think they can. Bringing some French northern hilbillies to blast things and using something like a Local Guide to shoot a unit of Braves up the board and smash into something is always going to be a solid list. Pierre having Elan will also help mitigate the damage if your unit doesn’t wipe out the unit and they stick around longer than you hoped.

Force List Examples

250 Pain by Land List

Pain by Land Download

250 Pain by Sea (Might be Terrible)

Pain by Sea Download

Marins w/ Hint of Lemon

(Force -5 Added due to force builder giving all marins the experience increase. Only first unit is veteran.)

Hint of Lemon Download

Final Thoughts on Iberville’s Expeditionary Force

In summary, I think this force is good….potentially even GREAT if you go into it with the right goal in in mind. This is one of the few forces that can work just as well on sea as it does on land, and I think that is a huge benefit for people who are in that “single army” mentality. Pierre works in a multitude of situations and I think he is very adaptable in regard to army building and even during the game itself. The Force Support unit rule means your lists can really look different between games, and I think it can stop you from feeling bored of running the same thing all the time. I went into researching this Force thinking I was going to dislike it but really walked away with an appreciation for Native American units that I was not expecting. It’s a great force to try if you already play France and you just want to inject a little oddness you might not be used to if you only play Caribbean-based armies.

Give the force a shot. You might love it or you might only like it, but I would surprised if you could HATE this force. It’s good where it needs to be good and its GREAT if you are just looking to have some fun. And that is what we play games for. So go out there and have fun and always remember to never give up the ship!