Helpful Links for Blood & Plunder Players

Last Updated on August 12, 2023

This page contains a wide variety of links to resources, products, and other media pertaining to Blood & Plunder. Enjoy!

Blood & Plunder Facebook Page

This is where all the community action happens. You can post pictures, battle reports, painting progress, and even get rules questions promptly answered.

Firelock Games does a great job with this group.

Current Errata and FAQ

Blood & Plunder Player Map

This is a useful tool for connecting with players in your area and finding stores that carry Firelock Games’ products. Make sure to add yourself to the map with a way to contact.

Blood & Plunder Force Builder Tool

The Blood & Plunder Force Builder tool is a free online tool that allows players to design and create their own custom fleets and crews for the tabletop wargame. This tool allows players to select from a wide range of nations/factions and their available ships, crew members, and equipment options. With a few clicks players can easily calculate point values for their fleets and share their designs with other players. You can also print out your force lists with all the special rules and abilities for your forces to use at the game table.

We also have a quick start tutorial for the Force Builder tool to get you started.

Blood & Pigment Learn to Play Quick Start Video

This video can be a good place to start. You can see us play through an entire turn, explaining the basic actions and flow of the game within 20 minutes.

Beasts of War Learn to Play Blood & Plunder Videos

Beasts of War worked with Firelock games and produced a helpful video explaining a lot of the basic game mechanics. A lot of people find a video format like this a much more friendly way to learn the rules compared to reading straight through a thick rulebook.

Blood & Pigment YouTube Channel

If you didn’t already know, we have a YouTube Channel with tons of content! We include ship reviews, faction breakdowns, battle reports, and much more. Here is a quick list of our playlists:

Tales of the Sail Podcast

This is The community podcast right now. They have a good backlog of fun episodes to listen to. They work hard to promote the game and organize events for the Firelock player community.

Seamon’s Quality Sails

These are, hands down, the best quality sails out there. If you’re looking for authentic and beautiful sails for your next ship build, check out Seamon’s Quality Sails. One of Guy’s relatives creates these sails and we’re happy to offer them here at Blood & Pigment.

Blood & Plunder Tartana fully rigged with Seamon's Quality Sails

Helpful Links for Blood & Plunder Terrain

We have several reviews and overviews for 28mm scale pirate-themed terrain but here are a few of our top creators and terrain providers.

The Plunder Den YouTube Channel

Dexter is an amazing crafter and artist. He makes terrain building look easy, creating buildings, fortifications, and terrain out of cheap and everyday materials. He is consistently putting out amazing videos every week.

Dead Man’s Chest Blog

Great content from former TotS member, Tyler Stone. Great mix of hobby, tactics, reports, and history focusing on Blood & Plunder/Steel/Valor and Oak & Iron.

HRC Wargaming Terrain

Selling through Etsy, this company offers great trees, hills, fences and other quality terrain elements at a reasonable price. If you aren’t crafty but want some solid terrain centerpieces for your table, check out this Etsy store.

You can read a full review of some of what they offer here.

Empires at War Buildings

These buildings are easy to build and don’t require any additional painting to look very presentable.

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Empires at War town.

Things from the Basement MDF Buildings

Things from the Basement did a lot of the design work for the Ports of Plunder series that 4Ground produced. You can get a slightly less fancy version of the Ports of Plunder buildings here along with some great New England Buildings.

They also produce some great boxes and chests for Blood & Plunder storage.

Sarissa MDF Buildings

Sarissa has a wide variety of MDF buildings available. Their two Mexican Churches from the “South of the Border” line are particularly appropriate for 17-18th Spanish territory.

Front Line Gaming Mats

I’ve bought several mats from Frontline and I really like them. They have several sizes, they aren’t too expensive, they’re in the USA and they have several appropriate styles.

Deep Cut Beach Mat

This is one of the most beautiful gaming mats I’ve ever used! It’s not cheap and it comes from the UK so shipping isn’t kind, but it’s perfect for this game. I think Firelock/Beast of War use it in one of their game play videos.

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Table War F.A.T Mats

I believe this series of Caribbean theater mats were made in partnership with Firelock Games and they are glorious! There are coastal mats in various forms in addition to sea mats with a shallow Caribbean feel to them. They offer the useful 3×4 size as well which is hard to come by.

Their Caribbean Tropics Land Mass mat is really nice as well.

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Trees

There are a lot of options out there for trees. While palm trees might not be native to the Caribbean, there would have been plenty around by the 17th century and they fit our mental image of what this region should look like.

The cheapest of the cheap. These fish tank palms aren’t perfect but they’re very functional. They don’t look too bad, they stand up well and they’re very sturdy. I use them for filler terrain and they work fine.

The Pegasus Hobbies tree kits are much larger and more realistic but they require more effort to build and paint. They are also very tipsy until you attack them to a larger base and then they’re very fragile.

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The largest palms here are from Pegasus Hobbies.

 Midgard Games YouTube Battle Reports

These guys keep their reports quick and snappy and play nice and reasonably sized games on land and sea. They do occasionally make some rules mistakes (as we all do)

Beasts of War Videos

Produced with Firelock games, these videos are great for learning how the game works. There are guides to some of the nationalities, concise rules videos and some recorded games.

There’s another playlist of videos they produced with the release of No Peace Beyond the Line which can be found here.

They have more videos that aren’t even in the playlists and they’re all worth watching. The recorded games really help teach you the rules as you see how the player uses Command Points, Fortune Tokens and navigates some of the trickier rules of the game (Mike Tunez is always watching to make sure they get the rules right).

The video on the design philosophy behind Blood and Plunder isn’t in their playlists but it’s a lot of fun to listen to.

Wizkids Boar Minis

Your Boucaniers need something to hunt, right?

Then you can bring them back to camp and cook your wild game on a spit or in a stew with the WizKids campfire set.


Miniature Corn Stalks

You can get these cornstalks on Amazon or at Hobby Lobby.

Chessex Cases for Storing Painted Miniatures

I find these cases very helpful for storing and transporting these metal minis. This 80 mini case is perfect for most of the B&P mini line and this 56 mini case is large enough for the larger models like the Spanish Lanceros who take up more space.

Blood & Plunder Compatible Ship Accessories

You can go crazy fitting out a ship with rigging accessories, a ship’s wheel, a working rudder, and closing gunports. Be careful. You might never finish a ship again if you look at what’s out there. You can find all sorts of interesting bits at Modelers Central.

Elastic Thread for Rigging

.8mm elastic thread is slightly smaller than what comes in the kit but it works really well.

4Ground Ports of Plunder Terrain

4Ground has recently shut down, but Firelock may be able to keep their Ports of Plunder line of buildings in stock anyway.

You can find lots of pictures and reviews of the Ports of Plunder line of products here on the blog.

Timber & Sail

This is an awesome site devoted to Firelock Games’ Oak & Iron game. If you’re interested in “Age of Sail” gaming (which you obviously are), then you need to pick up this game. At Timber & Sail, you can learn about the game, ships, factions, and strategy. Really great site.

Have another suggestion for our list? Send it along and we’ll see if we can add it to our recommendations

Additional Reading Recommendations