First look at Blood and Plunder
This story begins at some point before Christmas. My brother was really pushing hard to look at a game called "Blood and Plunder" by Firelock Games. I expressed interest and did Kati and long behold at Christmas time my brother sent us each a starter army and sloop. I quickly grabbed a rulebook and a few extra figures and went to work.
I don't normally show off my miniatures on the blog by I enjoyed painting these so I figured I'd use them as filler between paragraphs. These are my Spanish Guarda Costa.
So pirates....I have to admit I wasn't so sure about this venture and I knew little to nothing on the subject. I quickly read through the rules and then went to work looking for something to listen too while painting these guys up. I discovered an outstanding podcast produce by Matt Albers called the Pirate history podcast, and quickly was taken back by how exciting this area was.
Kati painted up these ruthless pirates.
I then picked up a book called "Empire of Blue Water" by Stephan Talty about Henry Morgan and after listening to even more stories of pirates and adventure I finally feel that I have a basic understanding of the era. And what an era it is. Filled with larger than life characters and raids and battles that feel like something out of a fantasy story. Needless to say, I am now hooked on the idea of pirates as a wargaming era. It surprised me how many pirate raids and skirmishes occurred on land making the gaming more exciting to me because you have both land and sea options.
The sloop I put together. Not perfect but a very new experience for me.
Now on to Blood and Plunder. These rules are a d10 system that uses a deck of cards to decide initiative. Basically at the beginning of a turn we each draw cards equal to the number of units we have(units have around 4-8 guys each) then we each place one face down on the table. We then flip them and whoever has the higher card activates a unit first. Spades>hearts>diamonds>clubs is the suit order and numbers are 1 to 13. but this is only the beginning of this layer of the game because if you play a spade yes you activate your unit first but units can do up to 3 actions when activated and a spade only lets you do 1 action. A club, on the other hand, may activate last but allows three actions. So do you want to go first or do you want to get more done? Now the amount of actions also varies a bit based on your units experience but the principle is the same the better the suit the fewer actions you get. I can't stress how much I love this initiative it makes your decision important every time I am a huge fan of give and take systems.
Actions come in 3 forms: regular, dedicated, and assignments. basically, regular count as one action and the other two take a whole turn to do regardless of how many actions you have. I'm not going to go into huge detail here but basically, regular actions are things like moving, shooting, rallying and reloading while dedicated are fighting in a locked melee or rallying a shaken unit.
The game does use a point system to help create an army and each faction has different units to pick from and each unit has two skills and two saves plus a resolve. the skill rolls are its melee number and shooting number which is the number they need to hit in each kind of combat. the saves are the number they need to save in combat. Units can have special traits too. for example, the Fast Reload ability states that if a unit was activated on using a spade it can remove one reload marker for free.
I'm not going to cover every aspect of the game but I do think shooting is interesting enough to look at. You start with a base skill lets say 6+ then you measure from your unit to theirs. for every 4 inches of range, you add +1 to hit. so at 20 inches, you are hitting on 10s. not there are a few of the bigger guns that let you extend your range a bit. Matchlocks for example state that if the target is under 24 inches but would need an 11+ to hit you still hit on 10s.
Its hard to hit but if you do..oh boy! if your target is in the open they only save on a 9+ and if they are in cover then they can use their shooting save. Units in the open drop pretty quick.
the rules for ships look cool but I haven't got to use them yet. I will say it looks like it adds a whole new level to the game(in a good way)
Now that I have rambled about the rules a bit lets look at a game.
Now normally Kati is my opponent for Blog games but we played while the figures were not 100% painted so we didn't take any pictures so the first documented game I played with my buddy Martin(while Kati observed) We decided that it would be fitting to enjoy a bit of rum with the game.
I set up as Caribbean a table as I could making sure there was plenty of terrain for when Kati and I played we learned quickly that terrain is important in a game with 9+ saves in the open.
I used my Spanish was we played with 127 points each. I had an experienced captain, 2 units of militia, a unit of sailors, a unit of natives, and a unit of lancers.
Martin used Kati's unaligned faction with an English captain, a group of sailors, a group of Flibustiers, a unit of freebooters, and lastly a unit called Les Enfants Perdus which act as a forlorn hope assault unit.
We rolled a classic attack/defend scenario and I was the attacker. Martin wisely choose the side of the table with the stream and good cover. I begin my cautious march to meet him.
The view from Martins side of the field.
The freebooters moved across the river to harass my advance while the flibustiers exchanged ineffective volleys with my militia.
On a side note brown markers are reload, yellow triangles are fatigue and red circles are shaken.
His infants moved up and caught my natives in the open killing 2 of them. I didn't know it at the time but this would basically knock them out as an effective unit for the game.
I advanced a unit of sailors up and had them go prone hoping to get first go next turn.
I did not get first turn and they were shot down to the man!
Martin concluded that the natives were not worth pursuing and the infants moved in to support the freebooters.
My lancers took a few hits but managed to get into melee with the freebooters.
Only to discover on the next turn how deadly having braces of pistols can be.(it let the freebooters reroll failed melee attacks)
the left flank.
My men fire a completely ineffectual pistol volley
The battle in the center turns into a musket duel. At this point, its turn 4 and I am not advancing fast enough. The attacker is this scenario gains strike points each turn after turn 3 they are not close enough to the defenders' deployment area. Whenever you have 2 more strike points than your opponent you have to role a resolve test based on your captains resolve and if you fail your force retreats.
Not sure why this picture turned out so terrible but here is the melee on the left.
As anticlimactic as is was I had lost enough troops to gain another strike dice and has to make a resolve test which I failed forcing my boys to retreat. I wasn't in the best position by the end of the game. trying to have a firefight with the flibustiers and freebooters was a lost cause for my less experienced militia. I was worried about moving up to slow but it cost me too many troops. Many lessons were learned.
Overall this game is just plain fun. It isn't the most historically accurate game I own but it still captures the feel of this period and these epic men fighting in it. As I stated earlier I love the initiative system and the mechanics in general
