After Fall-In, the holiday season means that Cold Wars comes quick, and with the 2026 convention season beating down the door, it’s time to present the Tournament Packet that will be used for any DMC-hosted Blood & Plunder tournament this year.
I strongly urge you to read through this packet – at least at the four all-new scenarios. There is a minor tweak to force building for this event, as well as a reason to consider Torches.
This link will take you to DMC’s 2026 Land Tournament Pack.
There is also a Q&A below, which explains some of the changes and the reasoning behind them.
Q. Is This the ‘Firelock Official’ Packet?
A. No. While this packet does reflect much of the same content as the Firelock packet, even reusing exact wording in many places, it is not “Firelock Official” and will only apply to DMC tournaments. The Firelock document is more generic, and does not have information like a schedule of rounds, points values, or scenarios. The other key difference is in the scoring and pairing.
Q. Why the ‘6 Unit, 199pt’ format?
A. To limit model count and maintain pace of play. 6×199 caps players at 48 models + Command + Advisor. Most lists retained from past events wouldn’t even need to change. In the future, events could be 5×150 or 6×250, for different flavor.
Q. Can You Explain Accelerated Pairings?
A. Plunder tournaments so far have used Straight-Down Pairs. With Straight-Down Pairs, when the Top-2 players face off in the final round, it is to decide 1st and 2nd. With more than 8 players, you can have multiple perfect records, and that Round 3 Loser can be dropped from the podium entirely.
Accelerated Pairings don’t solve this problem, but mitigate it by making sure that the Top 3 players never face each other directly in any round. The top 3 players going into the round, should still be the top 3 players at the end of the round if they all win their games.
Q. New Deployment Rules
A. Changing the rule to deploy in corners, and to have it chosen by the attacker – creates a real benefit to Attack Bonus. It also creates a more dynamic tournament experience since Scenarios 1 & 2 play very differently depending on deployment.
Q. A Night Scenario?!
A. There are some factions which get bonuses for playing at Night, as well as force-options that irrelevant if Night is off the table (firelocks). The fact that the scenario has you attempting to burn objectives also gives you Torches as another use for those spare points.
Q. Multi-Strike Objectives? Sudden Death?
A. More strikes for objectives should speed up games and avoid Draws (which are bad for DIFF tracking). Scenario 3 & 4 are more experimental, trying for faster rounds.
Q. 1 Point For Painting? Can I Podium Without Paint?
A. Yes, a whole point for painting. I want to strongly encourage painting, without barring unpainted armies. You can still podium unpainted, behind painted armies. It’s not enough points to move you up a bracket.
Q. What’s the Goal?
A. My short term goal is to shake things up for the 2026, 10th anniversary of Blood & Plunder, and try to get some momentum back in HMGS. We have great scenario games; it would be great to bring back great tournaments.
My long-term goal is to really commit to the competitive side of Blood & Plunder, through my blog and through events run at HMGS and regional game stores in the area. To that end I would like to find a format for faster games; either for shorter convention tournaments that don’t eat an attendee’s entire day, or for running conclusive 4rnd events inside an 8hr time-slot.
On the blog front, I hope to run more articles in support of this focus. Faction Reviews with a more competitive eye, tier-lists, battle reports with these scenarios, and so on.
