Blood & Pigment Announces Midpoint Prizes and Categories for Great Pirate Paint Off

Blood & Pigment posted its March 16 midpoint update for the 2026 Great Pirate Paint Off on March 17, covering mid-contest prizes, category status, and a callout to entrants about prize draws. The most concrete prize detail to emerge from the update: a handbuilt piece of terrain from Dexter, confirmed in the accompanying blog snippet.

The update also flagged that the Oak & Iron and Terrain categories will be closing, though the source material cuts off before specifying the exact end date. A separate deadline of March 15 appears in the Blood & Pigment snippet tied to this update cycle, suggesting some category windows have already passed by the time the blog post went live on March 17.

For context on how this contest is structured, Beastsofwar covered the 2024 iteration of the Great Pirate Paint Off across multiple posts, documenting a category lineup that included Command or Character, Unit, Blood & Plunder Ship, Oak & Iron Ship, Battle Force, Terrain, and a nationality-based award for best Blood & Plunder miniatures. Entries in 2024 were required to be official Firelock Games miniatures painted during that year, with the contest running January through April and category winners announced in May. Whether those same rules and that same calendar govern the 2026 edition has not been explicitly confirmed in Blood & Pigment's March 16 update as provided.

Beastsofwar also noted for the 2024 contest that "some entries will also be able to win some great spot prizes," a structure that appears consistent with Blood & Pigment's current mid-contest prize framing, though the two should not be conflated without confirmation.

Several details from the March 16 update remain unresolved: the full closing date for Oak & Iron and Terrain categories, which specific draw or category the Dexter terrain prize is attached to, and whether the Firelock Games eligibility requirement carries over into 2026. The Blood & Pigment source text also truncates mid-sentence on the prize draw callout, leaving the full scope of that announcement unclear. The full post on the Blood & Pigment blog would fill those gaps.