Hello. My name is Manuel Rivero de Pardal. You killed my father. Prepare to die!

Blood & Plunder features many special commanders and one that can be used with the Spanish Militia is Manuel Rivero de Pardal. All the special commanders are based on historical figures and seek to represent their talents and traits.

Manuel RdP is a good way for the generally land based Spanish Militia to gain some expertise at naval warfare. Weighing in at 32 points he isn't on the cheap side though.

Of course he can also be used as a normal Spanish Militia commander or perhaps to represent one of the special or scenario characters in the game.

The Lanceros are the elite Spanish melee infantry who are well setup to move quickly through cover and then survive defensive fire before engaging the enemy hand to hand.

Having lances gives them an additional bonus on the attack and allows them to make a defensive attack if charged by units with shorter weapons.

 

The last Spanish unit from the starter set are the Marineros who are the sailors for the Spanish faction. As the Militia are mostly going to be land based I suspect they won't often see action as Marineros.

Though as they have the Artillery Crew trait they could be used to man a cannon during a land battle or perhaps as an additional melee unit or to add extra bodies to other units.

Blood & Plunder also allows you to add characters to your force and they produce a pack of four to get you started. These are the Spy, Merchant, Shop's Pilot and Local Guide.

Each character gives a different benefit and they must be attached to a unit in the same way as a force commander.

One character who seems to get a good write-up by many players in the Grizzled Veteran, this is an upgrade character so you pay the points for the model as normal and then the additional to make them up-to a Veteran. For the three points the unit gains two abilities that allow them to shed fatigue and a free activation to Rally to further shed fatigue.

This had meant that the Spanish where all completed until I invested in a box of ECW infantry from Warlord Games. I got the box for only £18 off Ebay which seeing as it gives 40 infantry is a proper bargain. The models are slightly shorter than the Firelock Games ones but not massively so and as I plan to use them to bulk out the armies as required they should pass muster.