Hobby Update: Last of the Halflings

One last thing I was hoping to get done (hobby-wise) before 2018 rolled around was finishing up my Halfling army, which I started on over the summer, as a bit of a joke. Halflings-only is a bit silly... Surprisingly, I'm going to make it! Another post will focus on the army as a whole, but for now, here are the last three units I needed to finish up.

Halfling Spearlings

Like the rest of my Halflings, the models are from HaT miniatures. These are their Romans, at a 1/72 scale - too small for a "normal" Kings of War scale human, but pretty great for halflings. The spearmen are from a few different boxes, ass mixed up. Since the Halfling Braves are 4+ Defense, and the Spearlings 5+, I decided to cut the shield parts off of the minis. They would probably look far better with their shields, but I think this resulted in a good feeling of fragility.

Kind of a bad pic.. but the paint-job isn't all that much better in focus. These are definitely just to a basic tabletop quality.

Like most of the other halfling-themed units utilized by the League of Rhodia, they have the Stealthy special rule, which will make it harder for them to be removed from missile fire. Interestingly enough, in the few games I've played with the halflings, my opponents typically decide to shoot at something else. Gamers don't tend to like penalties to their rolls!

Stealthy makes them more likely to survive and get into combat... but they are still halflings. As mentioned above, they only have a 3+ Defense, so most things will tear right through them. Additionally, they don't have a great chance to hit back with no Crushing Strength (or Thunderous Charge), and only a 5+ to hit.

My plan is to run them as a horde. The extra Nerve should let them stick around for a few turns and actually tank something. Fortunately, they are really cheap!


Halfling Archers

While their stats aren't great (5+ to hit; no offensive bonuses), they do have Stealthy. This should let them more efficiently trade shots against other archery units, somewhat mitigating the bonuses of 4+ elves, and getting a bit of an edge against other basic archer units.

As mentioned elsewhere and shown here... I'm not sure the furry feet really turned out all that well either.

This is my second archery regiment for the halflings. I don't expect much from either of them, though the occasional wound would be welcome. I think I will use them mostly to sit on objectives. Their regimental size along with Stealthy will make them harder to dislodge with ranged attacks or lucky Nerve checks. Plus they can still shoot.


The army could probably use a touch-up here or there, but is ready for the table. I've got a little over 2000 points of distinct units, but combining a few regiments into hordes can get me to an even 2000 point list, which seems like a great place to stop.

I probably have another 600 points of halflings sitting around, but I don't really feel like expanding the army more. The "foot fur" effect I tried is really tedious, and has dubious results aesthetically. The plastic itself is soft and a little difficult to work with too (so soft it was impossible to file off mold lines; the whole model just got mangled). Painting them up also turned into a bit of a chore. Hobbying is supposed to be fun, so it's a good time to give them a break and move on to other things.

That said, these 1/72 scale models are cheap. HaT's boxes were around $10, and had tons of minis. There are also tons of companies producing at 1/72, and covering a wide variety of timelines and regions.

All in all, this was an alright project. I probably bought too much (I would have liked to have kept this around 1000 points), but they will see the table sometime I hope. If you have a League of Rhordia army, and want some halflings... check out stuff at this scale! Army update coming soon...