Goonhammer Reviews: Wargames Atlantic Halfling Cavalry & Halfling Militia

Halflings, everyone’s favourite half-pint heroes. I’ve been needing to round out my DM box recently with things that aren’t explicitly evil-doers or obstacles designed to get in players’ way, like guards and such. A group of Halfling militiamen to encounter out in the wild, engaging in merriment and a wee bit of warfare against the local goblin tribes sounded perfect, plus I could sprinkle them in with my guards to create a diverse taskforce of tax-collecting brutes.

Thanks to Wargames Atlantic for sending these kits out for review.

What’s in the Box?

Only when the box arrived did I realise my mistake. Eight sprues to make forty Halflings in total. That’s right. Forty. It shouldn’t confuse anyone really, they clearly advertise it as forty, but I somehow glossed over that fact and assumed a reasonable amount of Halflings would come in the box. I was dead wrong. It turns out when your main figures are tiny fellas you can pack way more onto the sprue, along with weapons over twice their height.

There’s a fair bit of variety in weapon options to kit out a platoon of Halflings with either polearms, bows, or slings. There aren’t enough options on each sprue for one of each, so you’re forced into creating a mixed-arms force. Due to these being repeated sprues, obviously everything is compatible to the point that you’ll still end up with as many bowmen as you have bows available in the kit.

I’d have liked to have seen more bows in the kit, as I fancy my Halflings preferring the safety (and more importantly comfort) of the backlines but I appreciate providing a smattering of options. I am particularly enjoying the pike and polearm options, it’s delightfully fearsome, and creates a great image on the tabletop with these little hairy-footed warriors hefting weapons triple their length.

More important than weapons are the little dudes themselves. There’s fifteen different heads on these sprues each with a bit of unique character to them, from pudgy, mutton-chopped faces squeezed into kettle-helmets to a heroic, oddly familiar faces wearing a rather fancy bycocket with a feather in it. They’re wonderful with lots of character to them, and I’ve got ideas to create a band of merrymen with radical ideas for wealth redistribution that will show up the next time I run a D&D campaign based on the headwear alone.

Other than that, the sprue is fairly spartan in terms of additional accessories. You get arms for a few different poses, quivers for the bowmen, but not much else in the way of making your Halflings a little more special like pouches. I don’t think the bodies themselves are plain without them but it would’ve been nice when you’ve got forty potential bodies to be able to make some look a little more unique. It’s more obvious when I sit them next to my classical fantasy guards, who came with all sorts of gubbins to glue on.

You do get a little chicken on each sprue, a recurring theme in the Wargames Atlantic models I’ve reviewed, which I imagine is there to supply its eggs to the sling-throwers to splatter across the faces of marauding ne'er-do-wells.

Absolutely, teeny-tiny, itty-bitty yolk dispenser.

There is a glaring problem in the kit, and it’s a bit disappointing. One of the weapon options that is holding an arrow has an abysmally placed sprue-gate, right on the shaft of the arrow. It’s placed in such a way that clipping it off is perilous and is prone to cause a snap, and if you do get it off good luck cleaning it with a hobby knife or a sanding stick without snapping it either. It really frustrated me, it’s a very useful arm and it’s too thin of a piece to glue back together. I’m not using the most precise snips, I’ll admit, but I shouldn’t need top-of-the-range, Gundam grade sprue cutters to do this work. It limited my options in building my diorama, as originally I had intended to include a lot more bows.

It’s a small shame that tarnishes how nice this kit is to assemble and put together, but I wouldn’t let it dissuade anyone. If you’re prepared and have some better quality snips, it might very well be a non-issue but for most people I think this'll be a common gripe.

What’s in the Other Kit?

On the flip-side, the Halfling calvary box is a much more reasonable ten Halflings strong, each with their own loyal pony. There isn’t as much variety in the weapon options as the foot-sloggers, but the options you do get are strong. You’ve got all sorts of things you’d expect to create some knightly cavalry, like spears, lances, swords and shields as well as a few miscellaneous options, like a pointing hand to let enemies know their doom is upon them, and a frothing mug of ale to let allies know the good times have arrived.

These more limited options are mitigated by cross-compatibility with the foot slogging Halfling sprue. Some options don’t work very well, the pikes would look a bit silly on horseback, but the obvious intended use is to allow you to have sling and bowmen riding on horseback along with the lancers. You would need to do some dry-fitting to match the options to the best body but it isn’t a tough process, and it fits pretty seamlessly thanks to the flat joints.

This extends to the head options as well though the horse-kit comes with some stellar options by itself. There’s a whole lot of kettle helmets, barbutes, and heroic, unhelmeted heads filled with nice, curly hair. It’s my preferred type of hair for painting, since it takes washes really well, especially when compared to the usual Space Marine crew-cuts I’m used to working with, and was a piece of cake to highlight up after.

My experience building it was a little sour since these kits don’t come with instructions, but it was nothing I couldn’t overcome by thinking it through instead of acting like an ape trying to discover fire with a rock. There’s a bridle bit that makes up the mouth of the pony that’s quite easy to miss, but thankfully can be glued in after the fact if you happen to miss it. I would recommend not doing what I did after though which is glue the rider down to the pony, and then painting it. It’s not impossible to paint but it certainly made life a lot harder for myself.

Painting

Unsurprisingly, Halflings aren’t very big and thus paint up quick. I took my usual approach for models intended to be NPCs which is using contrast paints and zenithal highlights to cheat out some easy shadows and highlights. My plan was to use multiple of these guys, and multiple times, so I made sure my paint schemes were quick and leaned closer to generic than stand-out. My players are inevitably going to recognise that these are the same Halflings as last time, but the longer I can defeat that feeling of deja vu, the better.

I found the zenithal highlight was a little pointless on the Halflings in the end. I don’t feel like it came through very strongly, there just isn’t enough surface area to get that contrast, but I still created some nice dark areas at least. I think the skin tone came through, but I could see myself adding in some more details to fit in with the winter theme like a little red on their noses. Unfortunately, game time fell upon me and I had to utilise what I had.

On the ponies I feel like it created a nice-ish looking horse-tone fairly quickly. It was around Christmas when I painted these, so I decided to embrace the holiday spirit and go with some festive colours, reds, greens and browns in various split-schemes across their armour. In order to create some contrast, I tried to keep the green as the brightest colour and keep the red quite dark, closer to a brick-red.

Using a sharp tip, I picked out some key details on the foot-sloggers so they’d stand out a bit more, focusing on their tabards and weapons. My intention here is to put multiple of them on one base so I focused on creating some focus points with their faces and weapons. I generally find when models are grouped together and look cohesive, little mistakes are harder to pick out and they look better overall. That's what I tell myself instead of obsessing over a single model out of five anyway.

I added some flare to the shield by utilising the zenithal as best I could. It was stronger on one side of the shield so I applied some green contrast paint over it, then cleaned off my brush, dipped it in a little bit of water, and feathered it out so it appeared lighter on one side. After that, I added a little arrow as a bit of heraldic flare on the shield to make it stand out even more.

Little bits like this elevate models that I’m otherwise not spending too much time on individually.

Final Thoughts

I’m really happy with these Halflings, despite some of the setbacks I faced putting them together. It’s a pair of really versatile kits you can use to help populate your fantasy world, and they’d look great mixed-and-matched amongst humans, elves, and dwarves to create travelling bands of warriors for your players to encounter. Variety is the spice of life, and the main thing I like to avoid in my fantasy settings is the typical racially homogeneous nations that all sit on different areas away from each other. I like my worlds to look like the party from Dungeon Meshi,

I ran this lot as an encounter in a one-shot festive-themed campaign. They were desperately trying to take down a Krampus that has been eating their livestock and stealing their presents, depriving these poor folk of their tasty chicken and toys. It was quite a pickle when they stumbled into their ambush, exposing both parties to an ambush from the creature they were hunting.

Outside of D&D, you get enough of these guys to create a platoon of warriors for all sorts of systems. With just two boxes you could create several warbands for systems like Frostgrave.

Or if you do all of the above you’ll be fine too. A box of each is fifty halflings total after all, and gives you plenty of spares you can mix and match between systems if need be. The fun doesn't just stop with these boxes either as these lil' guys would look great mix and matched with some humans, elves and dwarves to create bands of adventurers or town militias looking to keep the peace.

If the Halflings sound like something you’re interested in buying, don’t forget about our Wargames Atlantic affiliate link here!

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Tags: fantasy | halflings | wargames atlantic | The Old World