Many of you are familiar with the feel good PR picture of the halfling folk - jolly little chaps with furry feet who just make you smile with their antics. That's because you only know what the halfing spin-doctors want you to know. In truth, halflings are like all other folk with a certain percentage of the population being argumentative, bad tempered types.
The clever halfling leaders have come up with a brilliant plan to keep the less co-operative members of society from disrupting the happy lives of the rest. In a joint operation with the local dwarves, the disaffected halflings are shipped off to training camp and taught the fine art of the military crossbow.
Thus, the elders have made The Shire a peaceful place full of photogenic, tourist friendly halflings while at the same time earning a nice bit of coin hiring out the mercenary crossbow troop to trouble spots all over the world.
My eight figures depict some of these halflings who are veteran mercenaries, having served in some of the most vicious fighting since Curly Toes Wingsprocket's birthday party when someone "accidentally" ordered a vegan buffet and four barrels of light beer.
Having spent so much time with their dwarven drillmasters, the halflings have started to copy much of the dwarven lifestyle, some going so far as to sport outrageous facial hair (for a halfling) which rumour has it is mostly facial wigs. Not that anyone wants to point that out as these short fellows are always ready with a quarrel.
I purchased these figures from a fellow gamer and I believe that they are actually Hasslefree dwarves but are so slight compared to my GW types that they can only be halflings with dwarven habits. They are however beautiful miniatures and were a pleasure to paint.
My Dwarven Travelling Officers have spotted the Goblin host and are carefully observing them, taking notes and preparing to carry word back to the Host. The little green buggers won't get away from the mighty Dwarves this time!
These three figures are from the Kev Adam dwarves done for Heartbreaker Hobbies back in the day. Recently resurrected in resin by Tom at Impact Miniatures they represent everything that I love about the miniatures from the '90s. Clean, well proportioned sculpts with shedloads of character. No mass produced plastic sameness here, no clever IT skills masquerading as sculpting talent.
I have a lot of this range (serious quantities) and you will be seeing more as the Challenge progresses.
I had to push hard to make the deadline on these as I made a rookie error. I undercoated these resin casts with an ordinary primer rather than a plastic speciality one. So, despite them being thoroughly scrubbed before priming, the first days painting flaked off overnight. Anyway, scrubbed them back with alcohol, re-primed and started again.
I am very happy with the result (even if they aren't quite dry in the photos!)
