The technical deficiency of Halfling teams is legendary. They’re too short to throw or catch, they run at half pace, and the whole team can spend all afternoon trying to block an Ogre without any chance of success. Most Halfling coaches try to make up for quality with quantity. After all, if you can get half a dozen players in the opposing team’s End Zone and, by some miracle, manage to end up with the ball, then there is a small chance that one or two of them won’t be jelly by the time you throw the thing.
| QTY | Position | Cost | MA | ST | AG | PA | AV | Skills & Traits | Pri | Sec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-16 | Hopeful | 30k | 5 | 2 | 3+ | 4+ | 7+ | Dodge, Right Stuff, Stunty | A | GS |
| 0-2 | Hefty | 50k | 5 | 2 | 3+ | 3+ | 8+ | Dodge, Fend, Stunty | AP | GS |
| 0-2 | Catcher | 55k | 5 | 2 | 3+ | 5+ | 7+ | Catch, Dodge, Right Stuff, Sprint, Stunty | A | GS |
| 0-2 | Altern Forest Treeman | 120k | 2 | 6 | 5+ | 5+ | 11+ | Mighty Blow (+1), Stand Firm, Strong Arm, Take Root, Thick Skull, Throw Team Mate, Timmm-ber! | S | AGP |
| 0-8 | ReRolls | 60k | Apothecary: Yes | |||||||
| Special Rules | Halfling Thimble Cup, Old World Classic |
Halfling Team Overview:
Halflings are the weakest and slowest of all the teams in the game. They are designed to be one of the most challenging races to use and they certainly fulfil that criteria. They can start with two of the strongest players in the game in the guise of Treemen, who at ST6 and AV10 can really hold their own. The teams often make use of a Halfling Master Chef as well, the cooking aroma can put off the other team and enhance the performance of the Halflings by stealing the other teams rerolls. Due to the poor ability of the Halfling players though, they are very cheap to purchase and you can have a lot of them, which is great because you probably will need them!
Onto the bad news and as I hinted at they are a slow team. The numerous Halflings are a nice slow MV5 and the two Treemen have a speedy MV2. Now seeing as you need to MV3 to even stand up, should a Treeman get knocked over you will have to roll to see if they can stand up. The Treemen may on occasion decide to Take Root and not move at all from the square they are in for the rest of the drive. Whilst they can block an area of the pitch off they aren’t hard to avoid either. The Halflings are also weak at ST2, and have a low armour of AV6, combined with being injured easier cause of Stunty, the opposing teams will not have much trouble in removing them from the field. Don’t expect to have a lot of them staying around for a long time. Though you may get one who turns out to be resilient and gain a few skills, this is more the exception than the norm.
As you may have guessed the Halflings are very much not a team for a beginner, unless you really like a challenge and don’t mind losing both games and players on a fairly regular basis. In the right hands though, they can be quite rewarding and it is great when you win games due to the extra humiliation you can heap onto the opposing team and their coach.
Halfling Team Strengths:
- Very Cheap Players
- Two Treemen
- Can Steal Rerolls
- Dodge & Stunty
Halfling Team Weaknesses:
- Slow
- Weak
- Very Fragile
Personally I feel Halflings arent that terrible in an early league, everyone with dodge and not many teams having more than two rerolls means you will quite often be facing an opponent who has no rerolls at all and probably no players with tackle. You’ll also HAVE about 6 rerolls yourself.
Sure you need a master chef to stand much of a chance and he’s a 100k a game 🙁 so soon as you run out of money you’re in trouble….but you’ll start off strong for a game or two lol.
Sure, you’ll still probably lose, but you may win!
In seriousness, if you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding team, try goblins first, they’re a lot more fun and quite a lot easier to do well with.
The biggest weakness for halflings not mentioned here…. at least for league play. It’s a lack of General skills. You can only take those on a double, so even when your guys do level, you’re stuck with a less then great selection of skills. This goes for the Trees, too, as they can only take Strength abilities.
I’m about 7 games into my league now with a 2w-3t-2l…. but I’m running out of things to take, skill wise. Everyone else in the league is getting useful stuff like Strip Ball, Tackle, and I dunno, BLOCK…. and I’m stuck with the semi-useful Side Step and maybe Catch or Diving Catch… more likely the latter since everyone is stunty and accurate passes are gonna be a rarity…
Are you overlooking Diving Tackle then? On average one in 6 skill increases should be a double roll so it isn’t too bad. (Though I’ve gone 15 games with an AG4 team without getting a stat increase or double.) Having Side Step and Diving Tackle on every one of your Halflings will be horrible to play against. Sure Feet is also handy for a few of them too as I find you often need to do GFI with them.
And what about the Sneaky Git skill? It might be handy to put one in too, to have a designated fouler. Sure you don’t care if your 30k player get’s kicked out but it is still one halfling less you can throw at the opponents cage.
The halflings are actually a very nice team, you can get a good sized team with the two treemen 3 rerolls and an apothecary for around 800,000. Since treasury doesn’t count towards team value this gives you the a good amount of inducements seeing as almost all starting teams use the full 1 million.
Keeping your value low (easy for the squishy lot) means you can easily get Deeproot Strongbranch on the pitch each match and that cook pot they need so badly without a penny leaving your account. 3 treemen is a hassle and a lot of teams may try to ignore them knowing that its far easier to squish halflings but leave a treeman free and one halfling can get quick pass to halfling adjacent treeman and with stunty dodge the succefully landed halfling will have no trouble scoring a sneaky touch down. No loner on the tree man and strong arm makes this easy especially since you have most of your opponents rerolls
will halflings have the use of a master chef when they come out in the cyanide game?
I believe so, though that is more about the Cyanide game than Halfling teams, please ask things like that on the forum in future so the pages are kept relevant.
Begging your pardon. Trying to bring it back to relevance. The reason why I ask was that I remember reading a good while back, an old white dwarf article. Where the writers set up a league when the 2nd wave of 3rd ed. teams came out, and the winner used Halflings!! He attributed this to the use of master chefs. It seems then as is today, to be the main if not only edge Halflings have. Bashy teams will have less ball handling skills so re-rolls are going to be far more valuable, and painful to lose. In theory them mucking up the ball, will produce more turn- overs, that prevent them squashing your little guys. Those with who are better ball handlers are more likely to be potential treeman fertiliser.
Slight difference now in that you can only hire the Master Chef as an Inducement whereas before you could hire a permanent one. There are some other subtle changes to the team as well and if you wish to discuss them more feel free to sign up to the forum. Though Master Chefs are a big part of the success of a Halfling team.
Treemen are the best Throw team mate players.
Treemen aren’t Always hungry, Really stupid, or Loners and they have Strong arm.
They can throw a halfling 7 squares down the pitch, the halfling can then move 5 squares +1 GFI for a one turn touchdown. It all depends on the landing and scattering rolls.
If the thrown halfling has the ball it could end a turn but if you are lucky enough to get an AG4 halfling then landing should be fairly easy.
You can even throw a halfling at your Take rooted Treeman to knock him down and thus freeing him up again (if your beard is long).
I agree with all of that apart from throwing 7 squares, the furthest you can throw a Short Pass is 6 squares.
Oops, sorry, We have been playing on an oversized pitch and using an old FUMBBL passing chart. I forgot it wasn’t official.
6 squares (throw), 5 movement (Halfling) and 2 GFI (+/- upto 3 squares of scatter)
Hi, I’m very interested in giving Halflings a go and was going to use them in a one off game to see how I fare.
I was thinking of taking either 8 halflings, 3 treeman (including Deeproot), 2 rerolls and a chef or 10 halflings and 1 reroll.
Just wanted some advice on which would be best?
Some matches one will be best and in others the other choice would be… I’d probably go with the 1 reroll and 10 Halflings though, you have the Chef to steal some more. Those extra 2 players will also ease injuries and players getting sent off.
Have sort of come round to that in my own head – means I can foul like crazy too. Thanks for the reply.
Coach, apologies just one more question. Can you ever envisage a situation were a Halfling team would use any of its other star players than Deeproot or Puggy?
If you play a match with a big enough disparity that you have a massive amount of inducements. Or just cause someone wants to, valid enough reason right there as well!
Against low armour high blodge teams (Skaven, Wood elves, Amazon) Zara is a very valid alternative – a bit cheaper than deeproot and way more mobile. Teams with a set of Str4 guys however clearly need that third tree! Lizards are both high dodge low armour and high strength, so no idea what’s better
Halflings are one of my favourite teams, having first played them during the days of BB 2nd edition. However they never should have removed the Master Chef as a permanent option since all it does is encourage players to keep TV low to get one every game. Halflings would hardly be overpowered if they were allowed a permanent chef. Be nice to have Halfling positional players too. As for Star Players, it has to be Deeproot or possibly Zara if you are playing any of the walking dead and can’t afford Deeproot. Willow and Puggy suck, Bertha doesn’t have Block and Morg is too pricey (you can get Deeproot and nearly a Wizard for the cost).
Anyone notice GW have announced the new halfling team will have postionals.
Since no-one else has touched upon this, here are the added positionals.
Catcher 0-2 50k 5236 Dodge, Stunty, Right Stuff, Catch and Sprint.
Hefty 0-2 50k 5237 Dodge, Stunty, Fend, access to agility AND passing skills.
I for one think GW thought it through quite well when they created these. In tournaments you now have natural targets for added skills such as Sure Feet and Leader.
Great to have Halfling positionals but they missed a trick. The Hefty, while having some useful skills/stats is anti-fluff. Is he a big fat Halfling? Why does he have passing skills because of it? A better idea would be a kicker (those big hobbit feet), with Kick, Sure Hands and Hail Mary Pass, with the ability to develop into a short range passer through Passing access. The Catchers should have Diving Catch, Nerves of Steel and +1MA to make them more worthwhile. and have synergy with the kicker. That would be a great combination of skills, rather than giving them 2 agility skills they can get on a normal roll that does not help them much (especially Sprint which relies on you already passing 2 Go for it’s) and limits their later development to even fewer skills.
I can see myself picking Dump-Off on a Hefty. As a destinated ball-carry he will sit in a cage Dump-off to a catcher near him who is himself next to a tree. Going well with the fend off on the Hefty and might even accalerate my Play.
My second year going halflings only. Love those little buggers.
The following questions are from the typical resurrection tournament point of view, where you can make sure you get the chef and TV is not applied.
Is it worth enhancing the effect of the chef by getting cheerleaders and assistant coaches?
Is the apo worth 50K? You can’t save star players, halflings are cheap and trees are tough.
Always have an Apothecary, forget the flings, but if you lose a tree, especially a skilled one, you’ll be sad. They’re tough, but not invincible.
I disagree. For a halfling team, getting an apo is an easy binary decision that doesn’t require much consideration. You get one if you have a +AG halfling, and use it only on that halfling (or in the extremely rare case that one of your trees takes an injury), and you fire them if you lose that halfling.
It’s not worth getting an apo for any other halfling because they’re cheap to replace, or for your trees because they never get hurt.
Trees armor only gets broken on 1/12 of normal armor rolls, so the only ways in which they typically get hurt are by being fouled or being hit by claw players. Halfling players learn to protect their trees from the other team getting 2-die blocks on them in the first place because standing them back up can be suck a problem. So even when you play against a team with claw, or that prioritizes fouling, they’re typically not going to be able to take advantage of those traits to hurt your trees.