and now we return to our regularly scheduled halflings

Sorry for that interruption, but you know how self righteous those pesky elves can be, always insisting that they know everything and need to come before the other races (just don't mention mirrors to them).

So where were we before we were rudely interrupted?  Oh yes, the new halfling hard plastic sprues - sold in the army box, mega army box, and as a battlegroup.

The halfling battle group is two sets of the three sprues for the new hard plastic halflings - enough to make 20 infantry AND 10 cavalry.

The army box comes with two battle groups, and the mega army has three.

There are two full sprues, and one small one.  The first sprue holds almost all the bodies (one cavalry body is on sprue 2), 10 rifles, 10 spears and six hand weapons.

Sprue 2 has 15 heads, the final cavalry body, 5 aralaz heads, 4 of the aralez body halves, 10 shields, 4 hand weapons and 10 arms to go with the rifles.

The final sprue is smaller, with the final six aralez halves.  (I will apologize, I apparently forgot to get a picture of the back of this sprue).

You will have to do some planning when building your halflings.  While each sprue set makes 10 infantry and 5 cavalry, there aren't enough arms to make all 15 equipped with the same weapons.  So you can make 10 spearlings and 5 wild riders with rifles, or 10 rifles and 5 melee wild riders.  Mantic is planning on releasing sets of the sprues with resin weapons for bows, or new bits to make Stalwarts (with more armor).  So you will want to figure out how you want to build the sprues BEFORE you start cutting the pieces off.

Also be aware that the cavalry models are all specifically keyed together (as are the rifle arms).  So there are five models of cavalry, A - E.  The labelling is on the sprue (on the same side iwth the name)

The two sides of the Aralez are keyed specifically together, and they only fit the opposite version.  This makes the bodies a bit more dynamic as they don't all have to fit together.  Unfortunately, the halfs are NOT paired up on the sprues - I would have liked it if sprue 2 had 2 complete pairs, instead of sides for 4 different ones.  Then the smaller sprue 3 should have three matching bodies (it only has one (A), with the other 4 matching the halves on sprue 2.

The heads are also keyed to specific bodies.  I did not actually try to fit all the heads on all the bodies to see if they truly need to be keyed or are somewhat interchangeable.

This means that there are only 5 aralez scuplts (instead of the 25 possible models if the heads are interchangeable,  or 125 if the bodies halves were).

However, not only are the heads keyed, but the cavalry bodies are as well.

I did fit some of these a bit, and you can mix them up, but they don't fit as well to the bodies they aren't keyed to, so have gaps between the saddles and bodies.

To the majority of people, they won't be bothered that this makes only 5 cavalry models, since ANY head and arms will fit with any body.

Well, almost any head.  While they all fit, four of the infantry and two of the cavalry halfling bodies are female (which is great for inclusion)

To match these, there are six heads that are female (the ones with the helmets I found hard to identify)

so you may want to match the female heads to the female bodies.  Or not, you can put any head on any body if you either don't care or want to be even more diverse and inclusive of non-binary genders.

The rifle arms are also keyed pairs, so that the arm fits the specific rifle.

There is one rifle and one arm that are not keyed - this rifle is held by only the one arm, and the other is free to use with it, or otherwise (say, if you want to add banners to your units).

So, once you plan out what you want (I built a regiment of rifles, a regiment of spearlings, and a regiment of wild riders (ranged) with rifles, plus a mounted sergeant with the remaining cavalry models), you can start putting them together.

For the picture I used poster putty to attach them to troop bases - it is MUCH easier when multi-basing to paint the models BEFORE gluing them to the base. (The ONLY advantage to single basing your models is having the base to hold onto when painting).

I used the top hat on the sergeant to make him stand out (and didn't use it in the other units).

I know that people will ask (and have been asking) how do these halflings compare to other models?

A while back I picked up some of the Wargames Atlantic Halfling Militia with the idea to do a League of Rhordia demo army - and the 4 boxes of them are pretty much still sitting on my shelf.  But I can compare them now.

The Mantic halflings are a bit bigger, do not have integrated bases, and are wearing shoes  (The largest complaint I have heard about the new Mantic halflings is the shoes.)

I was wondering if I could mix the kits, but I don't think so.  The heads look to be just too small, though maybe if you cut the bow hands off and glued them to the mantic arms, it might be a way to do bows if you don't want to get the resin upgrades.

For some other comparisons, here are some of the new halflings with other models.

Vs. Basilean paladin knights (the halfling is sitting a little tall in his saddle because of the poster putty holding him on (and I took this picture before I decided to use the top hat head).

Comparing the sergeant and mounted sauceror with a mounted elf wizard

The new HP cavalry vs the League of Infamy "Steward on Guard Hound" from the "No Half Measures" expansion

The sauceror model on foot is the one from League of Infamy, so compare it to the mounted resin one.

And just to compare the sauceror to the sergeant.

So once you have the plastic sprues, what else do you need in your army?  How about halflings with jet packs!  Stay tuned - same half-time, same half-channel!

Because it is all fun and games . . .