Halfling Strategy

Summary:

Halflings (or flings) have always been one of the more 'fun' and challenging teams to play in Blood bowl. However, as with all Stunty teams, Halflings are tier 3, so coaching a halfling team is playing blood bowl on hard difficulty. They may be chaotic and quite fragile, but in the hands of a particularly cunning Coach, Halflings can sometimes pull off a draw or in a particularly sneaky coach, even the occasional win!

Strengths:

• Dodge and Stunty
• Two ST6 AV11+ big guys
• TTM
• 1TTD capability
• Cheap Players
• Chef
• Big guys don't have loner

Weaknesses:

• Unreliable
• Fragile
• Low Strength
• Limited Skill Access

The Roster

Halflings can have four different players on the field, linemen, big guy and two positionals, just like so many other teams. The difference compared to most other teams is that halflings have ST2 on three of the four different players on their roster AND two ST6 big guys.

Halfling hopeful linemen

• Primary Skills: Diving Tackle, Sneaky Git, jump up
• Secondary Skills: Dirty player, Block, Sure Hands, Kick, strip ball,

Halfling hopeful are your standard halfling player that make up the bulk of the team. They have below average movement, strength, and armor, but they DO have average agility, dodge and stunty! Expect to lose a lot of these little guys, but don’t be afraid of doing so as they are very cheap to replace. Developing halfling linemen are a bit of a joke since they will not last very long. Before 2020 rules a halfling could hope for a “double roll” or stat increase. That is not the case anymore. Now a halfling must save up spp to 12 for a secondary skill (like Dirty player or Block) or 18 spp for a 19% chance of rolling +AG. The best course of action is to pick a random primary skill as soon as they reach 3 spp, most agility skills suit a halfling lineman and only cost +10k in TV. Primary skills that might be a good to save 6 spp for are sneaky git and diving tackle. One sneaky git will do wonders with a foul every turn. At least two players with diving tackle are recommended, it will win you games. Good secondary skills to save 12 spp for are Block, Dirty player, kick, strip ball and Sure hands. A halfling with block will live longer and can act as a blitzer. Dirty player is the most useful skill to even out the numbers on the field. Kick for placing the ball better at the kick-off. Sure hands to pick up the ball and guarding it against strip ballers and strip ball to get the ball loose. But will the halfling in question survive to 12 spp, it could be a long time.

Halfling Hefty

• Primary Skills: Leader, on the ball
• Secondary: Block, Pro

This is an odd player, useful, but odd. He has Fend and AV8+ (one more than regular halflings) and access to passing skills for the extra price of 20k more than a halfling line man and the loss of right stuff. Fend and AV8+ makes the hefty the most resilient halfling player (except treemen). Access to passing skills as primary skills could set up the hefty to become a passar pared with the catcher. But is it worth it? Leader is a fine skill and then perhaps he is done?

Halfling catcher

• Primary Skill: Sure Feet
• Secondary skills:

This is a normal halfling hopeful with just sprint and catch, two rather weak skills for 25k more gold. Is he worth almost as much as two linemen? Perhaps, perhaps not. It depends on your playing style and what opponents you might face. But to pare up a player that have the ability move up to 8 squares with a treeman that can reliably (83% success rate) throw him 6 squares first? Yes, that is a great recipe for 1TTDs (even better than a doom diver goblin with a troll). The extra build in reroll for the hand-off before the TTM is just gravy. Sprint might not get used that often, since usually it is not needed, or you want to avoid making die rolls as much as possible. Succeeding with two rush moves in a row is 69% to be able to use sprint in the first place. This number change to 93% with sure feet… So pick sure feet!

Altern Forest Treemen

• Primary skills: Guard, Brawler, Break Tackle
• Secondary Skill: Block, sure feet, jump up

Treemen are an exceptional roadblock with its ST6 and stand firm. A standing treeman will remain in the spot unless a gang of opposition players decides to team up and do something about it, which means the halflings can roam more freely that turn. If the opposition do decide to take down a treeman there are almost a grantee that the treeman will stay on the pitch because of its AV11+ and thick skull. But a blocker with claw and mighty blow or a foul action with many assists and dirty player do have a good shot of removing even a treeman. So, guard a treeman with a halfling just to remove assists if a gang up seems likely.

Although all the greatness every Treemen possesses they do unfortunately have one giant problem – mobility. This mobility problem has many consequences. With MA2 they will struggle to keep up with the game, both on offence and defense. On offense the slow halfling cage or screen will still move faster than what the treeman can perform, so he usually can only assist at the start of the drive. On offense the opposition will just run away from a treeman in a turn or two. Therefore, reading the game and carefully positioning a treemen is extremely important instead of just reacting to what the opposition does.

Low agility is not a problem when considering ballhandling, because a treeman should not handle the ball. But AG5+ makes it close to useless to try to dodge away from a marking player unless the treeman has the break tackle skill. Even standing up is a mobility problem. Players with MA 1 or 2 can only stand up on a roll of 4+. But treemen in a halfling team (unlike treemen that have the unfortunate luck of playing with narcissistic wood elfs) can get assists in standing up. So, with two helpful caring halflings that roll will succeed on 2+ instead.

If that wasn’t enough mobility problems for a treeman, the take root negatrait reduces the MA to 0 on a roll of 1, for the rest of the drive, unless knocked down. This negatrait have both an upside and a downside. The downside is that unlike other big guys the treeman suffers from that one rolled one for the rest of the drive and will probably be useless most time after that roll. The upside is that a treeman does not lose its tackle zones and can still preform the declared action rolling that unfortunate one on the take root test unless he hast to move to do the action. So, a block or TTM is still possible.

Treemen will most turns have to move 2 squares and use one or two extra moves to keep up with the game and move into position or blitz that important player. Therefore save re-rolls for this and save spp to pick sure feet later.

Treemen starting skills

A treeman starts with a high number of skills that are worth highlighting a bit.

Mighty blow (+1):

Standard big guy skill. Good for hurting opponents. Makes it less interesting for other players to mark a treeman.

Stand firm:

The treeman can choose to not be pushed back because of a block action or chain-push. Very useful to offer the halflings some safety by staying in place, and the possibility of hitting the blocking player back next turn. Can not be pushed of the pitch. Sometimes, when the opponent plans for the treeman not getting pushed by a block, it could be advantageous to let him get pushed to mess up his plans.

Throw team-mate:

Can perform a throw team-mate action with a standing, prone or stunned player.

Strong arm:

+1 on the TTM roll. Which means a treeman can make a short throw on a 2+ instead of a 3+ (like other big guys have) and removes the possibility of a terrible throw.

Thick skull:

Ko’d only on a 9, instead of 8 and 9.

Timmm-ber:

May get help standing up, +1 for every helpful assist on that 4+ roll.

No loner!

Treemen in a halfling team does not have loner skill so he can use team rerolls without rolling a die first. Rerolls on treemen are usually used for take root rolls, TTM, blocking and rush moves.

Primary skills

A treeman start with four of the twelve strength skills and a random primary skill at 3 spp is perhaps not that bad idea. Brawler, break tackle, grab, guard and multi block are all good skills on a treeman. Arm bar, juggernaut and pile driver are not good. 5 out 8 are okay odds.

Brawler

This offers safer blocks and can be used on every block that do not result in defender down result. This skill is perhaps not as useful when the treeman have Block, but can still be used to reroll one die if got die with defender down result.

Break tackle

This skill used to be better, AG 6 on one dodge per turn. Now it grants a dodge out on 3+ once per turn. This makes the treeman more mobile and harder for the opponent to mark down.

Grab

A good skill to set up a foul and a particularly good skill for a rooted treeman, so the blocking victim won’t be pushed away from the treemans tacklezones.

Guard

Guard on a big guy is mostly a great choice. But on a treeman with only ST2 players next to him might not be as good since they won't block much with only ST3 after assists. On the other hand, if your halflings have ST3 standing next to a tree in your opponets turn, they might live longer and a gang up on the tree will be harder to acompish.

Multiple block

This an interesting skill for a treeman standing on the line marking several players. Make two blocks with Mighty blow in one action (cannot be used as part of a blitz action). The downside is that the treemans ST is lowered by two to ST4 for this type of block action, and the treeman can’t follow up. The “follow up problem” can be solved with having the skill Grab so both victims end up next to the tree anyway.

Secondary skills.

Here we have some interesting skills, too bad they will take forever for a treeman to save up for.

Block

This is an awesome skill for any high strength player with mighty blow, of course.

Sure feet

is also excellent since treemen are so slow and rush moves are usually a must to keep up with the game (two rush moves with sure feet goes up from 69% success to 93%).

Pro

Pro could be really helpful, do mitigate the take root problem and on blocks and TTM, dodges and rush moves.

Tackle

Great skill to hurt weaker players that have dodge. Perhaps treemen are not fast enough to catch those players with dodge though.

Jump up

This could be an interesting skill. Stand up for free (so no 4+ roll to stand up). Also on a 4+ the treeman can jump up and block. But there are better skills to pick a +MA would take away the 4+ roll to stand up to.

Defensive

Opponent players marked by the treeman can not use guard in their turn. Could be a way of preventing gang ups on the treeman, but there are other better skills for that.

Stat increase.

Usually stat increase is not worth it, because of the high spp cost and very random what you get, it also grants much higher TV. But for a treeman to save up for a stat increase is not a bad idea. Increase in MA (88% chance) is great! It would solve some of the mobility problems for that treeman, just standing up without a roll is good news. SP increase (50% chance) would improve the TTM game and increase the chance for a superb throw making the landing easier. AG is bad for a tree. ST increase might be fun, but perhaps over the top with ST7 at cost of 80k in TV?