Right Betwixt the Eyes: Halfling Snipers by Victoria Miniatures!

Ratlings, Warhammer 40k’s equivalent of Halflings, are something I theoretically always like the idea of, but never could get behind the models for. The current GW range are quite a crude looking mob, and while I loved the older ones, their day has long since passed and they don’t “fit in” nicely with newer models.

I have long used my Tanith First and Only models as Ratlings, using the justification of a single squad of expert marksmen from that storied regiment fighting alongside mine. A thrilling tale to be sure, but unfortunately the statline didn’t quite work, and the models were definitely not “wysiwyg”, or What You See Is What You Get. They all had Lasguns, and modifying the old metal Tanith models was just not going to happen.

I have searched, admittedly halfheartedly, for an alternative for years. 3D printing has now brought the solution straight to me.

Victoria Miniatures is a company I’m very fond of. I have ordered stuff from Victoria Lamb before the miniatures part of the business was in full swing, back when she was just operating it from a portfolio style page for her artistic painting of Warhammer figures. Her realistic styling, a throwback to when the Sci-Fi genre for tabletop drew from a lot of historical sources, was a really neat touch.

Victoria Miniatures launched a Kickstarter earlier this year for “Halfling Snipers”, and the cool addition was that these were to be both physical models in Sio-cast, a material I’m very curious to see, and STL files for home printing. I backed both the physical models and got the 3D printing files on top of that. Best of both worlds! The figures are definitely a little tongue in cheek, a depiction of Halflings as mischievous, but this time, armed with sniper rifles!

Now of course, these have applications outside of 40k. But for me, these are definitely going to be my Ratling stand-ins. As my local group has no issues with 3rd party models, I’ve got ten of them printed.

Even better, Victoria Miniatures also released Brodie WW1 helmets for these angry hobbits. Of course, I needed to have those.

The prints came out pretty nice from my Phrozen Mighty 4k. A couple print errors, but nothing major enough to warrant a re-print.

I hit the lot with Vallejo US Olive Drab, a really nice colour I had handy for another project(yes I know…) and it gave them a good uniform colour. Dark and Gritty seems to be my style, so I’ve leaned into it.

After some very basic, and nothing crazy painting, I got some pictures in the light box!

All in all, a fun and quick paint-job for a really fun model. I have 9 left to paint, but they won’t be a chore.

The brodie helmets I’m a big fan of, and now that Victoria Miniatures has released a non-halfling version of them, I’m definitely considering sticking them on some Guardsmen. My thought is to add them to the new Cadians when they release in short order, for some serious WW1/WW2 vibes.

But, that is all for today. My concussion is all but gone, but I still feel the after-effects. My memory, which was recovering nicely, has since taken a bad hit after the smack to my head. So I’m even more scatter-brained then usual.

In other, non-tabletop news…after the sad passing away of my kitten Kiki, we were offered another kitten when we wanted from the shelter we got her from. We were not planning on taking them up on it, and if so not so quickly…but we fell in love with an orange female tabby up for adoption along with the rest of her siblings.

I had my Mom grab her, as I was still out of commission. My family and I named her Billie, which hilariously in Urdu(our other language other then English)….means Cat. We named the cat, cat.

So yeah, expect a lot of Billie related shenanigans to occasionally pop up on my very serious business hobby blog!

Happy Wargaming wherever you are, and remember to not eat your second breakfast of Imperial MREs!