Blood Bowl Team Greenfield Grasshuggers

31 years after their initial introduction, the Greenfield Grasshuggers receive a plastic kit as part of the latest Blood Bowl reincarnation.

The Greenfield Grasshuggers were shown for the first time in the rulebook of the 2nd edition of Blood Bowl in 1988, above the entry you can see a bit of the Nurgle Rotters, who got a recent re-release for Blood Bowl as a plastic kit as well. The halflings were available as miniatures casted from metal with 6 different poses and a star player, Puggy Baconbreath in the late 80s / early 90s. Later in the mid 90s, during the 3rd edition of Blood Bowl, the models got a re-design, again with 6 different poses. (The Citadel Annual pictures were taken from SoLegend, Cat 1989 and Cat 1994). Prior to the release of the plastic kit, Games Workshop offered the 3rd edition metal team as made-to-order, a chance that I took as you can see here.

I was a bit surprised, when I opened up the box and saw the see-through plastic tray, that was very common with the old metal kits. In there were multiple small sprues, the bases, and a decal sheet and instructions on top.

The instructions are pretty lean, a double side for the assembly of the models and the team profile of the Greenfield Grasshuggers in English, French and German. The decal sheet covers black and white numbers, icons and names, to work with light and dark team colours. The Blood Bowl teams come with the new larger 32mm round bases, with slots and holes for the miniature slabs and balls. I was a bit surprised, that it were 5 small sprues and not two identical medium ones. The Scarcrag Snivellers sprues were small ones as well, two different set ups, available as individual sprue to be added to an Orc team. As this isn't an option for Halflings (as far as I know), the setup into smaller sprues came a bit unexpected.

But to have more flexibility and freedom with the bits, the designers went with two small sprues for the players, that are included two times each, covering alternative heads for more variety. The bonus items, like the markers and balls are covered in the 5th sprue. Casting is very well done, crisp details, but the "flow" of the designs, like the hair, shows clearly that these are digital sculpts.

The Greenfield Grasshuggers have 6 different bodies, covering 4 hopefuls (= regular linemen), a catcher and a hefty (= more or less a blocker). These can be build two times from the kit. As I play the "old" Blood Bowl edition as well, I go with the smaller 25mm round bases, to be downward compatible with the teams.

Next up the arms, there are no options or variants for the hopefuls, that is introduced by the heads / helmets on three of the four different bodies. The heads pick up the improvised helmets from the earlier editions. A bit weird, but funny is the squirrel that hides inside the belt of one of the runner bodies.

And here the build first set of hopefuls, along with the variants with different heads. It is funny, that the unhelmeted head looks a bit like Gordon Ramsay.

Next up the catcher and hefty. Again the arms are the same for both poses and the variation is achieved by a head swap.

Here's the full set of 12 players, covering 8 hopefuls, 2 catchers and 2 heftys. The 5th sprue covers two coins, two markers and three different sandwiches (hotdogs, empanadas) as specific halfling Blood Bowl balls.

It is interesting see, how the range developes. Blood Bowl has its own scale, that is somewhere between 32 - 35mm. The halflings have become bigger, but mostly have more present heads. The style is very distinctive but follows an own line within the Blood Bowl universe, to some degree. As you can see the scale is not linear. It is not a surprise that the old and new halflings aren't that compatible, but that the Forge World Halfling referee and star player doesn't really match up with the plastic halflings is a bit weird.

The third picture shows the relateable design, that was continued from the older miniatures, including the cookware as helmets.

And the whole team of the Greenfield Grasshuggers, incl. the comparison of the A and B variants of the sculpts.

Conclusion
To be honest, after them offering the Halflings as made to order and them being a stunty team, my hopes weren't that high that we would see them in plastic. But especially with an oddball team like Halflings it makes sense to lower the entry barrier. They are a fun team, they are hard to play compared to other "regular sized" teams. So having those only be available as OOP metals wouldn't motivate more people to give it a try, but at 25 EUR RRP for this box, that is a much easier to answer question. Beside that, I have seen very well done conversions based on this kit. Some build Chaos Dwarfs (simple head swap with helmets from the Chaos Warrior / Knights kit) and buffed the team with Goblins as Hobgoblins, or used them for a Halfling Militia in Age of Sigmar / Mordheim, by adding weaponry from the Empire or Zombie kits. Both work surprisingly well.

The only bottleneck of this team is the big guy. Where the ogre and troll came as plastic kits, and especially the ogre is very reasonably priced at just 14,50 EUR, the treeman for the Halflings is only available through Forge World and costs 50 EUR. That's twice what the team sets you back. You can buy a Treelord Ancient from the Sylvaneth range for that amount of money, or buy a box of Kurnoth Hunters and fill up all the treeman slots as well as the starplayer on your roster. As there is a huge market for third company products in Blood Bowl, you may give those a look as well for the treeman as they cost you around 15-20 EUR each.

The Greenfield Grasshuggers are accompanied with multiple additional items, similar to the other teams, like a themed pitch, dice, a card deck and the Spike! Magazine issue that covers additional information on Halfling Blood Bowl Teams. If you're interested in those, it makes sense to buy them soon, as the stock of them is usually not that big and especially the dice have a tendency to become insanely pricy second hand.

Blood Bowl is a brand by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.