You say Smurf Village, I say Goblin Huts

I don’t have a category on my website for Warhammer Fantasy.  Heck, I still call it Warhammer Fantasy, and not Age of Sigmar.    Those two facts should go a long way to underscore how much of that forsaken square based game I actually play.

Yes, I know that they don’t use square bases anymore.

But I do have quite a collection of the stuff.  The vast majority of my stuff falls into one of two categories:

• Skaven
• Night Goblins

The Skaven are are a remnant of the Lost & the Damned list from the Eye of Terror codex back in 4th edition.  My sharp Google-fu tells me that was back in 2003, so a good 14 years ago.  I had the notion that I was going to make a chaos army themed around rat men.  I collected various iterations of these guys to use:

• Skaven – Mutants
• Rat Ogres – Big Mutants
• Rat Swams – Nurglings
• Doomwheels – Sentinels
• Necromunda Ratskins – Guardsmen
• Great Horned Rat – Greater Demon

I’m sure there were more options in the mix, but I don’t remember all of the options in the list.  Over time, this dream has dwindled, but I still have a ton of skaven models.  Part of me has aspirations to use them as demons still, but I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen.  I also still have 50+ Ratskins if anyone really wants to play Necromunda again!

The other army I have is Night Goblins.  You may be tempted to call them “Orcs and Goblins,” but I stayed fairly true to the Night Goblin theme.  This was a result of me seeing deals for greenskins that were just too good to pass up.  When the Battle for Skull Pass was in high production, I recognized the insane value of the night goblins in that box. A total of 72 goblins (including 10 on spiders) and a Troll, and the prices were insane.  I wound up picking up 10 or so boxes worth of figures for $20-25 each.  Though I never really had any intention of playing the game, I knew that if I ever did get back into it, greenskins would be my jam.  Plus, the deals were so great that surely I’d be able to turn them for a profit one day if I so choose.

Well, I haven’t so chosen–at least not yet.  In fact, I’ve even tried to get my goblins painted at one point (which ended in disaster).  But should I let the fact that I don’t play the game, and have no real intention of ever doing so prevent me from adding to my army?

Of course not!

Well, when McDonald’s new line of Smurf toys hit the happy-meal shelves last month, I started asking all of my friends (and family) with kids to collect them for me.  Mushroom houses aren’t technically what Night Goblins would live in (I know this because I have 10+ tents that came from Skull Pass!), but I’ll be damned if they don’t seem to fit the bill.  I’m not sure that they would take to the same level of window gardens as the Smurfs did, but the size and general theme seem perfect.

So, to go along with my 700ish figures, I now have a dozen or two smurf houses to use as terrain.  Maybe one day I’ll actually make progress in painting these up–though I can’t see why I would do that if I’m not painting up (or even playing) my goblins.  Still, it seemed like a good idea, and didn’t cost me anything, so why not?

Now I just need to find a place to store these damn things…

EDIT: Updated to include a scale comparison with some AoS figures and a shot of the houses I managed to collect.