The Hobbit on the cheap: Goblin Town

Hi, It's finally time for another post in my The Hobbit on the cheap series! This time we will take a look at the different options that are available for the vast Goblin Town which is featured in the movie. In the previous post of the series I mentionned that I would scratchbuild the terrain out of craftsticks but browsing around on the internet I found some alternatives which I will compare here. All I know for sure is that every option is way cheaper than the Games Workshop option! Let's take a look.

Option one: Games Workshop Goblin Town Scenery Set

First of all we take a look at the readily available Games Workshop Terrain piece which is described as the following on their site: "A sinister kingdom, lorded over by the giant, bloated form of the Goblin King, Goblin Town is a dishevelled realm inhabited by stunted, twisted creatures. This mockery of a court, with its cruel bully-kind, is home to creatures of a deadly nature, troglodyte denizens of implacable cruelty. Goblin Town is a fantastically detailed scenery piece. It is made largely of long strips of timber that have been haphazardly combined to provide long, rickety walkways suitable for the inhabitants of Goblin Town. As well as chain detailing and wide ladders, it is scattered with bones and skulls, and some fragments of bones are strapped like totems to the large poles that hold the walkways up. Rugged and erratic, this is impressive scenery piece can be constructed in a number of different configurations."

This terrain set looks great I must admit and is made of hard plastic which is easy to assemble and glue but what really bothers me is the price! This terrain set costs you €45.00 when bought seperatly and is luckily shipped for free. At this cost I would cost you a fortune to fill up a Goblin Town table as this set only represent nothing more than a central square and some walkways! So we opt out this option and take a look at the others.

Option two: Angry Badgers Ramshackle Camp Set

The second option is the amazing lasercut wooden terrain set called Ramshackle Camp Set from the small Australian based company called Angry Badgers. The terrain set is described as the following on their site: "The Ramshackle Forest Camp kit comes as photographed with 3 six inch section where the boards run parallel, 4 six inch sections where the boards run perpendicular, 4 elevated walkway supports (taller), and 5 main platforms supports (shorter). Perfect for all those forest dwelling baddies and unspecified teddy bear types. This kit comes in the color shown in the photos. In order to keep costs down, the platform boards are etched on one side, and where the support beams can be seen, they are etched on two side."

I have this set and wrote a review about it which you can find here and I must say this set is really good value of money and can easily be used for more than fantasy such as pulp games among others. From a review on his website: "Just got my kits in the mail today. Very nice product, and a great value as well. Goes together easily. I see these finding use in pirate games, as platforms/scafolding in undeground caverns, and for use in pulp games set in many settings to include Darkest Africa where they will make a nice elevated game area above the jungle floor or over crocodile infested swamps and waters." The retail price of this piece is only $19.95 and can be bought at the Angry Badger Online Store. As you can see you can buy two of these sets instead of one Games Workshop terrain set! What's not to like.

Option three: Scratchbuilding your own Terrain

Of course we can also scratchbuild the terrain which is the most laborious but cheapest option available. I haven't give it a try but I found this example of an excellent scratchbuild Goblin Town on the internet.

Constructed by CyberAlien312 from The Lead Adventure Forum

Scale comparison

Scale comparison of the Angry Badgers Ramshackle set with the hard plastic pieces from the Games Workshop starterset. As you can see the scenery pieces are roughly the same the size but the angry badger one can be used unpainted without looking bad and is also much cheaper.

Picture kindly supplied by Jake from The Lead Adventure Forum

I hope you enjoyed this post and useful comparison and I want to thank the people who have supplied me with some of the pictures used in this post. Stay tuned as our next instalment will probably compare some miniatures from different manufacturers! Cheers.