Hobgoblin

What is Hobgoblin

Hobgoblin is a rank-and-flank fantasy mass battle game by Mike Hutchinson, the designer of Gaslands, published by Electi Studio. Big blocks of troops, wheeling into line and crashing together, but finished in under two hours instead of an afternoon.

There are no preset factions. The army list is a toolkit: you give each unit a type, then buy keywords that fit the models you have. Hutchinson says he wanted “a game in which any model I choose to paint is a viable choice on the battlefield.”

The setting is the Rotvärlden, a maze of tunnels, caverns and catacombs under a dead, frozen surface. Cursed Artefacts let their bearers, the Haunted, summon whole armies, while the artefact’s long-dead maker slowly takes them over. The art is by CROM.

It went through Kickstarter in spring 2023 and a stretch of open beta before the hardcover. In 2024 it won Best Miniatures Rules at the UK Games Expo Judge’s Choice Awards.

How it plays

Units are rectangles. Any tray with an obvious front edge. Footprint sets the size: wide units are 100 to 200mm across, narrow ones 40 to 100mm.
Unit type does the heavy lifting. Light Infantry, Heavy Cavalry, Chariot, War Wagon, Monster, Artillery and the rest each set speed, range and free keywords. Extra keywords cost points.
Rock-paper-scissors matchups. A single chart gives the target number for every attacker against every defender. Heavy Cavalry hits Ranged Infantry on a 2+ and Heavy Infantry on a 4+.
Fixed dice pools. Shooting is 5 dice, combat is 10. Every hit is a point of Doom.
Doom breaks units. At 10 Doom a unit is Broken and removed. Each Broken unit makes friends within 8” panic and take more Doom, so a bad flank can collapse.
Movement points. Each unit gets points equal to its Speed and spends them to advance, shuffle, wheel or reform.
Five rounds, six phases. Initiative, magic, shooting, movement, combat, doom. Most points left on the table wins.
Fortune Cards. You draw one each round, and every unit you lose earns you a Fortune Card or two Mercury Tokens for magic.

The quick start has one rule above the rest, the Rule of Carnage: if the rules are ever unclear, “pick whichever option results in the most carnage for all concerned.”

The core book includes official solo rules, so you can play it on your own.

How to start

Grab the free downloads. Planet Smasher Games has the Quick Start rules plus print-and-play Fortune Cards, tokens and paper units, all free.
Build a list. The army builder is free. A small army is 2,000 points.
Use what’s on your shelf. Any fantasy army works. Paper units or cut card will do while you paint.
Buy the book when you’re hooked. Electi sells the PDF for $19.99 and the hardcover from $45. The printed Fortune Deck is $15.49: 66 cards covering the Fortune, Abyssal Sorcery and Scenario decks plus quick reference cards.
Clear a 4’ × 3’ table. Set some fantasy terrain on it and deploy at least 16” apart.

More on the site: my entry for Children of Gomb, a Hobgoblin community hobby challenge. It starts at Starting My Entry for Children of Gomb and ends at I Finished the Daemon Prince. Hobgoblin is also on our solo and co-op gaming resources list.