Every small and indie wargame worth knowing about. Once a month.
What the indie wargaming scene made, released, funded, and argued about this month. New rules, crowdfunding worth backing, reviews, design writing, and hobby guides, gathered from across the community into one email on the first Tuesday of the month.
First issue goes out Tuesday, October 6, 2026. Monthly, never more. Unsubscribe in one click. Substack sends the email, so that's where the button takes you.
What's in an issue
The same sections in the same order every time, so you can skim it in a few minutes. Almost all of it points to other people's work. That's the point: the scene is bigger than any one channel, and most of it is hard to find unless you're already looking.
One line per link. A quote when the quote is the interesting part. No essays.
- Crowdfunding and pre-orders
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Live campaigns and short pre-order windows, with the dates they close. Ranked by whether they are worth your money, not by how big they are.
For example: Denizens of Dreadwood resin pre-order for Motley Crews, open one week.
- New and free rules
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Free rulesets, fan supplements, expansions, print-and-play, and pay-what-you-want releases.
For example: DWARF, a name-your-price solo hex crawl from Tavern Lore.
- Sales and deals
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Wargame Vault, MyMiniFactory, Humble bundles, studio sales. Only the ones that are actually good.
For example: A studio bundle at 40% off, or nothing if there was nothing.
- Reviews and play reports
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Other people playing indie games and writing honestly about it. Blogs, videos, forum threads worth your time.
For example: A three-part play report of a Trench Crusade campaign.
- News and culture
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Releases, reprints, things going out of print, competitions, studio news, and the occasional argument.
For example: BONEZONE 2026 is open; entries close on Halloween.
- Design and theory
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Writing about how skirmish games work: activation, campaigns, balance, what makes a ruleset feel good.
For example: Why alternating activation breaks at six models.
- Hobby and painting
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Guides, recipes, terrain, tools. Mostly from other people, occasionally from me.
For example: A bone recipe using blue and orange ink under airbrushed skin tone.
- From the Hobbinomicon
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Two or three links to what I made this month: a video, a guide, what got added to the game directory. Kept short on purpose.
For example: A new game in the directory and the video that goes with it.
Who's writing it
I'm Matt. I run The Hobbinomicon: a directory of indie miniature wargames, painting and hobby guides, and a YouTube channel where I paint something almost every day. The newsletter is the part of that where I read everything the scene put out this month and hand you the pieces worth your time.
Everything here is written by a person. No generated summaries, no auto-scraped link dumps. If something's in the email, I read it or watched it first.
The deal
- Once a month. If a month is thin, the issue is short. It will not be padded to fill space, and it will never turn into daily mail.
- Affiliate links exist and are marked. Where a store has an affiliate program, I use it; it costs you nothing and helps pay for this. Nobody pays to be included, and if a sponsor slot ever appears it will be labeled as one.
- Your address stays put. It goes to Substack, which sends the email, and nowhere else. Unsubscribe is one click at the bottom of every issue.
- Independent by default. The focus is small studios, solo designers, and skirmish games. Big publishers show up when they do something the indie scene cares about, not because they're big.
Get the first issue
Out Tuesday, October 6, 2026. You'd be on the list from the start.
Substack sends the email, so that's where the button takes you.