Seven years ago, game designer Mike Hutchinson had several titles he was developing. One was a miniatures-agnostic "rank and flank" fantasy battles game, called Hobgoblin. The other was a post-apocalyptic car combat game, called Gaslands, that used converted die cast toy cars. The latter, published by Osprey Games in 2017, was such a massive success that Hobgoblin was swamped in its wake. Until now.
Mike and Electi Studio (publishers of the wonderful Blaster game anthologies) have launched a Kickstarter to fund Hobgoblin and it looks like a whole lot of fun. It feels like good timing, too. Many of us tabletop wargamers have been so immersed in the world of small-band skirmish games for the past 7 years that a rank-based mass battles game sounds enticing again. The idea of using any miniatures you want also makes fielding a full fantasy army a little less intimidating. And with that logo-type on the cover, you know that Hobgoblin is going to be METAL \m/ \m/.
Here are some of the features of the game listed on the Kickstarter page:
- Army & Unit Creation: Build any army you can imagine, using any miniatures you want.
- Cursed Artefacts: Arcane items that bestow great power, but at a terrible cost.
- Movement: Intuitive rules for wheeling and advancing with blocks of "rank and flank" troops.
- Combat: Brutal combat ensures plenty of death, but also ensures that the units you bring into battle get a chance to fight, and fight as heroically or as devilishly as you wish.
- Abyssal Sorcery: Allows players to invoke and channel the power of abyssal gods, using Mana Tokens to cast spells and gain special abilities, represented by the selection of a school of magic.
- Fortune Cards: One-shot cards that can be played to change the odds in battle, they can be drawn at the start of each round Whenever a unit is removed as a casualty, they can be used to re-roll dice, change the target of a spell, grant bonuses to units, and other effects.
- Procedural Scenario Generation System: Hobgoblin provides a set of "Chaos of War" tables that allows you to rapidly generate a unique scenario for your battle. You can also create custom battle rules by visiting our website.
- Narrative Scenarios: The rulebook provides ways to play cinematic and asymmetrical battles, such as a fortress siege or the defence of a chasm.
- Multiplayer Rules: Play with 3 or more players, broken into teams, forcing unlikely allies to work together to achieve victory.
The Kickstarter reached its goal in 12 hours and is now over $38,000 with 23 days to go.