Disclaimer: The Following review is from the perspective of a hobby newcomer(ish...2021), so my interests in this specific type of game might not be aligned with yours...
Hobgoblin is not, despite some efforts made in the lore and such, a good replacement for Warhammer Fantasy Battles. Mike's game is something new and interesting, and it's built around creating certain experiences. If you don't mind four-hourhammer then this game's dedication to fast playing might miss you. If you're really into frontage maximization and not being allowed to make attacks unless your man is touching another model's base then this game's appeal might go over your head. Those aren't bad things, however, and I like those games for what they do.
Thankfully, Hobgoblin isn't that. It feels like it's that at times, what with the "large blocks of troops" focus, rolling a double handful of d6s at minimum and of course having phased combat, but- well let me get my preamble out of the way first.
Hobgoblin is a mass-battle rank and flank wargame developed by the creator of Gaslands, a car combat skirmish game. It's great. Not what we're on about today, however. As I said in the intro, this game, while having the trappings of various other Rank and Flank minis-agnostic games has managed to carve itself out a new niche, and it's a great niche. It's not all perfect, but it does a lot of stuff well.
Force Creation
In Hobgoblin!, players build forces by choosing a handful of generic options like light/heavy infantry/cavalry, monster, war wagon, chariot, etc and then assign special skills to them to bling them out and make them stronger. All of them have a special to-hit chart that works well and is easy to read. Instead of a more traditional "if they have x (stat), then they hit on y (dice result)" table, it's a "unit type hits unit type on dice result)" which is a bit easier to read. The special skills increase cost, and you can mitigate the costs back down by taking on a maximum of two negative skills, things that make you take damage if you aren't fighting, for example, or things that make you take damage when you roll ones. You can use this to make armies that are similar to the ones you use in games, as is Mike's goal, but I think it'll be more for fluffy, narrative games. Obviously this is similar to other RnF games, because you can put a really powerful super-monster in to the game, but if the FlyingWizardGodzilla that also manages to charge like a truck dies on round 2, then now that's 1/5 of your forces, and the person who built sensible normal army comps is laughing.
Units of troops are basically a base, like a piece of foamcore or lasercut MDF. There's three kinds of bases - wide, which can be anywhere between eight inches wide and six deep to as small as 4 inches wide by 1.5 inches deep and anything in between - narrow, which is as large as four inches wide and six inches deep to as small as 40mm square(!!!) and Horde - which is 8 inches square or goes as small as 6 inches wide and 4 inches deep. This means you can cut from foamcore or mdf/3dprint some trays that are 6x4 and be completely well served by this, since the advantage is always, always smaller units, being easier to maneuver and having harder to flank. Some games come with pre-made stands, like Runewars and Conquest - these are basically a straight port into hobgoblin.
Battles
You cast your spells, they cast their spells. You move your men, they move their men, you roll for attacks, they roll for attacks. It's a good compromise between alternating activations and you go, I go gameplay. There are no saves. There is no rolling to see if you spellcasting actually works, and spells are chosen from a small list of 9 different lores, most of which have 3. (There is, sadly, no counter-spelling) These spells typically work in buffing your units or debuffing the enemies you're fighting. Naturally there's a healing focused one as well and an undead-summoning one. Buffing is about slapping on traits(the positive skills mentioned above). So in a Warhammer game, you might go "ah yes, you gain the ability to auto-damage on nat sixes until the end of your next turn" in this game you'll typically gain a trait, usually a +1 to courage(health) or strikes(attacks) and things like that or they'll be temporarily larger and such. On top of this, spells have no limit except how many mana/mercury tokens you have. It feels very much like a Magic the Gathering system but once they're spent, they're gone. You get more based on every 1000 points you still have in your army, and one for each wizard in your army, and then you get two(or a fortune card) when a unit of yours dies(in most cases). Save up your tokens for the big spells(6 mana) or use the perfectly fine buffs for quick and easy victories. I will say that losing men granting you mana doesn't actually do a great job as a catchup mechanic, but it's thematic and flavorful and it feels good - but if you're losing by a lot, like losing 3 units in a turn, the six mana isn't going to make a huge difference.
Moving your ranked up guys is pretty easy. Wheeling an inch per move, blowing half your move to pivot on the spot in any direction, shuffling side to side or backwards, paying the enormous cost of a movement point per half inch.
So that's ranking, but what do we do about the flanking? Well, for one, if your frontage (or even just a gingerly little corner) is touching another enemy's base, you are engaged with them. Being engaged to multiple foes causes a splitting of your assignable dice - without decent buffs, every baseline unit in the game rolls 10d6 to attack, and if you're engaged by three guys, you have to split your attacks between three guys - who all each, if unengaged, get to pour all of their attacks into you. On top of this, it's 5 dice maximum of enemies on the side, and three to the rear for the defender, meaning if the enemy flies a powerful dragon behind them and hits your unit, you do get to fight back, correct, but you will have a much smaller chance of making that dragon pay. So there's a large advantage to moving correctly, and you are rewarded very well for it.
Finally, there's shooting before we get to combat resolution, and shooting is perhaps a bit weaker than in other games? You can assign a maximum of five doom(wounds) to a unit that's been shot, cannot shoot through your own men, or while engaged. It's definitely more of a "soften them up" role and if you're thinking of rows and rows of massed bowmen a la elves, you're going to find that you really probably only want two or three.
Combat resolution is done by "everyone gets to attack" so there's no initiative to keep track of when fighting. You attack, count hits, place doom, play fortune cards, and then the process is repeated for the other side, so in a lot of ways, it's like Battletech - initiative matters more for movement than anything else.
Finally, the doom phase. So "doom" is just "wounds and panic" here, and it's represented as a die or tokens. Most units have 10 "courage" which is effectively your health, so it's still themed around making your enemy rout by panicking them, not killing them. The Horde unit, by the way, has 20, so those 8x8 blocks are basically there to sit on an objective and be annoying for a couple rounds. Double if you're healing them. Units with the same or more doom than courage are removed, friendlies near them get a doom, and you collect your mana or fortune cards, then you do it again.
I guess I should explain the fortune cards. They're basically a small pool with many copies of useful effects like stealing initiative, not getting broken(dying) for a turn regardless of how much doom you have. You get one a turn, and can trade them(and mana, for that manner) for a re-roll of a single die, but they're just so useful, but again, no so useful that you can completely reverse the turn of the battle.
And I think, that's where Hobgoblin! shines. It's got lots of mechanics to keep getting absolutely fuckin' tabled interesting. It also is decidedly **not** like Warhammer Fantasy Battles and isn't really trying to be, despite the various nods in the lore. This is not One Page Rules, you should not come here to play "Not-Warhammer" because you don't like GW, which I think is a strength it has over OPR, since that game is way too much like Warhammer to truly ever become great, or really, ever it's own thing, and Hobgoblin! is mostly it's own thing, both mechanically and flavorfully. This is game where you can expect most of your army to get destroyed and still win, which has led to people wondering if it's even possible to do campaign play in this system, since it's so deadly, and you're not able to mitigate attacks being thrown your way like you can in WHFB with initiative and things like that.
There are some downsides, and this is mostly in the setting he has come up with. There's a bit too much leaning on the "anything can happen here" which means there's not..really any lore at all, since the lore is basically about there being 13 magical artifacts that are cursed, but you can use them to basically wish entire armies, species etc into existence, which is great, but it would be nice if there was some more flavor here. Keeping it vague prevents you from writing yourself in a corner but come on my man!! There's also a weird thing he does when he does add lore - he'll call things names like "Ice Elves" or "Copper Dwarves" and these are not a good way to spark the imagination - for example, if you're doing Warhammer and the game mentions Kislev, they say Kislev. They don't say "And up to the north Fantasy Russia fights an eternal war against The Eye Of Terror, but Cold." They say that Kislev is constantly defending itself against the seemingly infinite warband incursions of the Chaos Wastes. Mike...needs to explore the setting more. What does the ability to wish up legions of soldiers mean, man? I digress. It should be a testament to what an excellent game Hobgoblin! is that my biggest issues are the flavor, and Mike's unwillingness to actually develop an IP here, but he should, because he's got the chance to have straight up gold.
The biggest indicator of why I thought this game was awesome was because when I got destroyed, I didn't have to think about things I liked to make up for the pain of losing like I did for GW's offerings, I just hopped into their app and changed things. "That didn't work, let's try this. This worked, let's buff that. That wasn't super effective, so it can go." At the end of the day, I really just want to play Hobgoblin! again, and I can't really think of a single better endorsement for the title.
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