Andy Hobday ilustrated by Steve Beckett
ABOUT ANDY
I’m a tabletop games designer, writer and publisher. I’ve been involved in the hobby for more than 40 years, worked in the industry for most of my adult life, and spent the last ten years designing games of my own.
I’m probably best known for The Barons’ War, alongside games including Test of Honour, Gangs of Rome, Mortal Gods and Warhost. Today I divide my time between my own games and worlds, and my work with Wargames Atlantic as part of its senior team.
Most of what I do still comes back to the same thing that got me into the hobby in the first place: finding an idea that makes me want to put something on the table and play.
IT STARTED WITH A BOOK
My dad bought me The Warlock of Firetop Mountain when I was a boy. I don’t suppose either of us realised quite what he had started.
That book led to games, miniatures, painting, scenery, history, fantasy and eventually a working life spent almost entirely inside the hobby. More than 40 years later I am still fascinated by the same mixture of things: a good set of rules, characterful miniatures, a battlefield that makes you want to fight over it, and the stories that come out of a game once people start rolling dice.
I have never really separated the different parts of the hobby. Games lead me into history. History gives me ideas for games. Miniatures suggest characters and factions. A piece of artwork can start a whole train of thought. Sometimes an idea sits in a notebook for twenty years before I finally find somewhere to use it.
That is still how I work.
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain by Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone. Cover artwork by Peter Jones.
Manager of Games Workshop Plaza
LEARNING THE HOBBY BUSINESS
My professional life in the hobby began at Games Workshop, where I spent fifteen years in retail and at head office in Nottingham.
It was an extraordinary education. I learned how people find their way into a hobby, how communities grow around games, how ranges are supported, and how much the experience around a game matters.
After Games Workshop I worked across project management, online retail, digital marketing and technology before joining Warlord Games in 2011. That period eventually led to Test of Honour, and to the point where game design stopped being something happening at the edges of my working life and became something I wanted to do properly.
MAKING MY OWN GAMES
In 2017 I bought the UK side of Footsore Miniatures with Mark Farr, and together we built Footsore Miniatures & Games.
Those eight years gave me the opportunity to design, publish and support games including Gangs of Rome, Mortal Gods and The Barons’ War, and to work with an extraordinary group of sculptors, artists, painters, writers and players.
The Barons’ War became the game that brought together most clearly what I wanted from tabletop gaming: history providing the reason for the battle, players caring about the people in their retinues, straightforward rules that still produce difficult decisions, and games worth talking about afterwards.
It has grown far beyond that first book and remains a huge part of what I do.
Teaching Gangs of Rome at Firestorm Games in Cardiff
WHAT I’M DOING NOW
I left Footsore in 2025 and moved into a new role with Wargames Atlantic, where I am now part of the senior team.
My work goes well beyond writing rules. I am involved in game design and development, product and range planning, direct sales, digital strategy and the wider direction of the business. It is a broad role, which suits me, because I have always been interested in how all the different parts of a hobby company fit together.
After more than 40 years in the hobby, and many of those spent working inside it, I have seen a lot of what makes games, miniature ranges and communities work well, along with plenty of examples of what does not. Wargames Atlantic gives me the opportunity to bring that experience into larger projects and contribute across the business rather than from one narrow corner of it.
Salute 2026 with Wargames Atlantic
WARHOST
Warhost is the project I have probably been carrying around the longest, even when I did not know that was what it was called.
For more than 40 years I have filled notebooks with maps, fragments of history, peoples, characters, old grudges and ideas for fantasy worlds. Some disappeared for years, some came back in different forms, and some have simply been waiting for the right place to belong.
Warhost first appeared as a fantasy sourcebook built on The Barons’ War rules, but that was only the beginning. The Age of Fractured Crowns is where those old ideas can live alongside new ones: Crownlands with their own histories, peoples shaped by past wars, beliefs, rivalries, ambitions and stories still waiting to be told.
It is a labour of love, and much more than the background for a game. It is the world I want to keep exploring, writing about and developing for years to come, with every new battle giving me another reason to discover a little more of it.
WHAT I CARE ABOUT
I like games that are easy to start playing but give you reasons to keep playing them.
I like rules that create decisions rather than arguments.
I want history to do more than tell us which colour somebody’s shield should be. I want it to give us people, places, rivalries and reasons to fight.
I want fantasy worlds to feel as though they existed before the battle started and will continue after it ends.
I want miniatures that make people want to paint them, scenarios where the objective is more interesting than simply killing everybody opposite you, and campaigns where your retinue accumulates history rather than power.
Most of all, I want games to produce moments people remember.
That has probably been the common thread through everything I have made.
Testing The Barons’ War with the playtest group
STILL A HOBBY
For all the years I have spent working in this industry, I still think of myself as someone who is involved in the hobby.
I still paint when I can. I build retinues. I collect things I almost certainly don’t need. I make notes about games when I should probably be doing something else. I get excited by a new box of miniatures, a piece of artwork or an obscure bit of history that might turn into a scenario.
And I still want to play more games than I actually manage to.
This website is where I keep all of that together: the games I am designing, the worlds I am building, things I have learned, things I am thinking about, and whatever has caught my attention next.