Andy Hobday - Profile of a Game Writer
Game Writer (andyhobday.com)
e: andy@warhost.online
Andy Hobday has spent most of his life in miniature wargaming, first as a player and collector, and later as a retailer, publisher, game designer and miniature manufacturer. At some point, the hobby got slightly out of hand and became a career.
His fascination with games began at the age of 10 with a copy of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain. The following year he discovered Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Dungeons & Dragons, beginning a lifelong involvement with tabletop gaming and, presumably, the first signs that storage space might one day become a problem.
After nine years in the hobby as a player, collector and gamer, Andy joined Games Workshop in 1992 at the age of 20, turning that obsession into a career that has now lasted more than three decades.
After 15 years with Games Workshop, Andy moved into project management, e-commerce and digital development before returning to the tabletop industry with Warlord Games in 2011. There he headed up direct sales and IT and, alongside Graham Davey, created the original Test of Honour.
In 2017, Andy fulfilled a long-held ambition by buying the UK arm of Footsore Miniatures. Together with business partner Mark Farr, he developed it into Footsore Miniatures & Games and increasingly turned his attention towards designing and publishing games. During that period, he created The Barons' War, Mortal Gods and Gangs of Rome.
Andy left Footsore in 2025, bringing that chapter of his career to a close and, against all available evidence, apparently deciding he still hadn't had enough of the wargames industry.
Today, Andy works with Wargames Atlantic, writing games and contributing as part of its senior team, drawing on the experience he has built across game design, publishing, retail, e-commerce and the wider tabletop industry.
Alongside that work, he founded Warhost Limited to develop and publish his own games and miniature ranges, and to continue building the worlds and communities that surround them. Warhost.online is the home of Warhost, a 28mm fantasy battle game powered by The Barons' War rules.
For Andy, tabletop gaming has always been about more than rules and miniatures. It is the armies people build, the stories that emerge from games, the conversations around the table and the communities that form around them that have kept him fascinated by the hobby for more than 40 years.
He lives in rural Lincolnshire with his family and, after all this time, continues to buy far too many miniatures while maintaining that each new purchase is entirely justified.