by Peter Robbins, 4 February 2026
War In Spain is a wargame that screams passion project. And I say that with utmost respect. It’s a work of love that I think deserves your attention. It’s not necessarily the prettiest game on the planet, but you can tell there was a lot of effort put into it. It is a little rough around the edges, sure, but so is any solo project that has been a decade in the making from what I can tell, at least until Matrix helped produce the end results, was likely a one person development wargame. And the fact that is the case, and the developer saw it to this release point, is honestly, amazing. Now, with this said, will it be everyone’s cup of tea? Possibly not, but let’s pull back the curtain on a passion project that deserves your attention.
One quick applause; the music is outstanding. I absolutely love the crackling sounds of the old Victrola records playing. Really well done. Really sets the mood throughout. Exactly what you want in a sound track.
What’s In The Box?!
There is a main scenario (the full shmeal) of the War In Spain ‘36-’39 that covers the years of operations, and a handful of smaller scenarios that bring you into the War In Spain piecemeal. I 1000% suggest you finish the smaller scenarios first, before endeavoring into the full monty. Let yourself fail miserably (in my case) in the smaller scenarios, read the manal, fail again, read it some more, and then read it yet again, fail horrifically. That, unfortunately, is my MO, and I have to imagine that most readers approach wargaming : ) similarly if you are anything like me. I never said I was any good at these damn games! But darn it I enjoy trying.
Here is a listing of the available scenarios below.
click images to enlarge
Gameplay & Mechanics
I’m going to use the Battle Of Madrid 1936 scenario as the backdrop for walking through the basic Mechanics of War In Spain, and well as a walk through of the Gameplay as a whole. In this way you see around a bit, but also get a feel for how a typical turn plays out. I’m not going to show tactics, as I don’t have any quite yet in this particular game. I will use some basics from my wargaming experiences but the intent here is to just pull back the curtain and show you what you get with this product, not how to win.
Just so you have an idea of what generally is going on in this scenario, here is the full briefing pieced together from multiple scrolling windows worth of text below.
Please note that my comments will be mostly in the images. Make sure to maximize the screenshots to see my explanation of what you are looking at.
I’ll get into some mechanics by way of pics with comments soon below, but let’s talk about the main mechanics of interacting with each unit. The “LCU List” is a collapsible window that includes a primary window section at its top, and then any number of individual LCU or “land combat units” listed underneath. Each unit has the following basic characteristics shown in that listing:
LCU List Card
The type, Attack Value (computed), Experience Points, Force count, Fatigue level, Morale level, Disruption and supply level along the left side of the unit “card” for lack of a better term. In the middle, you are able to set whether you are wanting Replacements or Upgrades to automatically flow towards this particular unit. By default these are Off until you indicate you want them On. Two selectors to keep a good eye on are the Combat Mode and the Operations Mode. This is one of two places in the UI where you can set this for a unit. You can also set it, along with an Attack Type settings at the LCU Detail level, described in the next section below.
LCU Detail
Above is what you are provided as you click on the [Details] button on the unit card in the LCU List. You’ll notice that you can still see the Operation and Combat Mode settings here as well. Slightly more granular information in the full detail, including a photo of the unit.
Operations Mode & Combat Mode
These modes are worth knowing more about, as its the meat and bones of how your units “behave”. Moving your units around is not enough. You need to know how to set them up for success. And I’m in no way an expert on the Tactics overall (yet). But here are the manual sections on these modes to help you understand them a bit more before digging into the whole manual.
I also had a chat with my little friend ChatGPT 5.2 on this topic, and it came up with this little guide (not fully vetted**)1
Worth Reviewing
- YouTube Playlist worth watching!
- A great AAR by who I assume to be the main dev
- Another great AAR!
- Main community forum
- Another decent first play tutorial
The orange line in the above pic is in-game. The white text is my comments. As you plan a move, the organ dotted path morphs to use roadways and bridges where it can. The only thing I’ve not found is a button to easily see ALL paths at once.
Campaign Shots
A few additional main campaign scenario shots, with some additional observations about mechanics and gameplay are below. In the full campaign, this is where you’ll see naval task groups included in the unit listings. They have their own buttons for looking through those units apart from the land bases.
Final Thoughts & First Impressions
The long and short of War In Spain, is that if you put the time into it, it’ll give you back detail in spades. You need to genuinely like this format of wargame to get the most out of it. If you enjoyed War In The Pacific Admiral’s Edition, War In The East 1 & 2, and War In The West, I have no doubt you’ll enjoy this wargame. It is a labor of love and a clear homage to the Grigsby series of wargames. War In Spain is squarely into the grognard’s paradise style of game where you are given an overall situation more than an overly detailed briefing with much in the way of pop-up updates or any form of general staff suggestions. You kind of have to dig through situational report menu items to see the exacting results of what happened during the last turn, but it’s there, and it’s generally useful. The Show AAR on Map option is a nice helper for this. I found this later in the hotlist key and that helps visualize where most of the action was last turn. You then mouse-over the little icons it adds, and its a tiny bit easier to see the big picture unfold.
What is very interesting was this statement in the User Manual. When I first saw the game in play I absolutely thought it re-used the original code from War In The Pacific and augmented it. I’m glad I took the time to read the manual before doing this article.
I absolutely need more time in this game to properly investigate and test this out as far as the deepness of the AI as described above. It’s an intriguing concept, that each unit has basically a small mind of its own, instead of some baseline sets of patterns of logic or pre scripting movements and such and so on, as a typical enemy in most computer wargames. Anyhoo, for me personally, the jury is out on how good the AI is. The game’s AI did not appear in the 10 hours+ I’ve been able to put in so far to just use a pre plotted pattern, I’ll give it that thus far. But I’m not quite ready to say the overused statement of “it’s got a lot under the hood”. The proof will be in further pudding eating.
TL;DR is that it is a very detailed representation of the War In Spain, which offers a much more manageable amount of troops and scale and scope of operations to manage than its spiritual ancestors, the Grigsby “War In” lines of wargames.
TL;DR is that it is a very detailed representation of the War In Spain, which offers a much more manageable amount of troops and scale and scope of operations to manage than its spiritual ancestors, the Grigsby “War In” lines of wargames.
The UI is well, a bit all over the place for lack of polite terms. But, once you read the manual and get used to where things are at, it’s not that bad. The reporting you need to make decisions is there, but it’s a bit buried and difficult to sift through. There is not a lot in the way of AI general staff involved in this game, and not many games do either. But there was potentially a missed opportunity here to expand the boundaries of providing a more military planning approach to wargaming. I say that in that the AI Enemy seems to have a better decision-making capability than you may have as a player. I could easily see this perhaps in the future morphing into offering more of a back and forth communication about the decisions the player can and should make in a typical turn.
But, for now, that’s not there. You have to dig around for the information in a somewhat cluttered UI and piece it all back together into a semblance of a set of intel to act from. In some cases, like for seeing logistics spending, you even have to keep manually writing down what their supply was at the last turn to really know if its getting a good level of supplies now and over sets of turns or not. Just little things like that. War In Spain is a very old school wargame. It does have a nice map, looks good at all levels, but most of the overlays are a bit clunky in their mechanisms. Not to a greatly disparaging level, but enough to feel incongruent a bit with the detail of the map itself. It’s odd to describe. This feels like the opposite of a game that was released too soon, it’s almost like a game that was released too late.
WITH THAT SAID, I love it. I’ve been playing the heck out of it. A lot more than I can say for its spiritual ancestors. I think the subject matter is perfect for this level of detail of a wargame, as the total number of units is manageable, and the size of the area of operations is also equally manageable. Also, the scenario involved is quite fluid and exciting as its shifts a good bit even over some of the smaller scenarios. Unique reinforcements arrive in the nick of time for both the Republicans and the Nationalist sides.
War In Spain is one to get if you consider yourself a grognard, and you are a fan of the Grigsby games of old and newer varieties. It’s a slightly more intuitive interface than those games of old, but does not have the crispness of the newer updated War In The East 2 engine that I was honestly expecting to see be used in this game.
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