by MarcM, 15 December 2025
Take on the role of a Roman praetor and put the Iberian Peninsula under Roman rule in Hispania, from designer Miquel Marqués and publisher Draco Ideas. Can you and your fellow generals put down the revolts spreading through the region or will the might of Rome be buried by the resistance of the Hispanic tribes?
Miguel Marqués was kind enough to give me an interview about Hispania last year when it was on Gamefound, so when Draco Ideas offered a copy of the finished Hispania to try, I was eager to see how it came together. I had browsed through the rulebook for the interview, so I had an idea of the game system, but it was great to actually play through some games and see how it all works.
What Is Hispania?
click images to enlarge
Hispania is a one- to three-player cooperative strategy game with the goal of bringing the Hispanic tribes of the Iberian Peninsula under the control of the Roman Empire. Whether you play solo or with friends and family, you take on the roles Roman generals, while the Hispanic tribes run through a couple of simple decision trees. Simple but relentless. My first few games at medium difficulty were surprisingly challenging. That means I lost.
Game pieces represent Roman generals and garrisons and Hispanic armies and revolts. Movement is point to point between cities in eight provinces. Action points (in the form of coins, or denarii) govern what you can do each turn. The timeline covers nearly 200 years and a round of play covers about 18 years.
What’s in the Box
This is a compact game – it could be carried on vacation or to a friend’s house – but it’s full of nice components:
- A mounted board that folds out to about 16-1/2 by 12-1/2 inches
- Three wood Roman general meeples
- Five wood disc garrisons for each general
- Three Hispanic army meeples
- 22 revolt discs
- Five rods representing roads
- Eight denarii to spend for action points
- Two dice, one for the Romans and one for the tribes
- Rule booklets in English and French, with color illustrations, examples, and a player’s aid.
There are extra components for game variants, including a fourth Roman general, a special Roman garrison, and a special Hispanic army.
Gameplay Basics
Hispania expands on the system from Tetrarchia, an earlier release from Marqués, taking advantage of a difficulty matrix that allows lots of customization. At the start of the game, you determine the complexity by varying the number of action points, garrisons, fleets, and roads Rome has to work with and the number of armies available to the tribes.
Each Hispanic province begins with one to three revolts in a city. Some provinces have an army to fight the Romans and spread revolts. The Roman players start in their provinces and on one of the fleets. The game runs in a series of rounds made up of Roman and Hispanic turns.
The Roman Turn
The Roman general can spend denarii to move, place and remove garrisons, besiege cities in revolt, or fight an army. Movement is along segments (or fleets) at a cost of one denarius per segment. There might be one, two or three segments between cities. Rome can place a few roads during setup to make travel more economical, but there are only a handful.
Garrisons provide combat support, but you need to save some to garrison the province capitals. Once a general is adjacent to a city under revolt, he can pay one to three denarii to besiege it and attempt to remove the revolt. Combat is a die roll plus modifiers versus the shield value of the city (1 to 6). Each denarius adds to the roll, as does each garrison connected to the general. A general in a space connected to the revolt doubles the combat factor. A Hispanic army connected to the revolt doubles the city shield value. A Roman victory removes one revolt. Remove them frequently. You need to clear a province to take the capital toward victory and, perhaps more critically, once all revolts are on the board, you’re probably about to lose.
Attacks against a Hispanic army are similar to sieges. Tally one to three denarii and your garrisons, add them to the die roll, and double the number if you have a general reinforcing you. The defending army gets a die roll, plus a modifier for each connected revolt. And, if a Hispanic army can reinforce, the defender’s combat factor doubles. Victory removes the army from the board so they can’t sow revolts (at least for a bit) and removes all revolts from the city. A loss removes the general from the board, and you lose a denarius toward recruiting a new army until he returns on his next turn.
The Hispanic Phase
After a general has a turn, the Hispanic tribes have a go. A die roll determines the city for a potential revolt. An empty city gets a revolt disc. If you have a general or garrison in the city, the revolt stays off the board. That’s good. You never want all the discs to be on the board. If there’s already a revolt in the city, things can go from bad (add another revolt) to worse (if there’s a Hispanic army not on the board, place it in the city).
In the Hispanic movement phase, each army attempts to move to a new city in its province. If the city is empty, you add a revolt. Once the entire province is in revolt, the army can move to an adjacent province to spread more dissension. If a Roman general or garrison blocks the army, the army attacks the general or besieges the garrison.
If you need to place a revolt during the Hispanic phase but none are available, you lose. There are 22 revolts and at least six start on the board. At high difficulty, three Hispanic phases each round could spawn a total of 12 new revolts. If you’re unlucky (or a poor general) the game can be over very quickly.
After the end of the Hispanic phase, the next Roman general starts his turn, followed by another Hispanic phase and so on.
End of Round and Next Round
After the third Hispanic phase, the turn marker advances and you place a revolt disk on the previous turn space. If there are no discs to place, you lose. And here’s one more thing to keep in mind. The longer it takes to conquer Hispania, the more discs you add to the turn track and the fewer there are for the Hispanic phase.
Victory in Hispania
Rome wins when each province has a garrison in its capital and is free of revolts. The Hispanic tribes win if they survive until the end of the final round or if the game calls for a new revolt, but all are already on the board.
Thoughts and Impressions
Hispania is easy to pick up. Fifteen pages in a small booklet tell you everything you need to know to play. It has a small footprint (basically the game board and maybe the manual). And it’s a modest time commitment of about an hour or less. The shortage of action points make gameplay quick and challenging. As part of the system, combat is simple and effective. Do I want to devote three denarii to a nearly certain victory in a siege or can I afford to save a few and remove a second or third revolt. Or maybe I need to devote my denarii to getting in position to support another general. And of course, the randomness of each Hispanic phase adds a nice touch. It means you never know whether your plans will work anyway.
Over two hundred variations for difficulty will really add to replayability and make it easier introduce a newcomer to strategy gaming. Plus, there are seven game variants, ranging from adding an extra general to giving the tribes an army that doubles its own combat factor. And there are seven historical scenarios, each with recommendations of variants to try.
The rules are simple, but I struggled a few times interpreting them. I’m not totally sure I understood how the chains of garrisons and revolts work in every situation or what happened when multiple generals or armies can reinforce an attack. But, the examples are helpful and I figured it out in the end. I’m also not used to an abstract scale like that of Hispania.
While I enjoy the gameplay, I find it just a bit difficult to feel like I’m playing an actual conflict, but that’s likely my lack of experience and a good reminder I need to diversify my gaming. These are minor quibbles in an otherwise smooth experience.
The cooperative nature of the game is really enjoyable. There were times I wanted to attack an army with a long chain of supporting revolts. Planning for a general to besiege a city and cut that chain off while positioning a third to reinforce my attack created a huge shift in the chance of success.
And by design, the system works well for solo play. But I think having one or two people to strategize with is where you’ll find the most fun. I can see this being a game my family is willing to learn, both because it’s accessible and because everyone can work together and strategize to a common end. And who knows, maybe, that’ll build their interest in other strategy games.
You can chat about this game in the Pre-Gunpowder section of our discussion forums
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