by Migvel

At the beginning of the second century BCE, the Republic of Rome has just defeated its greatest nightmare, Hannibal. After annexing the Carthaginian possessions on the Mediterranean coast of Hispania, Rome organizes them into the provinces Ulterior and Citerior, then orders the corresponding praetors to complete the conquest of the whole peninsula, which is inhabited by tribes without cohesion — but these Hispaniards turn out to be a formidable enemy...

This is the introduction that sets you up for my new challenge: Hispania, a co-operative game in which 1-3 players take the role of all the praetors and consuls that Rome sent to Hispania for almost two hundred years, until the first emperor Caesar Augustus culminated the conquest and incorporated Hispania into his brand new empire.

The Idea

This game is special to me because it is my first design on request! The idea arose following the great success of my previous game Tetrarchia. Those who don't know it may check my two designer diaries on the original nestorgames version and the reimplementation by Draco Ideas, a Spanish publisher of light wargames, as well as the video covering both diaries. In brief, Tetrarchia was first published in 2015 and went out of print in early 2021...but only for a few days! I immediately signed a new contract with Draco Ideas, which has published two editions so far and is presently printing the third one.

This partnership is working so well that Draco Ideas asked whether I could consider a new game using a similar engine, but set in the history of Spain. Tetrarchia is a simple co-operative wargame in which 1-4 players handle the four Emperors of Diocletian's Tetrarchy that saved the Roman Empire from the third century crisis. This historical event is very specific and leads naturally to a co-operative game against unpredictable threats, but I could not think of a similar event in Spanish history, and thus my first answer was "No"!

But no one had ever requested a design from me, so I agreed to consider the case. While reading about the history of Spain, I stopped at the Roman conquest...and not just because Romans were involved! I realized that this was a relatively unknown episode, full of exciting events and characters, in which the Roman armies led by the different praetors and consuls suffered unpredictable threats in their advance inland. My answer became "Why not?" — it deserved a try.

As you may guess, it did work, and in this diary I will go through the main parts of the process. During the final steps of the design, I covered the game's development in design notes on the game's BGG page:

• Design notes (1): This is not Tetrarchia
• Design notes (2): The map
• Design notes (3): What have the Romans ever done for us?
• Design notes (4): Famous characters

I am going to summarize these posts below, but if you are curious for more details, you will find them at the links above.

1. This Is Not Tetrarchia

Tetrarchia's success was the reason for this new idea, but it was also a handicap. I didn't want to design "Tetrarchia on another map"; it had to feel unique. I needed to change many things anyway because a defensive engine had to become offensive. Would it work, and if so, would it be challenging and fun on its own?

Tetrarchia has simple rules without values, tables, or cards — only a few wooden meeples and discs, plus two dice. You spend action points on a few basic actions, with all the information needed on the board. However, these actions combine in subtle ways to create a variable and deep challenge. Four parameters can take three values each, leading to 81 difficulty levels! Finally, the game is co-operative with open information, so it can also be played solitaire with exactly the same rules. (The four Emperors are always in play.)

Starting from those roots, I identified the mechanisms that I could not use, the ones I should modify, and the new ones I would need — and I decided to take advantage of the latter two categories to improve the game system. I removed the (few) exceptions, I simplified the movement and the "bad" pieces (only revolt), and all the rules related to Emperors entering revolt are gone since Roman meeples cannot enter revolt. The result is a game that is (even) easier to learn, with a shorter rulebook.

Then I replaced the action points with physical coins, which are easy to track and now usable in attacks. This adds tension because you can reinforce a given attack at the price of not being able to do other things. Finally, these coins have entered the difficulty table, so now the combinations are 3 to the power of 5: 243!


I added Roman roads, which enhanced dynamism when moving through the huge block of land while portraying the progressive Romanization of the peninsula. With only revolts, I needed to find a new dimension of an increasing sense of threat, and I did it literally: height, with you being able to pile up three discs per space! Moreover, revolts are removed by attack, with you needing to roll more than their shield value, so an automatic action in the previous game is now a gamble. Important cities cost more, and you can invest your coins in these sieges, or not. The design has more tension from the decision of effort investment and from the rolls...


I changed the movement of armies with a more subtle, random mechanism that is better thematically but also mechanically. Then I added mid- and endgame tension by removing a revolt every round, placed the removed revolt on a time scale that added to the historicity, and decided to end the game after the two hundred years that the conquest lasted. Extremely long games are impossible, adding even more tension! Finally, the game is for 1-3 players who always handle the two praetors and the consul. This changes a lot the way in which the Romans co-operate, which they must, even more than in Tetrarchia. You cannot move in couples, so the decisions to see who supports whom represent a real dilemma.


2. The Map

Map lovers should click on the corresponding design note above for the details!

As in Tetrarchia, I wanted a simple map, without distractions, that's readable at a glance and evokes the historical period. First, I sketched the playing area (left picture). There were the two Roman coastal provinces, Ulterior (farther from Rome) and Citerior (closer), and due to the two-dice mechanism the rest should be cut in six areas holding six cities each, thus requiring them to be of similar size. I found the envelope of the whole Hispania in a map of the era (center picture), and I started to distort it towards a more rectangular shape, closer to the board proportions and with a more efficient occupation of space (right picture):


Now that I had the frame, I "just" needed to find the 6x6 Hispanic cities! I used many sources, but this one-shot picture of a map that had evolved over two hundred years required many (subjective) compromises. Helpfully, once I had placed and named all the board cells, the nature of the links was, as in Tetrarchia, dictated by the geography, an advantage of historical maps — and this is an almost final version that I used for the VASSAL module:


By the way, you will see that the board (and game) is language independent, with all of the names in Latin — even the game title! If you can read any of the available rulebooks (English, Spanish, and French), you can play the game. This is the back cover of the English rulebook, with a reminder of everything you need to know, variants included!


3. What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

At an early stage of the design, I went through some ethical doubts. Those who recognize the quote from Monty Python's Life of Brian may already see what I mean, the others should watch this hilarious excerpt!

Whenever I start designing a wargame, I read books on that war, then try to find links between its global features and game mechanisms. This exploration phase is the part of the design I enjoy the most! In the case of the Roman conquest of Hispania, I had a global knowledge, although somehow indirect and partial due to the few dedicated books. Was this conquest really so uninteresting?

I started to zoom in. I located the main events in space and time, then searched for details, and finally read Joao Aguiar's novels on Viriatus and Sertorius to infer the feelings that the leading characters might have experienced, something important in my designs. This progressive zoom started to build in me a very cruel picture of the conquest! Of course it was war as conducted two thousand years ago, but the war in Hispania was particularly cruel. Many praetors and consuls came to provoke the local tribes to war for the plunder and the associated triumph — and sometimes war didn't even "officially" start, with the treacherous breaking of treaties leading to the massacre of whole populations. (The corresponding design note above gives examples.) The Romans themselves were horrified and tried some of theirs back in Rome.

Roman historians estimated the total Hispanic deaths in the millions, and Rome vanquished its greatest enemies, Viriatus and Sertorius, only by bribing officers to assassinate them. At that point, I wasn't willing to design a game in which players would handle those Romans, and being a Spaniard myself did not make things feel any better...

I explored a radical change, make players handle the Hispaniards, but mechanically it would not work, leading me to consider abandoning the design! But I kept reading and tried to put things into context. In those two hundred years some Romans were capable of terrible things, but most of them were not. In fact, many of them defended the Hispanic tribes and carried their cause to Rome.

I also learned that extreme cruelty was not only to be found on the Roman side; there were many episodes on the Hispanic side, too. Hispania did not exist as a whole before the Romans came, the peninsula was full of tribes that fought each other in the (cruel) ways of the era, tribes that could hardly unite even to face the Romans. In a sense, the Romans "founded" Hispania, establishing (at a high price) one single first entity on the whole peninsula. For centuries to come, the survivors would stop fighting each other and would live in peace, becoming an important part of the Empire that gave birth to famous Roman characters like Seneca, Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius. As Monty Python said:

4. Famous Characters

The Roman conquest of Hispania is not well-known, but if you enter the game, you will be surprised (as I was) by all the Roman (and Hispanic) strong characters who shaped this piece of history. Many famous Romans, some better known for the things they did elsewhere, spent part of their lives in Hispania. This made me want to include them in the game through variants and historical scenarios. Scipio Africanus himself fought the prelude to the conquest right before his last battle against Hannibal, as depicted in the GameFound bonus scenario. Other famous Roman generals, like Cato the Elder, Scipio Aemilianus or Decimus Junius Brutus, led their main campaigns in Hispania and have their scenario, too.

On the Hispanic side, Viriatus was "the terror of the Romans", a true nightmare for Rome, and he deserved both a variant (Terror) and a scenario. The Hispano variant that makes the game competitive and opens it up to four players was also inspired by him. Sertorius was half Roman and half Hispano, so I have not included him yet because I want to find a more "sophisticated" (yet not complex) way to reflect this duality. I guess I will write a scenario for him in the future, in a magazine, for example.

And the two most famous characters are Caesar and Augustus! The former came to Hispania when he was young and yet unknown as a praetor, then he fought some of his civil war battles in Hispania. His impact on the conquest process was thus small, which made me decide to leave him out of a game about the conquest. On the other hand, Augustus concluded the conquest and thus "concludes" the game! His scenario (The new Empire) lets players enjoy the endgame in a shorter way, although still eventful, with special powers and legions.

The Final Game

Draco Ideas launched Hispania on Gamefound in April 2024, and the campaign was a great success! The game has now reached most of the backers, is available at Draco Ideas' shop, and soon will be in other shops.

I am doubly happy because this first edition of Hispania is accompanied by the third edition of Tetrarchia, still popular ten years later. (I was afraid it would become out of print again, possibly for more than a few days.) Draco Ideas has gone over the top, as usual, and for a moderate price they have succeeded in including metal denarii, an A3-sized board that folds twice so that the box is as small as Tetrarchia's (A5), large discs that pile up very well, beautiful meeples, many variants and scenarios...



The game is being published in both English/Spanish and English/French versions by Draco Ideas, then in German and Italian by two other publishers. (Other versions are being discussed.) As shown above, we also have a VASSAL module that we will make available soon, once the game arrives, and that has been useful for all of the demonstration videos we have recorded. Of course, if you want to get a better idea of the game, go check the rulebooks and other material that we have uploaded to the game page.

Thanks for reading, and I hope some of you will soon enjoy the game!

Miguel Marqués

P.S. Did you know that September, October, November and December are based on the Latin words for seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth, but arrive two months later in the year because of Hispania? The location, that is, not the game.

The calendar year used to start in March with the campaign season, when praetors and consuls were nominated. (There were twelve months already, with the fifth and sixth still named "Quintilis" and "Sextilis", with February being the twelfth month.) But for the first time, war was conducted far from Italy, and armies arrived too late to Hispania. The consuls asked to shift the nominations and thus the start of the year two months earlier — to January — in order to be already operational in Hispania for the war season. Apparently they were not bothered by the resulting incoherence in the names of the newly last months!