Battles For Spain

Just spent a good part of the day playing that very interesting and challenging game. I was delighted by the tough Guadalajara scenario and had a glimpse of the others too. The game has lot of interesting events (dealt with by play of cards), which show that the subject was well studied and researched. The designer has obviously a good knowledge of that war. It's hard to fight, and nothing blitz-like, you need to carefully build up and make the right moves and attacks. While also caring to your losses, which are hard to replace, and your supply lines, which can easily be cut if you are not attentive. All in all an excellent effort, worth its price. I hope they will get a deserved success and that we can, one day, get more scenarios on that rather unknown conflict. Congrats to the team, and keep up the good work.

Es de agradecer que se ofrezcan 4 batallas de la guerra civil española,totalmente traducido pero con algunos fallos anecdoticos (Yague era un general nacional no repúblicano como aparece la batalla del Ebro) y otros mas graves como que a partir del 5 turno de la batalla del Ebro humano repúblicano, el juego se bloqueo sin poder seguir moviendo unidades propias. Indicando a los desarrolladores pulan esos fallos, tan solo por la tematica y traducido al español;cuando este subsanado seguro que sera un juego muy interesante. Por lo que lo recomiendo con reservas.

¡VIVA FRANCO! Muerte a la segunda república.

El sistema de juego y el interfaz son PÉSIMOS. Lo siento mucho, sinceramente, el tema me interesaba mucho, pero el juego por las características de su modo de implementarlo es PARA NO VOLVER A JUGARLO NUNCA. Ha sido abrir, mirar las instrucciones, intentar jugar y la sensación de FRUSTRACIÖN y TOMADURA de PELO ha sido inmediata. Por favor, no innoven, HAGAN un Juego NORMAL, con las fichas de toda la vida, con un interfaz claro. Está todo inventado. Luego dirán que el problema es que 36-39 no interesa. Pues no, miren, no, no es eso.

This is a good adaptation of the Wars Across the World Spanish Civil War scenario, using the exact same game system, but at this point the game has lots of bugs, at least for me, playing in macOS. Scenarios randomly disappear from the list, becoming unavailable to play. During the Air Defense Move phase, air units get stuck moving infinitely between regions, so the scenario can't be completed. (If you try saving the game when that happens, the scenario disappears and you can't play any of your saved games for that scenario.) Even if you turn off all the sound effects, you still hear all the annoying "clicks," "swooshes" and "rattles" as you play the game, when selecting units, moving them and engaging in battle -- we MUST be able to turn all that off if we desire it, but as is, we must hear it all whether we want to or not, so that we can't listen to music while playing because our ears get blown out by the loud cheesy sound effects. Maybe after a LOT more work is put into fixing the bugs, I will give a "thumbs up" Yes recommendation, but for now, this game is pretty much unplayable. And no, I don't have time to provide the developers with copy after copy of my game files so they can troubleshoot these problems. I already did that for several WAW scenarios, eating up many hours of my time working as a playtester so they could fix bugs in that game, with no thanks, no credit, and no compensation. Won't do that again! The least they could do is provide me with some free WAW DLC but they never offered. So I'm not going to do it for this game. If they want playtesters to spend many hours to help them fix these bugs, they can find someone else, or better yet pay us for our time and give us credit for our work. Until then, I'll give this a "thumbs down" No recommendation until they fix these problems.

I love the topic and I really wanted to like this game but unfortunately this is not the case. The game is a mod of "Wars across the world" with a range of battles from the Spanish Civil War. The system does not do a particular good job portraying this conflict and the UI is cumbersome and slow (specially the management of air assets). I also saw some bugs and glitches where I had to close the application and come back. However, the worst thing is that the AI does not know how to attack. In my last scenario I played Teruel asRepublicans; the AI did not know what to do with the tons of reinforcements and a during the entire second half of the scenario (8 turns) it just tried to attak the same area a couple of times.

Hola. He adquirido este interesante juego y estoy disfrutando con él. Aún me queda mucho camino por andar, pues sólo he probado su escenario “Guadalajara 1937”, y en uno de sus bandos. Poco a poco voy aprendiendo a jugarlo y desentrañando sus reglas, que aunque no son complejas, dominarlas requiere un tiempo y algunos ensayos. Afortunadamente mantengo una ilustrativa correspondencia con su creador, que es un buen amigo y todo amabilidad y paciencia ante mis frecuentes preguntas y observaciones. El juego está en la línea de otros de su tipo que conozco (la verdad es que tampoco soy un experto), como “The Battle of the Bulge” o “Drive on Moscow”, si bien tiene importantes diferencias, como son las cartas y la forma de resolver los combates. Es bastante intuitivo, tiene la suficiente incertidumbre para hacer que cada partida no sea repetitiva, y plantea retos divertidos. Sobre todo si se cambia el nivel de la AI, que tiene tres niveles: “Básico”, “Voluntario” y “Experto”. Un ejemplo: en el escenario que cito, con nivel “Voluntario” los italianos no tienen apenas dificultad en hacerse con su objetivo. Pero cambiando a nivel “Experto” la cosa cambia radicalmente. Así que conviene ir poco a poco, que es como yo estoy yendo, y por eso aún no puedo extenderme mucho más. Tiene algunos detalles muy útiles, como las copias automáticas que hace de la partida tras cada fase de un mismo turno, de forma que si metes la pata por un error involuntario, puedes retomarlo desde la fase anterior. El sistema de movimientos también es muy ilustrativo, indicándose con ventanas emergentes los motivos de no poder realizarlo o los costes y situaciones que se crean al hacerlo. Los gráficos son correctos, y el autor ha sabido darle el “ambiente” de aquellos tiempos, tanto en las imágenes generales, como en la confección de las unidades, e incluso en las fotografías de acompañan los diversos tipos de terreno. De momento diré que me tiene enganchado, lo que no es poco ya que solo estoy comenzando. Así que no dudo en recomendarlo. Saludos

The first hour of the game was kinda puzzling, no tutorial, the manual is kinda hard to navigate from in game, you don't know when or how you'll be able to reinforce your units (you need a card), the battles look like a mystery (why do I cause a unit to flee on 0 but have damage on 1), why is there an end of turn phase if there is nothing to do during that phase, why can I have two cards sometimes and only 1 card at other times... It also has a few flaws on the interface section: - no way to set up airplane groups that last so you have to regroup the airplanes at every new phase, - setting up a course for your plane will have to be redone if you move your mouse too fast - targetting a territory has to be done on an empty space in the target province because the game tries to merge your units with the enemies if you don't do that (O_o) - the entry price is kinda steep for just 4 scenarios even if they are long (3-4h each) That being said, it's fun, enjoyable and the amount of detail brought in scenario is really nice to see. You'll slowly learn how to play with the system built for Wars Across the Worlds, the power of support, the dangers of terrain, the need for officers to launch attacks, how to cut off ennemy supply, and while you may still curse once in a while that your dice rolls are awful, the overal feeling is right and immersive. Games on the Spanish Civil War are rare and this one definitely does a good job at it once you get the hang of it. Review in french here: https://dystopeek.fr/jouer/battles-for-spain/

Good game, fun to play. Deep content without having to micromanage a lot of detail. Very impressed by documentation, particularly scenario briefings. Air Force operations are clever . One suggestion would be to incorporate a way to remove all units from battlefield to allow player to study terrain. Looking forward to additional scenarios.

Games about the war in Spain are now very rare, especially strategy games. The topic of this war is, of course, not very popular and there is quite a bit of information, but thanks to this game we can learn a lot more about it. Rating - worth to buy: (8.0 out of 10) Pros: ✅The game has a low barrier to entry, after I played the first battle, which lasted about a little over an hour, after that I was already 75 percent familiar with the game. ✅The battalions are described in detail, each has a name, its own number, HP, attack, and defense. Division/brigade commanders have their own picture with a portrait. ✅The game itself is very dynamic, where the front can change in a matter of minutes, and from an absolutely advantageous position in 2 moves it can already change to a tragic one, because enemy reinforcements will arrive (which during the escalation approach from both sides, depending on the scenario). ✅Incidents also add flavor to this game, the player chooses a card before each move and it is played as the move progresses. Bonuses to attack, which will allow you to inflict more damage on the enemy, or a bonus to defense, which will even help you avoid the battle during an enemy attack, thereby not receiving damage; in some scenarios, the game also gives cards for bombing rear areas with aircraft, which slows down the movement of the enemy, or shelling the city with siege artillery. In addition, the game also contains the usual incidents specified by the game. On winter maps, this is most often frost, which in turn, some troops to simply stand still and not move, even before can causing damage to the troops directly, for example, a storm may appear and prohibit planes from flying. ✅The visual is very nice and understandable, just look at the pictures, and there’s nothing to complain about. The map is perfectly drawn, the commanders have portraits, the soldiers are drawn perfectly, and everyone is different from each other - which is what I like most. ✅In most cases, the AI ​​works very well, trying to surround your troops, take designated positions, and breakthrough to the rear. ✅So far, not a single crash or glitch has been observed. Minuses: ❌The game is quite short, there are 4 scenarios, and each one takes 1-1.5 hours to play. If you sit still in all seriousness, then for 2-2.5 hours. Well, the game will cover you for at least 5-10 hours. ❌This minus is suitable for people who do not like board games or do not want to play them on the computer. Yes, this is a game that resembles a board game. You will need to roll dice for some cards, incidents, all battles, etc. It’s good that you get used to it very quickly and after an hour of playing - after you’ve become familiar with it - you don’t notice it. So the minus is individual for everyone. Although the developers hope someday they will make two modes, bone, and non-dice - this could attract more players. ❌I’ll also an AI, sometimes it works incorrectly, for example, it often decides to encircle your troops and thereby ends up surrounding itself, in small detachments. Or if he is ordered to occupy a city, he can encircle it, but cannot carry out a concentrated attack to end up your forces. The note: ⚡The game doesn't have a Ukrainian translation. This is not a problem for me, but take note of this.