Why Here I Stand should be in your board game library and how to win with the Protestants

My current board game crush is “Here I Stand” (HIS). Specifically, I just cannot get enough of the 500^th Anniversary Edition of Here I Stand, the 2017 revised edition of Ed Beach’s classic, originally released in 2006. This game relies on the well-known “Card-driven Game” (often abbreviated as CDG) formula, pioneered by Mark Herman in 1995’s “We the People” and much iterated-upon by a variety of great designers of historical board games.

Chapter I: Here I Stand in the Context of Card-Driven Games.

CDGs allow for a basic rules framework that covers the general actions that players can take, but then allow for a ton of asymmetry and historicity by having cards serve a dual purpose: either to trigger the standard actions or to allow some special, often rule-breaking event to occur. As an example consider the game “Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage” (HRC) by Mark Simonitch, in which it is difficult for Carthage to besiege cities as a general rule, but in the actual history of the Second Punic War, Hannibal took the southern Italian city of Tarentum (modern Taranto, on the heel of the Italian boot) by subterfuge working with someone on the inside. To capture this, HRC has a special card called “Traitor in Tarentum” that allows the Carthaginian player to take Tarentum automatically, and without casualties, if it besieges Tarentum using that card. Otherwise, to take that city would involve several turns of siege rolls and lots of potential for losing troops in the process.

Beach’s CDG masterpiece focuses on the extremely momentous first half of the 16^th century, during which the world saw:

• Truly era-defining monarchs including Suleiman the Magnificant, Henry VIII, Charles V, and Pope Paul III.
• The full-flowering of the Renaissance including the works of Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian;
• The birth of new forms of Christianity starting with Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses against standard Catholic practice and dogma abd radical change in Catholicism via the Council of Trent;
• A revolution in military technology which massively raised the costs of war and parallel revolution in banking and finance that enabled the larger states of Europe to pay for these increasingly expensive means of waging war;
• The Spanish and Portuguese (and a few others) exploring (from the European perspective) new land in the Americas and Asia and then infecting those peoples with diseases and enaging in violent conquests;
• The rise of two super powers:
  • The Ottoman Empire – through the normal process of conquest as the fall of Constantinople in 1453 opened up the Danube to further Ottoman expansion into Europe;
  • The Habsburg domains, ruled by Charles V who was King of Spain and also the Holy Roman Emperor (among many other titles). Charles’s dominion was formed by a series of dynastic accidents; he inherited the lands that had been ruled by all four of his sovereign grandparents, resulting in the incredibly improbably dynastic fusion of:
    • Castille (including the recently claimed New World),
    • Aragon (including much of Southern Italy plus Sicily and Sardinia),
    • The Burgundian Netherlands (including much of modern Benelux plus big slices of the eastern parts of France stretching down to the Swiss border), and
    • The territories of Habsburg dynasty, centered on Austria and modern Slovenia, but also including much of modern-day Alsace (the part that wasn’t Burgundian) and eventually also much of modern Czechia, Slovakia, and Croatia, and a slice of modern Hungary.

(Good books on the period include Patrick Wyman’s “The Verge” and John Julius Norwich’s “Four Princes.” And if you want a very deep dive, I recommend Geoffrey Parker’s magisterial biography of Charles V, who ruled those Habsburg domains, entitled Emperor: A New Life of Charles V.”)

Beach uses this incredible, dense half-century of history to paint exquisite detail onto the straightforward simplicity of the CDG canvas. The result is mostly brilliant, occasionally frustratingly fiddly, and ever-so occasionally internally ambiguous. If you like a six-player asymmetric troops on a map with all sorts of special actions layered on top of a simple action-purchase mechanism (spend X action points (known as “CP”), do an action that costs X CP), you can love Here I Stand even without any concern for the radically transformative period of political and social change in Europe. And if you do care about the 16th century and the transition from the medieval world to modernity, then you probably can’t help but love it, even with its sometimes frustrating rulebook edge cases. So that’s the game.

Chapter II: How can this power exist in a wargame?  The curious case of Here I Stand’s Protestants

But that’s not why I am here today. Rather, I want to talk about the most asymmetric of power in the game, the Protestants, why I love them as a game-design element, and then also why I think some of the received “best way to play the Prots” is wrong. Or at least to ask players to consider other options before going with the bog-standard Protestant plan for Turn 1-4 which I think is boooooring.

Let’s talk about how amazingly odd the Protestants are in a game like this. Here I Stand has six players, each representing one of the following powers of the era: The Ottoman Empire under Suleiman the Magnificent, the Habsburg domains under Charles V, the England of Henry VIII, France under François I, the Papal States under a series of Renaissance Popes, and then the Protestants, led by … well, no one really, at least not at the start. Nominally, your leader as the Protestants is Martin Luther, and he’ll stay in charge until he dies, when he is replaced by Jean Calvin. But unlike, say, François I, who eventually may die and be replaced by his son Henri II, neither Luther nor Calvin will serve as a general to lead your troops. And in fact, for much of the game, the Protestant player is not even allowed to build troops, nor to hire mercenaries, nor to move any troops he happens to acquire through other means. Where others make war, you happy Protestants, translate the Bible.

I’m serious about this. Here is a list of the standard set of actions that the Pope can do with his action points:

You can see the Pope has some troop movement options in light green, some ways to raise new troops in light orange, some ways to take over spaces in a pinkish hue, and then some religious-looking stuff in yellow. The Pope can do all of this from the very first turn of the game. Now let’s look at the Protestant equivalent set of possible moves.

Seems pretty similar, right? The Pope can do naval things that the Protestant can’t, but other than that, they both have ways to move armies, to raise land units, to take over spaces, and then three Protestant vs. four Papal religious options. Indeed, two of those religious things (Protestants publish treatises, Catholics burn those books to get rid of them) are the same in game terms. But get this. For up to four turns of a game that can end as soon as the end of Turn 3, and at most will only last until Turn 9, the Protestants cannot do anything but those three religious (yellow) actions. That’s right, they can translate scripture, publish treatises, call a theological debate, and then play event cards for their listed event. That’s it.

Imagine calling up your friend and saying, “Hey we need a sixth player for a game that might last all day, and all you can really do while we march around and fight and stuff, at least until our afternoon cookie break, is translate the bible and publish little religious rants.” And having that friend be like, “Hell yeah, I’m down for 9 hours of that kind of fun! Let me grab my brown* dice and I’ll be right over.”

*Protestants’ tokens are brown in the game. They are the beige on beige of HIS.

And yet, it really is fun, at least if you like the smell of what Martin Luther is cooking.

It ends up fun for the Protestants in part because one of the genius things Beach built into this game is some historical guiderails that allow the players all sorts of agency but also keep the game chugging along the actual path of history to a reasonable degree. In particular, in 1546, the tensions between the Lutheran princes of what is now Germany and Charles V, a Catholic who ruled over modern-day Germany in his role as Holy Roman Emperor, changed from a war of words into a shooting war known as the War of the League of Schmalkalden. (Why a German area was called “Roman” is a whole thing, and also it wasn’t that holy and it wasn’t very imperial either, so just remember a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Also, yes, it’s Schmalkalden – sounds just like it’s spelled.) And so the game simulates this buildup of tension and eventual outbreak of war by putting a card into the deck that acts like a ticking time bomb.

The card is out there in Turn 1, but if it gets played, you ignore the event, and it remains available to be drawn in future rounds. In Here I Stand, the discards are always shuffled back into the deck after each turn, so unless a card indicates that it be removed after play as an event, it can come back over and over like a bad Wurst after too much Bier. In Turns 2, 3, and 4, it can also appear, and then it will trigger as long as the Protestant has converted 12 cities to the new religion. If it does not appear or does not trigger when it does appear, then at the very end of Turn 4, more or less halfway through the game, it will trigger automatically. And then, when it does, all of the training wheels come off and the Protestants become a real country, able to do everything on their list of actions, and thus, essentially, do everything everyone else can do except play with ships. They can also earn as many as 12 VP if they’ve successfully converted the six major cities of Germany to their faith (2 VP for each of these “electorates”).

By the way, a lot of the cards I’m showing you are so-called Mandatory Events. What this means is that a player who draws one of these cards has to play it before the current turn ends. When played, the event must trigger, whether the person playing the card wants it to or not, but as consolation (or as a bonus), the player playing it gets to spend two action points after the event, doing whatever they want. This is how Beach’s design ensures that the broad strokes of the real history happen, and happen in generally the right sequence, since new mandatory cards get inserted into the deck at the start of many turns, and some of them have a timer, such that if they do not happen by the end of a given turn, then they automatically trigger as that round comes to an end. The Schmalkaldic League is thus guaranteed to form no later than the end of Turn 4, but it could go off beforehand in Turns 2 or 3 or during the course of play of Turn 4, rather than coming with certainty at any specific time prior to Turn 5.

This means that the Protestant player gets to spend 2-4 turns preparing for this big moment, uncertain when it will happen. Any player could have the card in Turns 2, 3, or 4. They could be waiting until the perfect moment to radically change the Protestant from a religious caterpillar to a fully functional battle-butterfly. It can be fun when it happens early, and it can be powerful when it happens late. Indeed, one of the best ways for the Protestant to win the game is to figure out a way to prevent the Schmalkaldic League card from coming into play until the very end of Turn 4, and then by having just enough VP built up (13) that the 12 VP they can get from converting German electorates prior to the event occurring, they can hit the magic winning number of 25. It might sound weird, but there is something really satisfying about winning a six-hour wargame without ever firing a shot.

There are other ways in which Beach succeeded in ensuring the game feels historical and also that the Protestants feel relevant. For example, in what amounts to a Turn 0, we launch the game by doing two key events in Reformation history.  First, Martin Luther starts the game by publishing his famous 95 Theses. This is represented by a mandatory card that is essentially played prior to anything else (even before the players get cards).

This card always starts the game, meaning that the Protestant essentially emerges at the German city of Wittenberg, gets Luther onto the board, and gets their first 2 army units (which can’t move yet, but hey, they are there). And then the Protestant player gets to give everyone a sample of one of the Protestants’ major actions: the “Reformation Attempt.” It’s not listed like that on the list of actions, but whenever the Protestant does the “Publish Treatise” action or after putting enough effort into the “Translate Scripture” action (and also from some special Events on cards), the result is some number of Reformation Attempts.

Here, the Protestant plays a little minigame where the goal is to roll higher than the Pope on some number of six-sided dice, and generally with the Protestant winning ties. Figuring out tricks to maximize the number of dice you get as Luther (based on adjacencies and bonuses) and how to minimize the Pope’s counter rolls is how the Protestant spreads the new Faith. Or just make sure you roll a 6 and you win no matter what, since you win most ties.

Then, after a little side show where the English, French, and Habsburgs chat about future plans in private, the Protestants and the Pope square off in the other major religious event of the game, a rap battle. No, wait, it’s a dance fight. Actually, it is the Diet of Worms. Yes, this is one of the oddest-named events in history, but no, they did not try to lose weight by eating squiggly wigglies. A Diet is like a Parliament, and Worms is a city in Germany where it was held. In Here I Stand, this particular Diet is basically a simplified (and mandatory) version of the Religious Action “Call theological debate” (available to both Pope and Protestant). It runs more or less the same as a military field battle, but if one side scores more “hits” than the other, instead of killing troops, they convert a city for each extra hit. (A hit means rolling a 5 or 6 on a six-sided die.)

Besides injecting Guy Fieri levels of flavor into the game, this also teaches everyone at the table how the Theological Debate works, except in this first debate, the stakes are just a bit lower. In all subsequent debates, in addition to the debate winner converting a certain number of the loser’s cities, if the Protestant scores enough of extra hits, they can disgrace the Catholic debater so that he retires permanently from Debate Club (earning VP for the Protestants, based on how good of a debater the disgraced guy supposedly was) and if the Pope scores enough extra hits, they can burn the Protestant debater at the stake (VP for the Pope based on the Protestant’s debate skill). Here I Stand players like to refer to this as a Barbecue.

If you were to go onto the internet and search for “How to Win ‘Here I Stand’ as the Protestants” you will get a lot of similar advice, much of which is very good. GMT, the game’s publisher, even hosts such an advice article, written by the very excellent Clio of Clio’s Board Games. Standard Protestant strategy tends to focus on how you can delay the Schmalkaldic League event from triggering until near the end of Turn 4, and thus maximize the time you spend as a caterpillar. This is wise because when you do convert into a power that can fight battles, you start out pretty weak. Indeed, where other players have Suleiman the Magnificent to lead their armies, you have these two dorks:

Your armies are super-weak at first as well, and every CP you push into growing the army is one fewer point for spreading the gospel beyond Germany into France and England, which is pretty much how you get your victory points, so delaying this second phase for as long as you can makes sense. Plus, prior to this event happening, none of the military powers can do anything against you, meaning you only have one enemy, the Pope, and only one dimension on which that war is waged, religion. This single-mindedness lets you focus all your CP on spreading the good word, whereas the Pope is also worried about things temporal and has to spread himself much thinner. Prolonging this period of hyperfocus is generally a good thing for your chances of winning the game. Because the Scmalkaldic League card cannot trigger during regular play unless Protestantism had spread to at least 12 cities, the standard advice for playing the Protestants is thus to play very slowly and creep towards 11 converted cities but never cross 11 until Turn 4, when you then try to expand as fast as possible before the end of the turn. In essence, the best advice is for you to play possum for like 3-4 hours if you can.

But that can be a little bit boring. And I am here to tell you it is not the only way to win. And in fact, the rest of this article is focused on “How to Win ‘Here I Stand’ as the Protestants without intentionally boring yourself to death by playing possum for four Turns.”

Chapter III: How to Win Here I Stand as the Protestants without intentionally boring yourself to death by playing possum for four Turns.

I should warn you that from this point on, we’re moving from a general paean about a game I love into a deep-dive strategy article. Feel free to stop here if you don’t think you’ll be playing Here I Stand any time soon, or even if you are going to play Here I Stand but won’t play as the Protestants or their main antagonist, the Papacy. But if you are going to rock the Prots soon, then the rest of this is perfect for you to dig into, like, say, a big bowl of delicious worms.

The standard advice is good for what it is—try to keep the total number of cities you convert below 12 until you’ve gotten religious control of all six of the electorates—those key cities that get you VP if they are in your political and religious control when the scoring check takes place. The Schmalkaldic League card gives you political control of every city you’ve converted to Protestantism when that time bomb explodes, meaning if you have converted all six of the electorates, you’ll get political control too and thus earn the maximum 12VP from this watershed moment of the game.

But here’s where I veer from that advice. The standard Protestant “how to” will tell you to keep below 12 no matter what (or at least until you are forced to) during Turns 1, 2, and 3. Better to not get a couple of electorates under your control than to risk an early triggering of Schmalkaldic when you have, say, just 12 or 13 cities. And sure, the moment you cross over the 11/12 line from Turn 2 onward, you are at risk of premature Schmalkalulation, but my thesis is that it’s not so bad to risk that for what can be a really fun and powerful way to play the Protestants, which is to go HAM into converting, blow past 12 cities while everyone else is squabbling over petty military things, and just leave the Pope in your dust as you get your conversions up to 25, 35, heck, go for 50 (which is a rarely seen auto-win condition if you manage to do it).

So yes, work hard to make sure that before you hit 12, you’ve gotten all six electorates. But if you have a ton of CPs or powerful events that award a bunch of conversion attempts, by all means, convert! This doesn’t mean you ignore the Bible translations, since those are powerful ways to get conversion attempts too, but where the standard guides will tell you to hold everything just one space short of finishing your translations of the New Testament into German, French and English, I would say dang it, finish that German New Testament and keep plowing forward. Maybe finish the full German Bible and get yourself well into the 20s, city-wise, before you have to worry about using your action points for other stuff. Yes, you may want to delay finishing the French or English translations until later in the game when key bonuses in those languages start to appear, but by golly, feel free to blow way past 12 and try to control all of the German spaces, once you’ve gotten the six electorates.

One reason for the focus on the electorates is that as you convert each of these six cities for the first time, it puts Protestant troops there, which stay even if the city reverts to being Catholic. The presence of troops, whether Protestant or Catholic, helps to convert adjacent cities (and that city itself if it is converted back to the other religion). The Pope will sometimes send a small army north, not to fight but just to “persuade” the local citizenry with a large Halberd that these newfangled Lutheran ideas are not really worth pursuing, are they, poke poke? You’d be surprised how much people in a city occupied by Catholic troops suddenly change their views on the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Gaining protestant troops when you first convert an electorate means that those converted electorates become vectors for the further spread of your religion. It can just snowball until suddenly there aren’t even any Catholic spaces adjacent to your electorates. This matters because you can generally only convert a city that is adjacent to a city of your religion. Building a buffer around most or all of your electorates is a great way to defend against someone Schmalkalding you too soon. It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s just that it won’t be too soon, because you’re ready to rock.

Chapter IV: A New Hope The Lutheran Blow Out Strategy

There is some nuance in how you want to expand your amalgam of Protestant-professing  cities, in that you don’t want to willy nilly convert stuff that isn’t strategic. I don’t want to do a full city-by-city breakdown, but essentially if you’re going to throw caution to the wind and use this Lutheran Blowout strategy, here’s how you basically want to do it.

With your very first decisions, the 95 Theses, you want to try to make a beeline to Mainz, which is the most centrally located electorate. Here’s what the map looks like when you have just begun the 95 These and control only Wittenberg.

Your goal is to try to convert a string of cities that get you to Mainz, which I have circled in red on the map above. I’ve also highlighted in red the most direct path of conversions to get you to Mainz (remember you can generally only convert if you have an adjacent city already professing your faith). It requires some luck, since every conversion attempt involves rolling a handful of dice, where you’re trying to roll higher on your best die than the Pope’s best, and this path affords you fewer dice than the Pope for Nuremberg and Mainz. But if you can manage to roll high (you win automatically with a 6), the optimal start is to convert Leipzig, Nuremberg, and then Mainz. If you do, the board will look like this:

Those hexagon tokens with a white center (instead of solid yellow) indicate the Protestant cities. Note that Mainz has gotten an army now (every electorate that converts gets Protestant troops), and while you cannot move it, it can help you convert all of the cities around Mainz.

If you don’t know Here I Stand, you probably cannot tell which of the cities are the magic six electorates. But look closely, what do Wittenberg and Mainz have in common that Leipzig and Nuremberg do not? The brown outline of the former two is hexagonal, while the other two are circular. (Yes, there are hex tokens on top of them, but I am talking about the outline printed on the board.)

Those hex-shaped electorates are your targets. And you can see that Mainz is adjacent to two other hex spaces, Cologne and Trier. And that Nuremberg is adjacent to another hex (Augsburg).

Thus it is key to get to Mainz. If you get there in four tries, the next two rolls are gravy. But might as well aim for some good gravy with Trier, Cologne, or Augsburg or maybe Worms to set up Augsburg later.

Rolling high for those three cities (Leipzig, Nuremberg, Mainz) right out of the gate is great, but say you fail on Leipzig. In that case, you can’t try Nuremberg because you lack adjacency. So, plan B is to go through Magdeberg, Erfurt, and then Kassel (see the larger map above). But at that point, that’s four tries even if you get to Kassel (Fail on Leipzig, success on the other three), so you get one crack at Mainz and you’re done.

If that path also fails, well, you might as well grab Brandenberg at that point, but anything else is kind of a pitfall (note, there is a reason you might want Lübeck, see below, so it makes some sense grab that too, and then also to try for Hamburg).

But what you don’t want to do—and on this my strategy and the standard guides agree—is convert anything extraneous in your race to get all 6 electorates. If you literally get stuck and have 1 more roll and the only choice is Stettin, sure, you can try for it, but you actually might be better off taking a swing at Prague, which you will lose ties on because of the rules nitty gritty not worth our time today, but you might be better off losing that last roll anyway because growing to 12 cities without a focus on the six electorates is suboptimal.

Quick side note on why Lübeck and then Hamburg makes any sense at all given that I just told you all that matter are the six electorates. There is a thing that can happen in Turn 2 where the Pope can pick on the solitary English protestant guy and the rules essentially let him spill over any victories into Germany. But if you manage to win, you have to do your conversions in England (which is fine), but you need to be “adjacent” which is weird because of the water. Every port on the North Sea is considered adjacent to every other one, so a secondary goal for the Protestants is to try to convert one of those North Sea ports. But if there is an electorate in reach, that will always take priority over the North Sea access issue, especially since when you convert an English city, it counts against your 12 cities limit anyway, meaning it’s adding Schmalkaldic risk without helping you grab the key six spaces.  Oh and also, conversions in England also give the English player VPs, so go easy on those in case you hand Henry VIII the win.

One more thing in terms of this opening salvo. And it require some to get into a little bit of deep rules detal to really explain it, but to try to keep it brief: both the Pope and the Protestants have these cool religious guys floating around that the game calls “debaters” (of course I tend to refer to them as “master debaters”) who can provide all sorts of fun little bonuses. And one of the Prots’ initial guys provides an extra die on every roll that is within 2 spaces of the modern French city of Strasbourg, which at the time was German-speaking (Strasburg) and part of the Holy Roman Empire. As it happens, Mainz is 2 spaces from Strasburg, as is Nuremberg. So my advice is that if you succeed on converting Leipzig with your very first roll, then you need to put your man Martin Bucer (no, not Martin Luther, get it straight) to work to help convert Nuremberg and then hopefully Mainz. Once he’s been “committed” (this is what the game calls it when you activate one of these master debaters) his bonus lasts for the entire set of rolls you’re doing right now.  Which is great because Worms, Trier, and Augsburg a re also within two spaces of Strasburg, meaning if you get lucky enough to get Leipzig, you can potentially get 4 uses of Bucer for one activation, which is awesome. So do it.

Other guides may warn you off of this, because once Bucer is committed, he becomes more vulnerable to a debate attack by the Pope. I say, so what, it’s worth it. First of all, the Pope is often more worried about trying to control Florence with his meager little armies than he is with some guys named Martin up in Barbaria, but also there are ways to protect Bucer on your very first turn once the game-proper begins. (Just commit your debater named Melanchthon on your first card play of Turn 1 to help with bible translations and you’ll be fine.) Remember, this is about going fast and going hard and holding back your best weapon is never compatible with that sort of strategy.

Anyway, whether you’ve done swimmingly with your 95 Theses roll or sunk into the pit of despair, you get another chance to make progress when we come around to the Diet of Worms. And we’ve already gotten over the giggles about the name, right? Ok, laugh one more time because it is legit hilarious that one of the most important events of the 16^th century was given a name that in English sounds like an episode of Fear Factor. As mentioned above, you’re going to square off in a Theological Debate against the Pope, but without any risk of your debaters being burned at the stake.

(Historical Side note: the lack of potential heretic burning stems from the fact that that the actual Diet of Worms, Charles V promised Martin Luther safe conduct, meaning in theory he could not be seized and burnt. In practice, Luther hightailed it out of there and got hidden away in a castle by his patron, Frederick “The Wise” of Saxony, just in case the promised safe conduct didn’t turn out to be quite so safe.)

Unlike the rest of the debates you’ll be having where the Pope often has the rhetorical advantage, in this one Debate you’re likely to get to roll the larger handful of dice. You pick one card and add 5 to the number of action points on your card, which sets your dice. In contrast, the Pope and the Habsburg player (a game mechanism that captures Charles V’s historical interest in religous uniformity which led to his decision to call the Diet in the first place) each choose a card. As it happens, the person playing the Habsburgs usually cares a lot less about this than did the real Charles V, so they’ll often play a low card, maybe even a 1. The Pope cares but has lots of goals for turn 1, so they could play up to a 5, but typically will play a 3 or so. Which means you can potentially have 9 dice against their combined 4 or 5. Whoever rolls more “hits” (5s or 6s) converts as many cities as they have more hits, so rolling 9 dice (with an expected hit rate of 3, but with the chance to maybe hit 6 or 7, if you get lucky) vs 4 (with an expected hit rate of 1.3) is a chance for you to make serious hay while the Vermicular Dietary sun is shining.

Any successes you get that lead to conversion should follow the path outlined above. If you didn’t get to Mainz on the 95 Theses rolls, follow the shortest path to get there (or nearer) now. If you did, then flip any electorates not yet flipped, or a centrally located city like Worms. Brandenburg can be the last electorate you get since the proximity to Luther himself makes that space easier to convert during the normal play of cards once Turn 1 proper begins.

So to this end, I say play a 5CP card if you have it, possibly even to the point of using your “home card” (HC), which is a special card each power gets that always has 5CP. If your best card is only a 1 or 2, then yeah, burn that HC for 5. If you have a 3, it’s kind of a toss-up, because the HC used is quite strong when for one of its bonuses. If you have a 4 or 5 that is not the home card, go that route and save the HC for later.

A lot of the standard advice would tell you never to waste your HC on this. And I get it. Your best use of the Protestant HC is to use it to grab a card someone else put into the discard pile and either use it right away or save it for when it’s ripe. And there are many great events you will see discarded that you’ll want to hoover out of the discard pile. And you will regret having “wasted” it at the Diet of Worms. BUT… you will never have a better chance to get those juicy electorates than if you roll a bunch of 5s and 6s at the Diet of Worms. So I suggest you do it if the alternative is a 2 or lower. It’s a gamble, but it’s not quite as one-sided as the guides would have you think.

And so, then, the game proper begins. Players take turns in a set order, starting with the Ottomans and ending with you, so after you’ve played a central role in these “Turn 0” starter events, you get to go play with your phone or whatever for a bit while the other five powers launch their initial salvos. And as stated above, almost certainly your first move should be to do some translating of the New Testament into German, using the bonus from Philip Melanchthon (yes I know it’s strange that his name is not Martin, but hopefully that won’t cause too much confusion), which has the nice side effect of protecting Martin Bucer from being attacked in a debate. The Pope will get one chance to take a swing at Bucer unprotected, simply because he goes ahead of you in turn order, but you can guarantee he doesn’t get a second guaranteed shot at him by committing Melanchthon on your very first card play. After that, you’re going to want to get the German New Testament finished as fast as you can and take some more shots at any electorates not in your hands already. If by chance, things went poorly so you never committed Bucer, do so as soon as you can get benefit from it, though after committing Melanchthon.

Keep an eye on the discard pile (if you didn’t use your HC for the Diet), especially focused on cards that help you convert cities. Printing Press is your number one goal, but cards like Katherine Bora, Erasmus (in early turns), Marbury Colloquy (Turn 2 and after), and A Mighty Fortress are all nice choices if you see them. Also, be patient with your ability to grab a card from the trash. No one else is going to be able to snag your card, so wait until you’re sure an even better one won’t come out. On the other hand, if you did play your HC at the Diet, then just grin and bear it when great cards go to the discard. Know that once you get to Turn 2, you’ll get your HC back, and every turn thereafter,r you can use it for its powerful vacuum ability.

Once you’ve done the German New Testament, get the full German Bible done as soon as you can. It’s a free VP, plus you get very strong conversion rolls. And then do everything you can to hold your electorates, even to the point of converting some of the bordering French-speaking cities to provide a buffer for places like Cologne and Trier. If you’ve gotten the six electorates and control much of Germany, you’re in a great spot. You can afford to set up your other languages for when the time is right—often people like to leave the French and English New Testament poised one tick away from completion until the master debaters in that language show up, around Turn 4. I’d say, sure, if you’re low on action points, but if you’ve got enough to get the French New Testament translation done, that’s fine to do earlier, and then build up the Full French Bible to close to completion and hold that in suspense until Jean Calvin and his crew show up to help.

(As mentioned above, German and French conversions are generally better than English ones because only you benefit when you convert a city in Germany, but England benefits from English conversions even more than you do. Oh, also, you can convert in Spain and Italy, but it’s harder, and so why bother.)

So that’s basically how to play the Protestants in a way that is a little more fun, in my view, than just sitting around and doing nothing. Be bold in proclaiming your faith, and spread the good news throughout Germany and even into France, and worry not whether you will face a shooting war before you’re ready. As I think it says in Martin Luther’s translation of the book of Proverbs: “If you stay ready, you never have to get ready.”