Here I Stand: 500th Anniversary Edition

A strategic simulation of Europe during the Protestant Reformation and related global events of the early 16th century. Players take the roles of major powers and pursue military, diplomatic, religious, and naval objectives across a point-to-point map, using a card-driven system to trigger events, campaigns, and negotiations. Each of the six primary powers has distinct abilities and victory paths, and cards represent historical figures, policies, and incidents that shape available actions and diplomatic opportunities. The 500th-anniversary edition updates the card pool, revises several event cards and rules, and adds component enhancements that affect diplomacy, minor powers, piracy, and exploration.

Players: 2–6 best 6
Playing time: 180–360 min
Age: 14+
Complexity: 4.6 / 5

8.1 on Ludoya from $75.99PoliticalPike and ShotPoint to Point MovementArea MovementSimulation

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About the game

Design: Ed Beach
Art: Mark Simonitch
Rodger B. MacGowan
Publisher: GMT Games

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Full stats in Ludoya

46
Plays logged: 88
Players: 4h 11m
Average play: 27
In collections: 5
On wishlists: 1
Pre-ordered

8.1/10

from 13 Ludoya reviews

Balleflass7.5
Rulebook is missing a few clarifications or I'm just very bad at searching. Did help a lot by printing an index from BGG. Takes very long to play. Papacy, Protestant and Ottoman felt a bit one-dimensional in our game. The history through the deck is fantastic. We all liked the game even with a few shortcomings. ---Update 2026--- We all agreed that we'd rather play TI4, Europa Universalis.
andycted8.5
A hell of a game manual and a lot of downtime in 6, means that rarely you'll be able to play with full complement of players. However the three player game is quite ok. Shame though. The religious battle has buckets of dice and becomes a bit boring after a while for both parts involved and for other factions watching … Perfect theme, great story telling, fantastic asymmetry and very balanced powers. What the game takes away in terms of complexity, time commitment and randomness, gives back in theme, diplomacy, interaction and scope. But realistically, we won't play it again. (EDIT) We're going to play it again