by Raymond Weiss

One of the overarching themes throughout history is that those with privilege and material wealth tend to exploit those without in order to greater accumulate wealth, or as Thomas Müntzer put it in 1525, "The princes are nothing but tyrants who flay the people; they fritter away our blood and sweat on their pomp and whoring and knavery."

One would be remiss not to note the public's euphoric reaction to the murder of a healthcare executive, and this brings me to the subject of why I find the German Peasant War of 1525 fascinating and (at the same time) terrifyingly relevant to our modern predicament.

Being a German peasant in the early-middle 16th century was an absolutely miserable existence. Peasants had to pay a tithe on nearly every facet of life and could neither move nor marry without the approval of local nobles. Sporadic uprisings had occurred prior to the German Peasant War of 1524-1526, but none would be so organized and so completely terrifying to the nobles of Germany. In fact, the uprising would be the largest organized revolution until the French Revolution, all the more remarkable in a period when communications were difficult and primitive.


At first, I had thought about making a Euro-style game on this subject, especially after playing such great games as Paladins of the West Kingdom, Hadrian's Wall, John Company, A Feast For Odin, and a whole bunch of others that inspired me.

I read all I could about the subject (of which there is not much available in English) and was particularly inspired by Andrew Drummond's 2024 book The Dreadful History and Judgement of God on Thomas Müntzer, which set me on a tear for 16th century Germany itself. It's a fascinating period between Luther and a whole bunch of other personalities like Jan Hus who cast a shadow over that time.

But with my primitive wargamer-brain, all of my prototypes were re-skins of other games I played. After all, all wargames are fairly derivative, but this became way more obvious for me as a designer attempting to use games I enjoyed as inspiration.


I went through 2-3 different prototypes before finally settling on the current iteration of the game. I had help by playing Plantagenet in the Levy & Campaign series and finally had in front of me a model of medieval logistics that made sense to my literal wargamer-brain. Even though the campaign I was looking at was completely different in character, many of the mechanisms of war were similar, and I saw a way to deconstruct the game and utilize it for my purposes.

While Eurogames are fun, they didn't do a good job at telling the story I wanted to tell, with peasant leaders running around Germany trying to inspire peasant bands to join up in arms. Wargames, while they tend to be literal, are pretty damn good at creating a narrative, and I began to think what if instead of trying to depict the whole war, I focused on one area of Germany. This was where I started to come up with what the game should look like.


In its final form, my game With The Hammer has Noble and Peasant players, and the Noble player has to do some similar things to the Levy & Campaign series in regard to logistics and the use of their noble prestige, but that's where the similarities end.

Noble armies have to spend their time preaching in order to counter the influence of radical clerics like Thomas Müntzer who are bent on proto-proletariat revolution. Nobles must negotiate with organized bands of peasants before those peasants can be inspired by leaders to join in arms against their betters. The players struggle over victory points as the Peasants will win if the VP Marker reaches 20 and the Nobles will win if it reaches 0. Peasants have the option to raid locales for extra artillery and VPs, whereas Nobles can raid for Supply in exchange for ceding the placement of a Propaganda marker.

Ultimately, what resulted was a point-to-point wargame, but one in which the actions of individuals have an outsized effect on history, and I tried to give enough agency to players to act as those individuals in a way that would be relevant and interesting.

I ranted for a while about this subject to Fred Serval, who eventually agreed to help develop the game wherein he saw to it that my vision more or less came to life. Peasant leaders now have unique, historical abilities that allow them to directly influence events, such as Thomas Müntzer's "Sermon to the Princes", which allows him to attempt to immobilize Noble armies by negotiation. He also added the idea of event cards that alter the rules for a turn or grant various abilities to either side. We managed to develop the game live on one of his livestreams with professor Doug Miller, who suggested we make propaganda markers more meaningful, wherein Fred came up with the idea to allow Peasant leaders to end movement only in areas where propaganda markers are present.


Adding in art from Ilya Kudriashov, the game now looks incredible and, thanks to Fred's input, feels exactly how I originally envisioned this idea. As published, 1-7 players struggle with one another to create a better world for the people of 16th century Germany; they can learn about the individuals involved and may be inspired to take it upon themselves to learn more about the subject.

Finally, I managed to get author Andrew Drummond involved, and the game now includes a historical analysis that examines all the personages involved in the game.

With The Hammer is the game I am the most proud of as a game designer, and I couldn't have done it without the assistance of Fred Serval, Andrew Drummond, Doug Miller, and Ilya Kudriashov. With The Hammer is now available from Conflict Simulations LLC (CSL).

Ray Weiss