Excommunicated on Turn 1

My first foray into playing Here I Stand via PBEM using Cyberboard/ACTS is going well, except for the small detail of getting excommunicated by the Pope on Turn 1. I'm playing as France, and as you might notice from the map above (click on it), my loyal forces have besieged the decadent Papists at Ravenna in Italy. An unfortunate side effect of the excommunication is two zones of unrest in southern France, disrupting supply to my forces in Italy. Time to crush some peasants! The evil Hapsburgs have taken advantage of my southern endeavors by quickly gobbling up Metz and Liege to the north, so I'll have to do something about that next turn. Unfortunately, the English have already crushed my Scottish allies. So, essentially, its me vs. the World (reference the diplomacy track top right), except for the even more evil Ottomans, who no one wants to be friends with anyway.

At a turn per day, this method of gaming, though slow, is good fun. Particularly when you're learning a game it gives you time to look up rules to make sure you're doing things correctly without irritating everyone at the table. Also, you don't have to wait until you have enough interested players with a day to kill before you can play the game. If anyone wants to try any card-driven wargames this way, just let me know.

Now to go process ordering my troops out onto a final glorious German death ride in Diplomacy!