"Impetus basic vs full rules differences?" Topic

Hi I was wondering what major differences (apart from full army lists with points values) there is between the basic and full Impetus rules?

E.g. One thing I noticed in basic impetus is that there doesn't seem to be any evade type action for light cav/foot that is charged? Is this correct and is there something in the full rules for this?

Thanks for any help!

two totally different worlds as far as I can see. In the proper rules you can evade from a charge beginning within you frontal projection,i.e. the charging unit directly falling within that part of your base frontage projected forward ,and then you make at least on move directly to the rear.

I believe that some of the BI players use house rules for evade moves. I never played alot of BI figuring that the full game was probably more interesting.

If you go to the new Impetus Forum here: impetus.ativiforum.com You will find in the Basic Impetus section that I have copied the house rules we use for evasion. These are essential and were a major (the major) omission in the original BI set. Its a pity Lorenzo hasn't amended the free set to include evade rules as, in my experience, this is the major turn-off for new players trying them out.

As for differences between BI and the full set – there are many. The full set has multiple moves, for example. Personally with the addition of evasion, I consider Basic Impetus the best set of ancient ruler around, with excellent (and most importantly) elegant game mechanics. The full set just add a lot of complications which, to my mind, just mask the elegance. But, hey, different people want different things from a wargame.

Cheers 1Ingram yes I found that and commented after I had made this post, thanks!

What I really like about Basic Impetus is that it's an excellent introductory game to Ancients gaming (and other periods, to).

Armies have between 7-10 bases, on average, so it's easy for a newcomer who likes the game to acquire his own army.

I've painted up several in 25/28mm so that I can use them as "loaner" armies to get someone started.

In addition, the rules are free, and simple enough to grasp pretty quickly. All in all, a very lovely system.

I will have a look at your link, thanks 1ngram.

Another thing that's not in BI but I like in a game is a countercharge (especially for aggressive cavalry types): it is OK, as a game device to settle this sort of thing with the initiative roll, but it isn't a good representation of mounted actions (where evade and countercharge are important common options depending on the troops involved)

We played my (largish) BI+ game of Montaperti at CoW at the weekend with 4 newcomer players and got a result inside 2 hours.

Phil
Ancients on the Move

Other differences to mention are, the addition of a discipline stat, units can move more than once per turn, commanders and command structure, opportunity fire, and minor things like fortifications & baggage

We used to use countercharge as well, taking the rules from the Baroque variant of Basic Impetus (also free), but eventually abandoned it. The critical thing is the morale check not the number of attack dice and it seemed to give a cleaner, sharper game just having the phasing player get the impetus bonus. But you can certainly use the Baroque countercharge rules if you want to replicate this ability.

The other thing "missing" is a way of determining terrain that gets away from the many small pieces that tend to litter the Impetus battleground – the cat litter approach, I call it. I've also posted a different way of doing this on the site mentioned above which allows players to keep the existing scatter or have larger, more dominant, more realistic terrain sizes on their battlefield. Try it.

In fact the only thing still "wrong" with BI is the army lists. Units of VBU 6, for example are far too powerful and it would be better to have army lists where, for example any unit with a VBU over 5 pays an extra point cost per VBU value over 5. Thus a unit with VBU 6 would cost 7. But of course the whole set of army lists needs rewriting. One of these days.

Does BI use Opportunity? Also I don`t see Point Blank fire modifiers for BI on the chart.

Those are two of the rules that put me off going to the full set of rules. Close range fire is far too powerful and opportunity just complicated an existing elegant system that works.

I guess that is part of the reason why 1ngram you play BI and I play Impetus. :) Can't imagine playing without both.