"impetus" Topic

Just found the above system all my ancient 15mm are. Based for the fields of glory system is there much difference between them.

The games are very different in feel but the basing can work fine. Just use 4 DBx bases for one Impetus unit.

I gave FoG a try but found the system boring and having several holes in it. Gave Impetus a try in desperation and I love it. Every game is different even when using the same armies. Impetus is fast moving, dramatic, decisive gaming system. It does have its peculiarities that need to be gotten used to.

Exactly as Marcus says!!!
FOG -like a dull day at the accountant's office.
Impetus -like a date with Kylie Minogue.

The FoG army lists convert quite happily to give impetus armies in most circumstances by dividing the element count by 4 and rounding fractions up or down as required.

I messed around with FoG.

Its a lot of fun but hard to get other people into.

Impetus is very fast, I love the basing, and its easy to teach.

I like that we can fight the same battle 2-3 times in an evening, so we can play out those 'what ifs' you always have after a good match, where as with FOG I rarely got more than a single match in an evening.

Marcus Brutus, out of curiosity, what are these several holes you found in FoG?
I've played it many times and have never found anything that I would call a "hole."

I won't knock Impetus (not only because I've never played it!) but I will leap to the defence of FoG.

I acknowledge that no rule set is for everyone. However, FoG
gives an exciting game that rewards good generalship & seems to fit my prejudices about historical accuracy.

I will concede there's a steep learning curve. The good news is We're moving into FoG-R & it's essentially the same system as the Ancients version: new period same rules. Win: win.

It was so long ago keyhat that I don't remember specifically what the several holes were. But at the time we were playing FoG they were apparent.

How I would desribe FoG. It took a lot of ideas from other systems and melded them into a rules set but to my thinking it didn't create anything particularly compelling. It really felt like a rehash of 20th century rules systems. Impetus really is a novel and fresh approach to ancient gaming. At first I didn't like it but kept at and have come to appreciate the simple mechanism and complex results it gives. It is completely impossible to game the system since the outcomes are so varied. Some people really hate this approach but personally I like it.

Your description of FoG as taking ideas from other systems and melding them together is partially true, to the credit of the system. There are virtually no rules sets which do not borrow from others which have gone before them. The mark of good engineering is to take proven ideas and incorporate them into new designs, whether it be automotive engineering, aerospace or miniature war-games.

In terms of these being "20th century rules", I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean, but I notice that Impetus still has wheeling, differentiation of troops into light and heavy , and multiple other things that it shares with most other rules sets since the hobby began. At least, the designer of FoG was one of men who helped Barker develop some of these things he is borrowing.

In fact, in many important respects, such as the fact that in Impetus it is the entire unit which takes hits, or in larger on table unit sizes,or in skirmishers dispersing upon contact in the open, or in certain troop types charging without orders, or faster units needing to pass a dice roll to disengage from melee, etc. Impetus could very well be said to have strongly borrowed from Armati which was written almost 25 years ago.

If we are going to discuss holes in rules let me float just one observation. Since terrain penalties in Impetus are taken in absolute dice, we have the situation where heavy cavalry, like the Parthian Cataphracts(VBU=7), are fighting in difficult terrain, they lose only one die. This means that the "penalty" for these groups is a drop of only 12-15% in their total fighting ability. Compare this to a typical light cavalry unit which suffers a 25-33% drop in difficult terrain. Infantry examples could just as well be given using other conditions. The "absolute dice" penalties allow for several potentially out- of-balance situations.

We could also discuss the historicity of allowing units to independently respond to situations "simultaneously" all over the field as they have been placed on "opportunity". Fun, yes. Historical, probably not so much.
It was this period that first demonstrated the general superiority of coordinated, disciplined movements over individual unit actions. Of course these occurred, but they were not a hallmark of the period.

I don't usually care for posts that attack someone else's rules, and this was not meant to denigrate Impetus in any way. It has rekindled interest in the ancients among many players, and that is great. I have never published a set of rules myself, and I have nothing but respect for those that do.

Impetus is a good game, a fun game, and certainly plays more rapidly than FoG, but in terms of historical depth it is not as rewarding as FoG, nor was it meant to be.

With respect to the Impetus scenario the penalties for cavalry operating in difficult terrain there is also automatic disorder plus reduced movement and the extra minus on the Cohesion Test for mounted units. The net result is that cavalry never go into difficult ground ever whether they are Cataphracts or Light Horse. That seems to me to be most realistic result possible.

I agree that closest cousin in Ancient rules sets to Impetus is Armati. Having played both games extensively I can say that the concepts in Impetus make it a very different game.

The use of opportunity allows the non active player a chance to influence events. Surely you would agree that the greatest challenge in rules writing is the IGYG approach which arbitrarily forces the flow of battles to follow a simplistic model. I really respect Piquet and other similar systems trying to undercut the kind of control players have in games like WRG and FoG. Impetus does this in a less radical way by providing for Opportunity. But any experienced Impetus player will tell you that single units responding to circumstances on Opportunity usually suffer for it.

20th gaming rule sets to me means breaking out not only the result but also the process by which the result occurs. One gets rule sets from T&T and others that have a multitude of factors and modifiers. Impetus gets rid of that by using probability to account for the process and reduces the time to play because of this.

As far as historical depth I must beg to differ. Detail does not necessarily get more historical accuracy. This is one the great lessons I've learned in my 40+ years of gaming. Back in 70s I played very complex game systems that took enormous amounts of time. I am not convinced that this gained anything in the way historical accuracy. I don't find FoG more historically accurate than Impetus and am curious why you would think so.

" I really respect Piquet and other similar systems trying to undercut the kind of control players have in games like WRG and FoG"

Why? What's wrong with the level of control one finds in these rules – and in Basic Impetus (my particular favourite) as well? We aren't fighting Napoleonic battles with hundreds of thousands of men where entire Corps can get lost or halt because the Corps Commander isn't sure what he is supposed to be doing. Most if not all commanders in the ancient world were professionals, knew their business. Battles were (generally smaller) and the range of actions pretty restricted. The idea that rules must have command control at their core is a pernicious one and does not, in my opinion, reflect the reality of battle and warfare in the ancient world. Certainly there were exceptional generals but the lower level unit leaders seem to have been more than capable of doing whatever their unit needed to do. Just look at how complicated the actions of horse archers in a battle could be, skirmish, false flight, hiding for long periods, ambush – and these were bizarrely called barbarians. Command control in wargames almost inevitably means rules preventing units from doing things. I just don't see any historical evidence that this was a problem in the ancient (even Medieval) period.

It's called the God's Eye View 1ngram and has nothing to do with professionalism of historical subordinate commanders. As long as we understand that we are playing games I have no problem with it. And I am not really talking about command and control but rather the ability of players to react in time on the tabletop. One of the things I like about Impetus is that the pace of the games moves quickly enough that players have a hard time recovering from initial deployment problems. Impetus does this without the extra layer of a command and control system. I've tried to recover from a bad deployment in Impetus by sideways moves etc.and I usually get punished for it.

In general, I would agree with the statement that additional detail does not necessarily guarantee greater historical accuracy. The devil, however, is in the details you that you choose to include. FoG does an excellent job of limiting itself to those "details" that actually made a difference on the field of battle.

For instance, rather than just assigning every unit a single VBU, FoG enables the player to see the interaction of several factors such as weapon type, unit size, armor,and troop quality that contribute to the final result of a melee, and to try and plan ahead accordingly.
In FoG, there is a real distinction between the factors which are important in charge or impact combat and melee. In addition, the interaction between Spear and Sword troops or even troops armed with a Heavy Weapon (a 2 handed ax or sword or pole-arm) are all modeled to a fair extent. There are even important distinctions between Spearmen who are trained to use their weapon offensively and those who were more defensively trained. The level of armor protection can be a significant factor in melee in FoG.

As another example, there is a distinction between the disorder caused by terrain and that caused by a combat result. In fact, melee results include two levels of decreasing cohesion before rout, not just "disorder", as well as individual casualties as the fight goes on. Each of these factors; disruption, fragmentation and bases lost in combat degrades the units fighting ability in real time far more accurately than just a -1 die for disorder until the unit breaks.
Which is the better model of pre-gunpowder combat?

In regards to movement capabilities, FoG makes a very real distinction between trained troops, untrained troops, untrained troops with a commander, untrained cavalry, and LH,LI. A bit detailed? Perhaps, but it can make a great difference in the maneuverability of your army and how you handle them in set up and once the game begins.
Impetus treats every army fundamentally the same.Their system of discipline tests for second movements and automatic disorders for oblique, sideways and backward movement for every troop type except LI and LH is identical for every army from the Gauls to the highly professional Byzantines.
Again which game is more historical?

Impetus is a very fine game and much fun to play. It is decidedly not my intention to denigrate it in any way. It forms a valuable niche in our community.

But I also have been gaming for about 40 years, and frankly have never seen a miniatures game like FoG, that handles it's subject in the proper depth while remaining eminently playable. We have always been seen as a subset of the population that really knows and enjoys history and is generally more intellectually inclined than the average joe. Let us resolve to do what we can to stem this rising tide of simpler, more generic systems.

I would suggest keyhat based on your above comments that you fall into that group of gamers that likes to see process of the result. Personally I no longer need to see that. I rather prefer a system that produces the "correct" result without the tediousness of seeing it happen. However, let us not confuse this with historicity.

Disorder in Impetus reflects troops that are in some degree of danger, whether from melee, movement or terrain. Cohesion has been reduced and the unit is vulnerable in away that it otherwise would not be. Does it really matter how this vulnerability comes about? Personally I don't think so.

The loss of bases to me is another example of the process of the game rather than the result. In truth, actual casualties in battle were small when compared to the breaking of the army. When we compare the Roman casualties at Zama versus the Carthaginian the ratio is at least 10:1. Yet the battle was highly contested up to the very end. Troops are more likely to fritter away from battle than to actually be killed or wounded. The declining VBU reflects a whole host of factors related to real battles losses, morale loss, and troops frittering away. I don't see this in anyway less realistic than the more detailed approach in FoG.

I must disagree again around movement. Up to the time of Frederick the Great the basic constructs of movement didn't really vary much from army to army. Wheeling, echelon, retrograde, sideway movement was difficult to perform in ancient/medieval battles and only the best trained troops could be expected to pull these off with any regularity. I personally think that most ancient rules sets allow far too much freedom of movement to most troop types. Even wheeling was difficult for most bodies of troops through the period of discussion. Impetus pretty much has it right. Except for A class troops and skirmishers anything but forward movement disorders the unit. Wheeling takes a whole movement phase and rightly delays the unit advancing.

I personally didn't enjoy playing FoG. I had hoped otherwise and when the news of its release came out I waited with batted excitement. Obviously you do enjoy FoG. Fair enough.I don't need to see the process of the result but it seems to me that you enjoy that detail. Again, fair enough. Just please don't fall into the trap that the extra process detail of FoG gives a more historical result to Impetus.

I enjoy much the same thing we all do when playing Ancients. Beyond the social aspect of a good time with friends, I enjoy the competitive seeking for advantage that will lead to victory in the game. This usually takes it's form in seeking my opponents weaknesses and finding the best way to to exploit them, while shielding or disguising mine from him.
This "process" is much enriched when there are differences in maneuverability, weapons interactions, armor, training etc. that must be taken into account when forming a plan or reacting to changed circumstance. So to me, this level of detail is enjoyable.

I must admit, however, there is also much to be said for a more generic approach to the subject. I was a pretty fair DBM player for many years, playing in many tourneys. And it was a blast. The current popularity of Impetus reminds me of how quickly DBM caught on world wide.

However, all generic systems must make some compromises somewhere and to me the biggest problem with Impetus, (besides the somewhat gamey "opportunity" status), is the use of a fixed dice bonus or penalty per unit. This can lead to some pretty disproportionate effects. For instance, the effect of being "uphill" in a battle is far more pronounced for a unit with a small VBU than with a large one.This is simply illogical.

In fact, I am hard pressed to believe that any system which features a single combat value for all circumstances (even DBM had two) and that doesn't differentiate between professionally trained troops and untrained war bands in maneuver, save for impetuosity,could ever be as accurate historically as one which does.

However, as this has been a good discussion, with little likelihood of either of us changing our minds,let us simply agree to disagree.

" I am hard pressed to believe that any system . . . . that doesn't differentiate between professionally trained troops and untrained war bands in maneuver, save for impetuosity,could ever be as accurate historically as one which does."

Why do you believe that warbands were "untrained"? The bulk of any force in the ancient world were full time, professional warriors (see Beckwith's Silk Road book on the IndoEuropeans) or from cultures like the horsed nomads who fought as they lived. Yes there were armies (crusades for example) full of untrained inexperienced men but most armies were composed of "professional" warriors. This a hangover from the ignorant Barker era, nothing more. Rules which persist in this mythology are certainly what I would call "last century".

You protest too much, 1ngram. Phil Barker was trying to deal with the evident problem that Romans and Hellenistics were capable of a lot more manoeuvres than barbarians.mThere is a real distinction there. Rome could put out 5000 troops in a unit that could operate together in a very sophisticated way. Hellenistic armies could do complex stuff, given that believe their manuals indicate what actually happened.
The difficulty comes, not with Romans versus Gauls, but with what to do about Achaemenid Persians and Greeks, ir Assyriansversus Elamites or Babylonians. Who knows were to put the dividing line in terms of the ability to drill ? Its a meaningful distinction, but so many armies do not obviously fit into one or other category.

Lewisgunner, that was a very good answer, it was spot-on.
1ngram, I'm not quite sure that you grasped the meaning of "untrained" in the post you refer to. In many rules sets there is an attempt to distinguish between the levels of training and professionalism found in different armies at different times.
The use of the term "undrilled" or untrained to describe a unit in FoG implies not an absence of all ability to maneuver, but rather a level of drill training that was less than some of it's contemporaries.
Thus, not only can an "undrilled" unit wheel or move in a march column but an "undrilled" unit can still turn 90 degrees or expand it's line or about face like a "drilled" unit. However, it may have to pass a die roll test or it cannot perform these latter three maneuvers and still move in the same turn as it's better trained brethren can. This reflects the greater time it would take a less well drilled or trained unit to perform these tasks. This seems a common sense approach to me.

In regards as to whether Gallic war bands fit into this category, consider the following. While there was still likely to be found a warrior caste serving the tribal chieftains, Klaus Randsborg describes the Helvetiian army that opposed Julius Caesar as being largely a militia force, composed of perhaps up to 25% of the total tribal population. Yet they were capable of at least a simple unified movement. IIRC Caesar describes the Helvetii as advancing slowly in a "close formation" as they approached the Roman position. The dominant weapon of many of these tribes had become spear and shield by the first Century B.C., which in itself implies a need for some unit cohesion for maximum effectiveness. Thus there was some level of training present.
However, the splintered nature of these tribes into various clans spread throughout the land, coupled with the very nature of the Gallic economy as being primarily agricultural (demanding the full time attention of most of the male population) would seem to mitigate against the existence of large well drilled professional armies among the Gauls. This doesn't mean that they were incapable of any maneuver, but rather that they would be generally inferior to the highly professional legions they faced in matters of drill, and hence for many war-games, like FoG purposes might be considered undrilled or untrained.

In regard to Mr. Barker, I will only say that I am grateful that he has done as much as he has for this hobby. It would certainly not have spread as far nor as fast without his manifold contributions.

As well as "undrilled warbands" (which as keyhat explains are not entirely unwieldy) FoG has "mob" troop types. Everything is covered.

I think the army book lists, as expensive as they are, are a wonderful asset & enhance the FoG system.

So back to the basing – yeah four of the FOG (or as I like to call them not another rule war-game) are a perfect. Play what you like don't listen to me!

Impetus does differentiate between the ability of units to manouvre. Troops have discipline ratings A, B or C which enable them to do multiple moves with diffferent chances of success. A grade troops are able to carry out more manouvres (echelon, sideways move) than B or C grade troops.

The current rules are updated from the original book here PDF link

You may disagree with the way it is implemented, but the concept is present.

I grant you that such a such a distinction exists, but as "discipline" is a general concept that is tied to morale and motivation as much as training, the idea that this system allows for true differences in maneuvering ability between armies appears just a bit of a stretch.

In practice, since the majority of troops in Impetus are "B"s, this means that Hannibal's Gauls, and Henry the Fifth's Irish are in the same "maneuver category" as Caesar's Legions or the majority of the Swiss Pike in French service from the 16th Century. Not exactly what one would expect. I do note that the advanced rules now make provision for "A" troops to move obliquely without disorder, which is a step in the right direction.

The original discussion on maneuvering differences in various games between drilled and undrilled troops was not a slam on anything, just a discussion on perceived historicity. Impetus is not meant to bog players down with detail. It is a great game in it's own right and has brought a lot of players back into the ancients, where they belong.