"Impetus or Hail Caesar" Topic

In the continuing saga to find an ancient/medieval set I like, I have had my interested tweaked by these to. So over to you chaps, what do you like? Why? Is one better than the other?

Here are some requirements that I have;

All my figures are 15mm and I believe that basing isn't a problem?

Want to be able to play a game in an evening 3 hours (4max)

Not to bothered about multiplayer but it can't hurt.

Army lists for Early Rome and her enemies would be nice as well.

Cheers

I may be in the minority here, but I actually prefer Warmaster Ancients to Hail Caesar. I'm not a hardcore ancients (or anything) gamer so YMMV.

We've played a lot of HC and find it's ease of play enjoyable.

Hail Caesar doesn't work well for Hoplites much. It does work well for anything else though, at least I've found it to do so. It really does light cavalry and skirmish cavalry very well.

Between the two, I'd go with Impetus. It lends itself to head to head play better than HC does. HC is really designed specifically for large/huge multi-player games.

Nonsense. We use hail Caesar for modest one on one club night games. Just dont use the breakpoint rules and play around ten units a side. The break tests are usually enough to force a conclusion in under two hours.

I'm rather taken by what I have seen of Impetus, in fact they have prompted me to paint my first ever ancients army as for HC I have no idea but it has plenty of followers.

A basic version of Impetus (basic impetus) can be down loaded from the official site for a read through and try out, google it.

regards
dave

I've played both but prefer Impetus. Why, well –

1. I prefer the initiative sequence in Impetus rather than the IGO-UGO of HC
2. I don't like that, on the whim of the dice, divisions and units can fail to move turn after turn in HC or potentially move half way across the board in one turn. I prefer the single guaranteed move followed by your choice to move further repeatedly (but at increasing risk of disruption) in Impetus.
3. The writers of HC have a real Roman bias making them super hard but without commensurately increasing the points (Special rules Pilum which can be combined with Close Ranks to break any enemy charge, Testudo, etc)
4. The rules IMO are very poor at modelling Pike or Hopalite units

I have enjoyed playing HC but for me Impetus is much better.

I agree with Impetus and pretty much for the same reasons as Nick B

I play Rome Civil war period – about 6 armies (28mm) and Early Crusades – about 5 armies (10mm).

I have a copy of HC and, whilst never playing more than a couple of times, I think there are some interesting things but I always revert back to Impetus (familiarity and all that).

I'll add my vote for Impetus as well.

I like using the Basic Impetus rules to introduce new players to the hobby. Easy to learn, fun to play, and you don't need a whole lot of figures.

To that end, I have several BI armies so someone can borrow one while choosing and painting up his or her own. It's a cinch to expand them to Full Impetus armies later on if they want to.

I prefer to have my units based/mounted on the Impetus bases (I play 25/28mm) BUT….. I also have some ancients leftover from my Warhammer Ancients days and it's quite easy to plunk them onto a sabot base for a game if needs be.

Having said all that, there is really no right or wrong answer to your question. In the end you need to decide which system "feels" right to you, and which gives you the most pleasure with the least amount of rules learning/finagling/etc.

Best of luck to you!

V/R

Impetus all the way

I like Impetus because every game is quite distinct, even when playing with the same armies. The inability to "game" the system means that as the commander you have to constantly think of back up plans. I have found the HC is more predictable and produces less interesting games. Impetus has real tension and drama.

One of the weaknesses of Impetus is that as it stands it isn't as good a multi-player game as HC. We've come up with house rules to assist in this but you may need to experiment with different approaches.

Having played both rule sets, I much prefer Hail Caesar. But as Tim Kindred indicated above, it is very much a matter of learning which of them is likely to provide the experience that best matches your own particular wargaming tastes and preferences.

To that end, here are some good, detailed online reviews for Hail Caesar:
link
link
link

And here are some good, detailed reviews for Impetus:
link
PDF link
link

Best of luck with your search! Hope the reviews help a bit.

Cheers,
Scott

Nonsense. We use hail Caesar for modest one on one club night games.

Never said you couldn't use them or they would not work. I said they lend themselves better to a larger multi-player games. As in, that is what they were DESIGNED for. This is where the game really shines.

Impetus hits an intermediate sweet spot. You can play multi-player or one on one and do just fine.

BTW if you are playing solo, either game would work just fine…equally well.

I have never understood how Impetus makes allowances for different armour types. I know that VDU is meant to reflect this, but it also is the basis for attack dice. How can it do both ?

I have never understood how Impetus makes allowances for different armour types.

Impetus does not focus on armor or equipment but rather looks at the whole unit's fighting ability. The only inexplicable exception is the annoying need to detail as many missile weapons as possible.

HC, by contrast, takes into account armor and weapons to a higher degree.

Neither approach is wrong. They are just different.

Impetus uses both the VBU and impetus to represent a unit's fighting effectiveness and morale. The Discipline rating is used to represent training and the ability to control the unit. When I first bought Impetus I wasn't impressed but as I have played it I have come appreciate how well these simple ratings reflect troop types. Roman legionnaires are very tough disciplined troops. Norman cavalry are tough with high hitting power but poor ability to control.

The big challenge for those learning to play Impetus is the importance of the Cohesion Test. The CT is the critical dice roll in the Impetus system and it has a wide range of potential outcomes. This makes outcomes very unpredictable and for some players it is too difficult to accept. Impetus also emphasizes unit activation as all actions occur while the unit is activated rather than distinct phases. Personally, I find HC a bit of a drag as it plays when compared to Impetus. But as others have stated to each his own.

I've really been enjoying HC for what its worth. While I agree that it does make Roman units a bit too tough, I'd say that about all ancient rules sets I have played.

I'm also quite happy with the way it does phalanxs as well. I haven't played phalanx v phalanx, but certainly phalanx v legion and phalanx v mounted the rules are fine.

As well as the very large number of missile weapons on Impetus, the ranges seem awfully long for an army-level game.
I'd expect missile range to be about the same as the frontage of an average unit. Long ranges make it feel like a skirmish rather than a battle.

The missile ranges in Impetus do seem very long proportionally.

The Fire Table does have a lot of weapons types in Impetus. There are subtle differences that have a in impact on the game and cause players to use different troops in somewhat different ways. So for instance there are three types of Composite Bow, A,B,C. Composite Bow A is for infantry using composite bow, Composite Bow B is for cavalry whose primary weapon is bow (horse archers etc.) and Composite Bow C is for shock cavalry who use bow as a supplmentary weapon (Byzantine Tagmatic cavalry etc..) All the distinctions are on done through the chart and that makes the game move quickly.

Range in Impetus is exaggerated (as it is in Might of Arms, Armati and a host of other games.) It is a compromise between fire effect versus movement. Some games like FOG try to keep fire ranges to the scale of the game (which I would prefer) but in practice doesn`t work very well in my opinion.

I find HC to be less fiddly. I think it is faster and would call it easier to teach new players. Impetus has its moments but just was not as enjoyable to my gaming group so we went with HC.

Again, I am with the minority, but I think Warmaster does (or did) it the best.

@CPBelt- Stay Strong Brother!

Warmaster was good for certain periods but it really failed in the way it did skirmishers. All skirmisher or light horse armies were WAY too powerful.

I enjoy the hell out of Hail Caesar. I play a Greek army and often fight Romans, and both hoplites and legions seem to work just fine.

Impetus is particularly good at covering all the possible outcomes when units come into contact without ever being able to predict too accurately which one you're gonna get. I like this a lot. Many of the detractors dislike this bit the most…generally saying it's "too random".
Wargamers do seem to like predictability in outcomes so they can measure themselves against their opponent. I can see their point but history is full of examples where equally matched troops saw one side bolt etc and I enjoy history as much as wargaming. I like the idea that the troops are deciding the result and not me. Whether the odds of each possible result is right or wrong is a whole different subject but I find them convincing….most of the time!

Impetus all the way ….. why ? I just enjoy it the most in the end.

Played HC a fair bit ..also a good set of rules. Only way to really tell though is to have a go at both….sorry probably not what you want to hear.

IF I had to point out one thing in Impetus that stands out it would be that as your troops cohesion deteriorates…so does their ability to continue the fight or inflict pain on others … don't know any other rules that does this so simply and so effectively. It's what hooked me in the end :-)

Not sure I agree with the ranges being too long ? …not a problem in our games.

To me this belief in Impetus ranges being too great is a common mistake, and certainly one I made when I started playing.

When you compare the movement rates to missile ranges it certainly does look out of whack, but once you get used to the fact you can move more than once per turn it puts everything into perspective. The longest range hand held weapons shoot up to 3 movement pulses for medium cavalry, so if pushed hard they can close with Longbow A equipped troops in a single turn if they pass 2 Discipline checks.

Alternatively take A grade heavy infantry with a General. Move once for free, move second time and roll 2+ to move a third time and roll 3+ to move a fourth time, 4+ gets you a fifth move…

A graders with generals are awesome…

Even the slowest infantry have covered 25 BU… max range of a longbow is 30

Never played Impetus or even seen a game of it being played but I've never had a bad game of HC.

Much better than Warmaster in my view as it removed the possibility of a single round of movement heaving large parts of the enemy from one side of the table to the other while the opponent looked on!

that was the best bit.