Impetus or Basic Impetus for fantasy? And what about Lords and Servants?

[Hobgoblin]

As the weather improves, thoughts turn to mass-battle games in the garden. Last year, we had a blast playing lots of Kings of War; the year before that, it was HotT. Now I'm wondering about Impetus (though I'm sure we'll play a fair bit of the other two this year as well).

Ages ago, I downloaded the free Impetus Fantasy supplement. I think I then realised that Impetus bases were bigger and different measurements to anything I had, and the supplement made little sense without the rules (unsurprisingly!), so I thought no more about it.

But on a second glance, it's glaringly clear that armies could be easily put together from the various HotT and KoW units that we've got in abundance. I gather depth doesn't matter much, so a couple of HotT hordes would probably do as a unit of light foot or whatever, and the various 40mm bases we use to get our HotT units to KoW size could be combined on their own. On top of that, all the KoW ogre and troll units are already on 120mm frontages, while the HotT behemoths are correctly based already as monsters in the Impetus Fantasy rules.

But what's the better bet? Basic Impetus or the full-fat version?

My initial inclination is to go with Basic Impetus (for the price if nothing else!). From what I can see, Basic has set army lists (like DBA) whereas full-fat is build your own (like HotT). I wouldn't be wedded to the few fantasy lists in the supplement; I can imagine proxying orcs for Gauls or Vikings or whatever and ogres for some heavy-infantry-dependent army (Romans? WotR?). And I've actually got a fair bit of historical El Cid HotT stuff that would yield a historical or human fantasy army pretty quickly, and our regular opponents have a large DBA Hundred Years War force, so I'd initially only need to put together one 'fantasy' army. The main potential downside would be finding that there are a couple of things in a given list that can't be easily proxied.

What do those who've played both think? Basic or full-blown Impetus?

[Hobgoblin]

Actually, the more I think about it, the more using 100mm frontages (rather than 120) might make sense. That would allow our KoW infantry units to be used as is, and we've already got the extra 40mm bases to convert 60mm HotT hordes and warbands into KoW units.

That would also bring our KoW 'heavy infantry' (i.e. orcs, beastmen and lizardmen) into play; KoW annoyingly puts those units on 125mm frontages, but we use my old Citadel figures for these on 25mm squares (they're appropriately scaled for our 1/72). For 100mm-frontage Impetus, they could just be fielded in Oldhammer-style four-man ranks - giving us many more beefy infantry units (for the loss of the ogres and trolls).

Against that, does 5mm in frontage (125 vs 120) make any difference in Impetus? I imagine it might be more of a concern for infantry than cavalry.

But Basic Impetus or Impetus - that's the key issue!

[blacksoilbill]

I'd go full Impetus. The main difference (from memory) is the activation system. In Basic you activate everything once and that's it. Full Impetus has a nice risk-reward built into activations. You can try to activate units repeatedly, but a failed activation disorders the unit. There are a few other things as well (multiple commands: choosing which of those to try to activate) but the activation system is the main interesting difference.

[Hobgoblin]

Aha - thanks! That's very useful and goes against much of what I'd picked up online, where a lot of people seemed to be leaning towards Basic as the better game.

The scaleability of the game looks very attractive: having movement based on frontages means that we could try out a big game (on a small table) with individual HotT elements before working out whether to go with 100mm or 120mm as the standard frontage (I'm not sure which size would produce the most units from our HotT/KoW forces).

Also, how critical is consistent frontage in Impetus? I'm aware that there's a distinction between HotT/DBA where frontage really matters and, say, Sword and Spear or KoW where a bit of variation isn't that important (e.g. in KoW, players often use movement trays that increase the frontage of their units by 10mm or so beyond the standard, and the rules allow for it).

[blacksoilbill]

I guess you could go with Basic Impetus and see what you think. If you like it, no need to throw down the cash for the full version.

I can't really remember about frontage: all my units were the same frontage, so it never really arose as an issue.

[Hobgoblin]

I guess you could go with Basic Impetus and see what you think. If you like it, no need to throw down the cash for the full version.

I can't really remember about frontage: all my units were the same frontage, so it never really arose as an issue.

Thanks! Yes, that's certainly the cheaper way in.

Is Basic Impetus still considered a "gateway drug" to the main game, or is it more of a separate thing these days? Some of what I've picked up from various forums seems to suggest that there's almost a Basic D&D/AD&D situation going on now, with each game quite well established in its own right.

Also, do you need to shell out for the army lists separately for full-fat Impetus, or are there some in the rulebook to start with?

[Hobgoblin]

Ha - and as I delve into the Dadi & Piombi oeuvre, I find myself intrigued by Lords and Servants! Has anyone much experience of that? The reviews make it sound like an interesting use of Mordheim and Saga forces and something quite different from many other skirmish games.

When it comes to rules, I'm always perfectly happy with a good medieval/ancients set for fantasy - which is why I haven't been particularly tempted by Saga: Age of Magic when I already have Age of Vikings. And it's why we were perfectly happy playing Lion Rampant with goblins and ogres before Dragon Rampant came out (admittedly, the latter has some nice tweaks).

In most good fantasy literature, magic is largely "off screen" or a condition: swords in stones, knights magically bound to serve enchantresses, spells and counterspells that cancel each other out. So I rarely see the need for it to take D&D-style forms.

Also, a lot of historical skirmish games tend towards the heroic. Saga's a case in point - and for good reason! But I doubt very much that historical leaders in skirmish situations were always much better fighters than regular men-at-arms; the 'heroic' tendency in historical skirmish games is probably in part just for fun and in part a reflection of figure scales in massed-battle games, where the commander figure really represents the leader plus tens or even hundreds of elite bodyguards. And where you have heroes, you can easily replace them with monsters ...

[blacksoilbill]

Is Basic Impetus still considered a "gateway drug" to the main game, or is it more of a separate thing these days? Some of what I've picked up from various forums seems to suggest that there's almost a Basic D&D/AD&D situation going on now, with each game quite well established in its own right.

Also, do you need to shell out for the army lists separately for full-fat Impetus, or are there some in the rulebook to start with?

I'm not really sure about the Impetus 'scene' and how they see the two sets.

The rules only have a few lists (Greeks & Persians, Romans and some enemies, Crusades, HYW, Italian Wars) so you'd need to buy extra to get any decent array of lists. That's the other benefit of Basic: oodles of lists.

[Hobgoblin]

The rules only have a few lists (Greeks & Persians, Romans and some enemies, Crusades, HYW, Italian Wars) so you'd need to buy extra to get any decent array of lists. That's the other benefit of Basic: oodles of lists.

Brilliant - that's very handy info to have! From Wargames Vault, I'd got the impression that the full rules didn't have any army lists at all. So that's very good to know.

Curses, though! I'd just about decided to pick up Lords and Servants and Basic Impetus today; now I'll have to reconsider! 

[blacksoilbill]

I've got version 1 of the rules: maybe version 2 is different?

[Ethelred the Almost Ready]

Like you, Hobgoblin, I am interested in Lords and Servants.
I have given full Impetus as go a few years ago - solo and used for Middle Earth fantasy - so really 90% of it was just a normal historical game.  I like a lot of the mechanics, but there is quite a high learning curve for the game and for solo gaming I found it just too much to manage enjoyably.
I have played Dragon Rampant as a "big battle" game - using multiple commands, tweaked the leader/hero rules and used the flank and rules that are now included in Lion Rampant.  You clearly like the Lion/Dragon Rampant rules - you should perhaps try using these for big battles.
Impetus is great but will be an investment in time to learn the rules well and best to use with a few friends, not so much for solo gaming.  As far as basing, playing solo I could use whatever basing I wanted - using a smaller frontage was no major problem.
Midgard rules by James Morris are also due out soon.  These will also play well with any basing so you could easily use Impetus armies for this later on.