BASIC IMPETUS Part 7: And Finally...

 In this final post on the BASIC IMPETUS series, I’ll mention a few extra things and give my overall thoughts on the game.

1.    Initiative Re-Rolls

Each army has a single Impetus Re-roll for free, to use when desired. There is also the option to acquire more re-rolls by forfeiting an “S” unit. See the Army Lists for other options.

2.    Great Battles

A series of alternate rules mods are detailed for fighting battles with two or three times the quantities of units of a normal game.

3.    Ace In The Hole

Special advantages can be acquired by taking an “Ace In The Hole”. Sounds painful, but they’re quite good – allowing the player to bend the rules under certain conditions, such as ignoring charge limitations, rolling extra dice for initiative, cohesion test bonus, etc.

4.    Final Thoughts

I like the simplicity of the system over some other games, especially with unit contact and the smaller number of modifications to rolls. And the thing that really attracted me was the small number of bases required and the larger size of said bases.

However, there are a few things that could be better (not saying they are bad, but I have gotten used to some nice mechanics from other games). Here are my suggestions for “House Rules”:

RANDOM ACTIONS. After rolling Initiative to see who is the Active Player, roll a D6  (+2 if General still on table) to see how many actual Actions you can perform on your turn. I’ve never really been a fan of being able to move anything an everything in a turn, so using the DBx idea should work well enough.

COHESION TEST: I’m not convinced by the mechanics of the Cohesion test; it seems very powerful and too linear in relation to VBU for my liking. But I can’t think of a way around it without making it a little more complicated, so I’ll grudgingly stick with it. It’s the same for everyone, so, yeah, we’ll keep it for now.

Full IMPETUS. Once we’ve played a few more games with the BASIC rules, I’ll red the full version and see where the improvements are. Most people who play the full version suggest going straight to that one, but I bought the BASIC set first and so can’t just put it aside without trying it. 😉

And that’s it. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you on the gaming table!