Large Units and Impetus - potential mod

Team,

have been thinking about the Large Unit changes, as a house rule in preparation for such a change I'm looking for feedback on how sensible the following sounds:

Impetus:

Rather than immediately losing Impetus units lose 1 point of Impetus per point of strength loss. This will give a net effect of 2 Dice lost per point of damage taken (until the Impetus bonus is exhausted OR as modified by Large Unit rule).

When a unit is reduced to zero Impetus it can no longer gain a charge bonus to movement, countercharge or opportunity charge. The troops are effectively exhausted and whilst they can muster themselves to move into contact and melee with the enemy they no longer do so with the same degree of elan as when they were fresher.




Large units:

Large units feed strength from the rear unit(s) into the front unit in the same way as at present, i.e. there is no VBU loss until the rear unit is removed through taking sufficient damage.

Note that the large unit suffers from Impetus loss as described above as soon as the rear unit takes damage, i.e. whilst the Large Unit fights with a full VBU strength front unit it loses Impetus in line with rear unit losses but as long as there is a rear unit present it will always have an Impetus value of at least 1.

This will require some book keeping as removal of the rear unit will remove markers associated with losses and result in the front unit potentially having a different level of VBU loss and Impetus loss.

I like the current system which is simple and easy to keep track of.

I especially like how Impetus reflects the fragility of cavalry. Basically cavalry has one good charge in it and the timing of it is very important.

I don't like the added complexity and tracking. Impetus is related to freshness, chipping away at it instead would devalue disorder and reset most of the game paradigms.

The goal of the game at the moment is to maintain cohesion and freshness - this would just turn it into a mindless slugfest.

I agree with Gaius and Zippee, Rob.

This would add a layer of book-keeping that could become emotionally untidy in a convention battle.

Happy to try it in a friendly but, as noted, it would play against one of Impetus' strengths.

Some form of change is coming in Impetus 2 anyway, might as well get used to it now.

I think the system works quite well now and tend to agree that any change that requires more account keeping is not desirable.

Cheers,

Dennis