Vikings - Army Lists

Hi everyone.

I am new to Impetus, but an experienced Ancients player. I like the rules very much and our community is trying to make the switch to Impetus as our "main" ancients & medievals system, however I have not been able to find any Viking list except for Harald Hardrada's, which is limited to 1066-1071.

Is this a known issue ? I have not managed to find a list in the existing supplements or among the medieval beta lists, and as you can imagine, Vikings are a quite popular and beloved army (we have 2 players in the community who have Viking armies). Could you please clarify whether I am missing something or whether they have just been ignored / delayed ?

Many Thanks,
Dan.

First welcome aboard Dan. Impetus certainly resurrected ancient gaming for my group. It is our principal game and we still find it enjoyable and frustrating all these years.

I remember seeing a few years back a Viking Raider's list but it isn't, as you note, currently in the Medieval Beta Lists.

New lists are likely a considerable distance in the offing (from what Lorenzo has intimated.)

What period of the Vikings are you interested in? Is there much difference, for instance, between 10th and 11th century Vikings? I don't know but you probably have some ideas.

Here is what I would do. Take a couple of other rule sets lists for the army you are interested in and convert the lists into Impetus using EI2 Hardrada as a guide. Then post it on this Forum and invite responses. Once you be savaged a bit by a few in the community and get agreement you can send the list to Lorenzo and he will review it and post it in Beta Lists.

I did the above for the Early Franks because I wanted to build them and after making several changes sent it to Lorenzo and got it approved and added into the Beta List.

My one suggestion would be not to be over enthusiastic about the army and make them into "gods". I've seen that happen a lot of that. If you need some technical help please let me know and I can send you my email through messages on this Forum.

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the explanations. That would be no problem, I am quite experienced in list design (co-wrote Vlad the Impaler for WAB and wrote several Clash of Empires lists), so I am well aware what traps to avoid, however I was hoping to not have to, since I pitched Impetvs to my group as "having loads of lists". One of the main reasons for us abandoning Clash of Empires (beside the system being somewhat archaic), was the chronic lack of "official" lists and our need to always pester the authors with fan-built lists (which were generally well received - but which does not say a lot about the author's involvement). So I was hoping not to have to do this in Impetvs as well, especially since in truth it DOES have loads of lists. It's just quite surprising that such a popular one seems to not have made it. I noticed that Impetvs is quite popular outside the anglosphere, perhaps the interest for Dark Ages Northern Europe is less in the Impetvs community and no push has been made for this.

In any case, I will get to work on something, the sooner it's started, the sooner is solved.

Thanks a lot for the input.

Cheers,
Dan

Hi Dan

Yes, I agree that the lists are incomplete after all these years. Part of the reason is the way that Lorenzo developed the game. The Extra Impetus List books are highly quality productions and so took a considerable effort I imagine to get published. I hope that for Impetus 2 the list books will be more like other sets, just lists.

Here is the lists for Vikings from DBM. Seems similar to the EI2 list for Vikings. With your background it wouldn't be hard to modify the EI2 list with these troop types. Making minimums for the Hird would be a good idea. Plus you could perhaps have some FP/T units to reflect the Viking firepower (that option is missing in the EI2 Viking list.) Just a few ideas to float out there.  

NORSE VIKING AND LEIDANG 790 AD -1280 AD
Huscarls - Irr Bd (O) @ 5AP 8-20
Berserks - Irr Wb (F) @ 3AP 0-2
Scouts - Irr Ps (S) @ 3AP 0-3
Mounted Scouts - Irr Cv (I) @ 5AP 0-2

Only Viking before 850 AD:
Undisciplined raiders - Irr Bd (F) @ 5AP 26-80

Only Viking after 850 AD:
Hird - Irr Bd (I) @ 4AP 32-72
Archers - Irr Bw (O) @ 4AP or Irr Ps (O) @ 2AP 0-6
Horses to mount all foot @ lAP All/0

As an aside, Lorenzo has mentioned that the Impetus 2 lists will likely come in 3 books and follow the ordering of the Basic Impetus lists.

yes, Impetus 2 lists will be simple list with not those extras.
Philosophy of besta lists is to add more lists in a quick way and provide a basis to develop the final list. So any imput is welcome.

It seems to me that the main difference betweek and "early" Viking and a "later" Viking is lis is that Raiders are used instead of more "stationary" militia like Hird
I thin that these can be depicted in the same way of Huscarls with VBU 5 maybe as FL insead of FP. And with no Large Units.

What are you modelling with the early list as opposed to the later list? If it's whole armies, like the Great Army that invaded Anglo-Saxon England in the ninth century, then I'm really not sure FL is a suitable troop type. Unless you're scaling up a few boatloads of raiders to a full army and modelling an actual raid, then FP for the main body of infantry is the best way of depicting them.

yes, I agree. Basically and Early Viking can be taken from the later list simply avoiding Hirds and adding more Huscarls.
But if there are other suggestions I would be happy to add this list among the betas in a short time.