Rules query

Had the rules now for over a year but this was the first time I had actually played a game with other wargammers who were also new to this rule set, although both had a background of playing ancients.

The game went OK but there were a few queries, and I have documented some of the queried here as they come into my head.

Shooting at Large Units or groups: When shooting at large units or groups do you as the attacker say which unit you are shooting at? For example if you have a large unit with skirmishers in the front can you elect to ignore the skirmishers and instead shoot at the second unit?

Large Units and Skirmishers: Are skirmishers fixed permanently to a large unit or can they peel off to attack or move somewhere else?

When skirmishers evade how far do they pull back? Is it a full move or the roll of a dice?

If a commander has a discipline of 2 does that mean that you can only influence units to remove disorder? So for example if I have two units disordered and I use two discipline rolls to attempt to get rid of discipline on one unit, then thats it. I cannot attempt to use two discipline tests on another unit, or in other words its tow attempts per Division?

When a large unit is attacked in the flank and loses a melee, is the whole unit removed or just one unit?

When skirmishers attached to large units and are charged can they shoot before evading to the rear?

I'm also guessing they cannot evade when being attacked from a unit thats on opportunity?

Finally, it came as a surprise how bad Spartans were in combat. Looking at the lists they seem to cost a lot for very little. 5VBU at 27 points against Athenian Hoplites for 22 points and all you get is a higher discipline value. We expected Spartan Hoplites to be much tougher than this and were very nearly destroyed by a single charge of heavy cavalry when we expected the long spear to murder the cavalry.

I'm sure I will remember other things i missed, but overall the game seemed to go ok apart from as a I say a few queries. If anyone is near Northampton then please come for a game at Northampton Warlords.

I'll have a go at these.

Your first question, "shooting at Large units or groups". You only target single units for shooting purposes. In most case this will be during your own turn, when enemy "groups" have no meaning. A group exists temporarily as a rule concept during its own activation phase, when the player declares he is moving a set of units as a group. If you have shooters on Opportunity you may target a single unit within an enemy group during his movement. If you score a hit and cause disorder to that target unit, it no longer forms part of the group. A Large unit, can be 2 or 3 bases deep, is treated as a single unit, the front base is the target, casualties are removed from the rear most base.

Skirmishers are normally independent of Large units, although may well move as part of a group with Large units, forming a front rank. If the range is over 15U the skirmishers can be ignored and the unit they are screening can be targeted, but in this case the shooting dice are halved, rounded up. At less than 15U skirmishers cannot be ignored.

There are very few army lists when skirmishers can form part of a Large unit. I can only think of the Assyrian Beta list, there may be some others. In this case the S base forms the rear rank and is allowed to shoot through the front ranks without penalty. Bases declared to be part of a Large unit remain so throughout the game and cannot act independently.

Skirmishers evade a full move distance.

A commander with a Leadership Bonus of 2 rolls 2 dice whenever he attempts to rally a disordered unit "by Command" (or "shouts at" in the common parlance). So if you begin your turn with 2 "B" class units disordered, you activate your first unit, which may attempt to rally itself, 1 dice, looking for a 4,5 or 6. If it fails you have the option continue disordered, or to rally "by Command" i.e. 2 dice, looking for 4,5 or 6 on either dice. The unit cannot then take any further action this phase. You may now activate you second unit with the same options.

A Large unit "Flank attacked" will be destroyed if it looses the melee. But be aware, not all flank contacts are "Flank attacks". The contacting move must start entirely behind the front line of the contacted unit.

Skirmishers are not attached to Large units, see above. Skirmishers in front of units may evade or shoot (if charge from beyond point blank) but not both. Evasion is only possible to the inactive player, so you cannot evade an opportunity event.

Spartans are very tough. As Large units they can be almost unstoppable, especially if upgraded to VBU 6. Their main advantage against mounted is Long Spear negates impetus, FP bonus of +1 Vs mounted in the cohesion test and discipline bonus dice in melee against most opponents (+1 if superior class). The latter bonus's are to be found in the "Clarifications and Amendments" on this site, if you have not already found them.

Hope this helps, enjoy the game.

I don't mean this cheeky but there are so many misunderstandings in your questions arthur that I would highly recommend reading through the rules carefully a couple of times. Also, looking over Advanced Impetus and some of the tutorials in the Extra Impetuses would help a lot.

Skirmishers are always (for practical purposes) separate units and are treated as such.

A Fair army commander can rally as many units in  a single activation as are needed by using his Leadership Bonus. There is no limit to the number of attempts but each unit would only get 2 dice.

As far as the Spartans go, the big plus for them is upgrading the front rank to VBU 6. Always take this upgrade because with the back rank they become an extremely tough unit for the cost. Most non Spartan hoplites don't get this option and the difference between a front unit of a large unit with VBU 5 and 6 is considerable.

Thanks guys thats crystal clear

Gaius Cassius posted

I don't mean this cheeky but there are so many misunderstandings in your questions arthur that I would highly recommend reading through the rules carefully a couple of times. Also, looking over Advanced Impetus and some of the tutorials in the Extra Impetuses would help a lot.

I have read through it more than a few times but I think its probably just how I read it. I come from a background of historical research so I might look at something and read it in several different ways, for example

Page 14

"Disorder is not cumulative, but a unit that is already disordered and that receives another disordered result after fire or melee takes one permanent loss to its VBU instead of a second disorder and remains disordered".

Now thats crystal clear BUT it then says on page 34

"A unit that is already Disordered (After movement,firing or melee) and that is disordered a second time, while passing the cohesion test caused by receiving fire also takes a permanent loss to their VBU"

and this is repeated on page 38 in regard to melee.

Now to me whats written on page 14 and page 34 are actually saying two different things, or certainly can be read in two ways.

The first one is saying that if you take another hit you get disordered a second time and that second disorder becomes a loss to VBU.

However the change to the sentence on page 34 is the words "While passing the cohesion test"

Does this mean that if you fail the cohesion test you don't take an extra hit to your VBU because you are disordered a second time?

firstly there are a couple of fundamentals which must be born in mind when reading the clauses you quote:

1) You can be disordered by different means.

2) You can only ever be subject to disorder, there is no such thing as multiple disorder

Nothing will change those fundamentals.

Page 14 is talking about disorder from movement; pages 34 & 38 are talking about disorder from combat. They are actually saying the same thing from different directions.

That the language can be a little strained is well understood – a product of translation from the Italian by non-natives. It does generate the odd raised eyebrow but over the years most (all) have been ironed out and the meaning understood/clarified.

“While passing the cohesion test (CT)” doesn’t change the meaning of Page 14. There is possibly one too many or one too few commas in the statement, remove one or add one after “receiving fire”.

You are reading it too literally for a translated work "disordered a second time" should pedantically be written as "receives an additional disorder result" or similar.

If you are successfully hit in combat (ranged or close) one of the results of that, is that you are disordered. However, if you are already disordered that translates into a VBU loss.

When you fail a CT you will lose VBU as dictated by that fail but you take the "disorder" VBU loss even when you pass the CT. So in a sense you don’t take the VBU loss due to receiving the second disorder result when you fail the CT but only when you pass it.

But I do accept that it is an unnecessary clause in the page 34/38 statement which could be better written something like: "A unit that is already disordered and receives a further disorder result from combat, suffers a minimum VBU loss of 1, regardless of whether it passes or fails a CT"

Yes I think I have got that now thanks.

Yes, I agree with Zippee that the Impetus English edition is sometimes oddly phrased. Writing rules is generally tricky and very few sets have been written in a manner that is easily understood. Translation only adds to the challenge.

When a unit disorders in Impetus it becomes immediately vulnerable to automatic loses through fire or melee. For instance, a disordered CP with VBU 8 that receives a single hit in melee can not technically fail a Cohesion test (its test is 8 - 1 (disorder) - 1 (hit) for a final result of 6 on 1d6.) Of course this is remedied by the rule that a CT roll of 6 is an automatic failure. But assume in the melee the CP rolls a 5 on the CT. It passes the test and remains locked in melee but does take a loss because it is is disordered. If the above CP had not been disordered then the result of the CT would have been that it becomes disordered. Powerful units in Impetus get worn down through taking automatic disorder losses before they actually fail a CT.

Impetus ( if read through only ) are difficult to get your head around I think a few would agree there. Lorenzo has 'messed with' the I go-You go 'norm' to such an extent that it's not till you've had a few games that you fully appreciate what's going on. This is what makes them stand out from the crowd though...stick with it

Gaius Cassius wrote:Yes, I agree with Zippee that the Impetus English edition is sometimes oddly phrased. Writing rules is generally tricky and very few sets have been written in a manner that is easily understood. Translation only adds to the challenge.

orn down through taking automatic disorder losses before they actually fail a CT.

Just to say that with BI2 and Baroque where I've been a little involved in translation etc and it's when you're involved that you realise the difficulties

An example, in Baroque we now have Light artillery 'rotates' whereas medium and heavy 'wheel'

Firstly it's to drive home that one can rotate and fire whereas the one that had to wheel cannot.
(Which is a good thing, gives light artillery a sensible advantage)
Secondly we used a different word so that we didn't have the complication of some guns could wheel and fire and some couldn't. Lighter stuff is so light it rotates rather than wheels

Thirdly I haven't a clue what the equivalent words are in Italian and Spanish   but because we had long email discussions to get the idea across hopefully all three editions allow the same thing

When you expand this process to include the whole rules, including things that you've never bothered to think about because you know how they work, you can imagine how much time it can take

Jim