First impression is two thumbs up! However I'll start with a small critique.
I received the main Impetus rulebook 2 weeks ago and imho I think it needs an aesthetic update to come on line with the current rule book's hitting the market. It needs to be hardback and the photo's updated. Some of armies/units looked quite good, but too many didn't show the great basing potential Impetus offers in diorama type basing which anaesthetically is such a strong point of the system . However, I'm happy that I bought the rules.:-)
Some of the translation was a little dodgy, but since I'm dyslexic resulting in my writing also being dodgy even in my own language and the book originally in Italian I'll give that an understanding wink and a pass.
That said the rules are easy to understand and are not overly complex. The structure of armies and organization seems very good and flexible with an emphasis on results over process which is nice for game flow.
It offers an Impetus Bonus rule which is another nice factor of the game where you receive this on charges when Fresh(no wounds suffered) and not disordered which will make players think about when committing their best troops. To early and they will wear out too soon or too late and your army will already have suffered too much damage to come back.
Today at our club we played Impetus for the first time using the Basic Impetus version to just get a feel for the game before moving on to full Impetus later on. This leads to the other nice point about Impetus is they offer both a free scaled down version with the option of buying the full version.
Any ways, I had a great time and really enjoyed the pace of the game and unpredictability built into it. Results were fast and furious and packed a lot of drama.This was a very welcome change from FOG with it's grinding approach that I quite frankly find boring. I also believe it to be superior in play over DBA/DBMM because in view DBA/DBMM are to slow to react to changing situations and single dice rolls deciding everything. Of course that's just IMHO, but it is how I feel.
We played Normans(my friend) vs Saxons(me) which at first I thought might not have that many tactical decisions as the Saxon player will generally start in shieldwall. However, during the course of the game situations came up where the Saxon player had to decide if he wanted to take advantage of situations by moving. So, what I thought might be a static game, actually turned into manoeuvre. In the end the Saxons prevailed, but I think the Normans could equally have won on another occasion had the dice been a bit nicer to the Normans.
I'm looking forward to more games and hopefully my friends at the club will play some more games. They want to try FOG which I will accommodate, but hopefully like me they will end up preferring Impetus.
There is no doubt Impetus will become my 15mm game of choice and will also join the ranks of top 28mm games I play for sure for Ancient and Medieval gaming . Really enjoyed this game folks!
Sorry, no pics, but I'll try to remember next time.
I also just received Hail Caesar in the mail! :-) However I'll leave that review for another time.