Question about Impact

[BMAXIMUS]

I was wondering what was the "history" (in term of game design) of the Impact. I'm new to ancient warfare wargame and I am just aware of the predecessor of FOG (DB DBM etc ...).
So who came with the idea of the impact phase (vs melee).
Also what does justify the fact armours are ignorde during impact phase, or that in theory one guy on its own could break a full unit when flanking it ?

[rbodleyscott]

I was wondering what was the "history" (in term of game design) of the Impact. I'm new to ancient warfare wargame and I am just aware of the predecessor of FOG (DB DBM etc ...).
So who came with the idea of the impact phase (vs melee).

Not sure whether it came from a much older set of rules (not DBM, DBA or WRG Ancients), or whether one of the team that developed FOG Ancients/Medieval tabletop rules (Simon Hall, Terry Shaw and myself) came up with it.

Also what does justify the fact armours are ignorde during impact phase

We decided that armour would have less effect at impact than in melee. Probably not no effect at all, obviously, but we wanted to keep it simple.

or that in theory one guy on its own could break a full unit when flanking it ?

In theory, but not really in practice, because there are no such "one guy on his own" units.

The idea is that at the moment of impact, only the files directly in front of the chargers can influence the outcome.

Knights/cavalry charging into a mass of enemy might initially be successful, but then (if the enemy did not break) eventually be overwhelmed by weight of numbers.

[BMAXIMUS]

Not sure whether it came from a much older set of rules (not DBM, DBA or WRG Ancients), or whether one of the team that developed FOG Ancients/Medieval tabletop rules (Simon Hall, Terry Shaw and myself) came up with it.

I was just wondering in other games had this concept or if it was introduced by FOG.

We decided that armour would have less effect at impact than in melee. Probably not no effect at all, obviously, but we wanted to keep it simple.

But am I right to think that as it stands, armours have no effet at all during impact ?

In theory, but not really in practice, because there are no such "one guy on his own" units.

I realized that indeed units can't really go much lower than 50% and this combined with the light troop incapacity to break heavier troops prevents
units less 50%(ish) to break full units

Thanks for the answer

[rbodleyscott]

We decided that armour would have less effect at impact than in melee. Probably not no effect at all, obviously, but we wanted to keep it simple.

But am I right to think that as it stands, armours have no effect at all during impact ?

That is correct.

[Delbruck]

Many games have used impact as a separate mechanism from melee in ancient warfare. One game which used it was Ancient Warfare developed in the 1970's by Arnold Hendrick.

[BMAXIMUS]

Just out of curiosity, how did the impact work in that game ?