Impetus

Josh and I are mostly playing MegaMek, but that's not entirely satisfying--he's on his computer, I'm on my computer, there's no personal interaction. And I've been looking for a game where I can put, say, Thirty Years War armies against each other, or against Aztecs, or against Byzantines...
I could do that with Field of Glory, but that's a wall of text written for tournament gamers. I was looking for something like DBA, but with some of the more glaring problems fixed. I thought about writing my own...but then I heard about Impetus, and got a copy of that plus Basic Impetus.

At first glance, Basic seems to be the equivalent of DBA, while the full thing has a little more chrome--multiple commanders, activation order, troop quality and such. Instead of being either pushed back or destroyed, units can take cohesion hits. Large units, such as pike blocks and deep formations of impetuous infantry, can be formed from multiple bases, and absorb damage with the rear bases--feeding men into the line. Units which pass a discipline test can respond during the enemy's activation, for instance by counter charging or firing.

There are some publishing problems, such as hyphenation in odd places, lack of paragraph indentation, and some typos; however, it's more readable than DBA (which I realize is damning with faint praise). It calls for units which are (when using 15mm figures) 80mm wide instead of the de facto standard 40mm. But it looks good and I'm looking forward to trying it soon.