I love backdrops and I hope that the Impiltur article is cool and such things will become a regular feature. Will another FR City from Ed Greenwood be in the works soon as well?
If anyone knows Impiltur its George Krashos, so I am very excited to see this as well, especially after the sneak peaks of Impiltur that we got in Champions of Valor/Champions of Ruin.
I haven't gone through the issue in detail yet. I'll also admit I'm not that interested in the Forgotten Realms. However, this article does seem well done, and goes into a lot of detail.
I suspect having this in the same issue as the Pelor article is going to have the guys looking for heavy crunch complaining about the issue though. It's very crunch lite (which many will love), and the main mechanics article deals with using the Three-Dragon Ante game.
Even though I don't run the Realms anymore as my campaign world, the backdrops are so ripe for "plunder" that I just love to see them in either magazine. Cities, regions and now a whole kingdom? I can't wait to see this!!