Advanced European Theater of Operations
Advanced European Theater of Operations (also known as “Advanced ETO” or just “AETO”) is a strategic level board wargame simulating the military campaigns in Europe during the Second World War. The game is noted for detail and complexity.
History
Advanced European Theater of Operations was designed by Eric Harvey in the late 1990s, basing most of AETO's combat rules on the foregoing European Theater of Operations from which Advanced ETO derives its name. First published in 2002 by Decision Games, whom had previously purchased the rights to ETO, AETO was praised for its impressive detail, but also criticized for excessive complexity.
Advanced ETO is an ambitious attempt to inculcate as much accuracy and detail as possible into a two-map game of the European Theater of World War II. The counter inventory doubles that of ETO and includes a ratio of about 90% combat counters and 10% informational chits. Units for most of the major combatants, major and minor, are included.
The AETO rules are 150 pages in length, unusual for most board games (Advanced Squad Leader perhaps being the record holder for the lengthiest rule book. By comparison, the similar game World in Flames had a rule book only half as many pages in length.
Rules development
According to Mr. Harvey's comments at the consmiworld.com forums, the system expanded to such lengths based on several intentions:
- to formulate ratios of game counters and associated rules based upon historically-accurate data, and not upon any preexisting limitations inherited from ETO;
- to write the rules with no lexicon or abbreviations whatsoever (using only normal English vernacular to ease understanding and comprehension)
- to write each of the game’s rules with intentionally-excessive verbosity (in an attempt to minimize ambiguities and loopholes.)
- because of Decision Games’ perceived uncommunicativeness (apparently even towards its designers), no guidelines regarding layout and format specifications were communicated to Mr. Harvey until after his draft rules were due for submission.
On consimworld.com in November of 2006, Mr. Harvey posted:
In all fairness, I have to share the blame with [Decision Games], because in my effort to make the game rules air-tight, I was very verbose in my writing (I tried to cover every eventuality), and thus the rules grew to be quite lengthy. Not to exonerate DG, though, because they were extremely uncommunicative, and I had absolutely no idea that they would convert my entire rules into another program, nor that they would change the formatting, nor that they would edit any rules, etc, etc, etc. I literally did not discover any of this until days before the game was released
Overall Game Premise
Advanced ETO covers the entire European Theater of Operations during the Second World War, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, and concluding in 1945 depending on the events and outcome of each game. AETO was primarily intended to replicate the entire strategic campaign in Europe from the war’s start to the war’s end. Individual scenarios are not prolific and are regarded by AETO players as not much more than learning aids in most cases.
AETO Maps
The playing surface for Advanced ETO comprises two large (22” x 34”) maps that together represent all of Europe, North Africa, and much of the Middle East, with each hexagon representing approximately 50 statute miles. The AETO maps were based upon, and thus are very similar to, the ETO maps, but are notably quite evolved, including the addition of a rail line network, ‘resource hexes’, additional cities, rivers, lakes, islands, re-rendered mountain ranges and ‘large sea areas.’ A new system for naval movement based on the new map has been developed.
The maps’ graphic artwork was drawn by wargame map-artist Joseph Youst, to whom Mr. Harvey credits the idea for the re-rendered mountain ranges.
The AETO maps also include printed player-aids. Together, the two maps are considerably larger than the maps of games such as The Rise and Decline of the Third Reich.
AETO Counters
The Advanced ETO counters are a notable upgrade from the original ETO counters. The artwork for the air and naval units in AETO were rendered by Jon Compton (primarily imported from Jon’s existing artwork archives at the behest of Decision Games, as an attempt to save money during production.) The artwork of the AETO air and naval units are the opposite of convention for a strategic game insofar as the aircraft are presented as side views, and the naval units are presented as top-down view. The land units, derived from the ETO NATO-symbol style, are relatively standard in appearance but did entail some improvements over ETO (e.g., an ‘exploitation-allowance’ circle added to armor units.) During production, however, Mr. Harvey discovered and became dissatisfied with some of the ancillary artwork that was being submitted (for example, submarine artwork was represented as nothing more than protruding periscopes), and he redrew some of the artwork himself by hand.
Advanced ETO includes 2240 game counters on 8 counter-sheets of 280 counters each. In this regard, the inventory of AETO bears no resemblance to ETO at all; AETO’s “Orders of Battle” was a complete re-mastering by Eric Harvey from top to bottom and includes numerous types of units (e.g., panzergrenadier divisions) not present in ETO.
The Atrocity counter
A controversial aspect of AETO is the Atrocity counter, which was misunderstood by some to be an ACTIVE task to be accomplished during game play. The atrocity rule itself is a conceptual addition to AETO (i.e. not a feature of ETO) that actually penalized the German player whenever he employed Waffen SS units during game play (representing criminal acts committed by units such as Kampfgruppe Peiper as well as abstractly representing the whole SS culture throughout the war. To those gamers that did not understand the actual intent of the rule, the artwork of the Atrocity counter(depicting a silhouetted German officer about to execute a kneeling prisoner) was regarded as macabre. Eric Harvey reported receiving numerous dissenting opinions over the matter; at consimworld.com in October of 2002 he posted:
...to simulate the existence of things like the einsatzgruppen and the atrocities committed by the Germans (and the negative repercussions), the German player is essentially penalized whenever any SS unit (albeit Waffen SS) is employed into any particular enemy nation (even if conquered). This then increases the allowable Partisan activity therein; it's that simple...
And:
I think, though, some people actually thought that the 'atrocity' chit was a good thing for the Germans to do...and hence the offense. In all reality, the German player will want to avoid the atrocity effect whenever possible (translate: atrocity is not a good thing!)
AETO Force Pools
A unique component of Advanced ETO is its comprehensive force pools which feature a relatively accurate tabulation of all the belligerents (and even neutrals) of the Second World War. The AETO force pools present players with an extremely well-organized spreadsheet that manages the arrival schedules of all the game’s units and pieces, including units that are purchasable by the players, and units that are automatic historical arrivals (such as the powerful Soviet ‘Siberian’ units, which may arrive just in time to help the Soviet player defend Moscow, as happened historically.) The force pools present a very organized apportionment of each belligerent’s forces according to historical timeframes, and this has the effect of simulating the war more historically than most other strategic-level wargames (e.g., the initial German panzer units...though effective during the war’s early stages...are gradually replaced by better-equipped and more powerful panzer units, as occurred historically.)
Because of Advanced ETO’s extensive scope of units, ships and aircraft, the AETO force pools are quite extensive (7 pages), but they are very detailed for the game’s scale (some players have contended that they are too detailed), and even include the precise comings and goings of naval units that historically transferred back and forth from other Theaters (i.e., the Pacific), as well as obscure details such as the former names of certain ships (e.g., the Soviet cruiser “Petropavlovsk”, which was formally the old German warship “Lutzow”.) Such is the extent of the force pools’ detail, the length of the “notes” actually exceed the length of the force pools unit tabulation themselves, in most cases. Though very detailed, the AETO force pools are well organized, intuitive and easy to comprehend.
AETO Rules
The AETO Rules were written from scratch and total 144 pages. Though not absent of ambiguities, the AETO rules are use clear English and avoid the use acronyms and abbreviations. The rules are described as "thorough" and attempt to give detailed examples of all conceivable game play situations. The rules have suffered from poor editing and, in the first production run, misprints and missing pages. The latter was remedied by Mr. Harvey's offer to sell a privately produced rule book directly. As an additional bonus, a CD was included which contained a bonus files (including the rules files themselves) such as player-aids, and a designer’s notes article. This has come to be known as the “AETO Kit”.
AETO Scenarios
Besides the main campaign game, Advanced ETO only includes 8 unique but simple scenarios.
AETO Game Concept and Evolution
Advanced ETO’s design philosophy was to maintain a strict adherence to historical fact. Players of either side are given the opportunity to deviate from historical campaign strategies, but geo-political historical deviations are extremely limited. The AETO rules require participating players to operate in accordance with historic political realities (e.g. Italy may invade Greece, as occurred historically, but Italy may not join the Allies against Germany.) Furthermore, the AETO rules restrict players to historically fielded units and combatants (e.g. the Soviet Union cannot launch aircraft carriers, although Germany may launch one historic aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin.) Germany, for example, is not required to establish the Vichy puppet State, but to not do so would invite abject disadvantages for the German player.
International popularity
AETO's rules have been successfully translated by dedicated fans into foreign languages such as Italian and Spanish. The full Italian translation (by Manuele Cogno) is currently available for download at boardgamegeek.com.
Reviews
A review of Advanced ETO appeared in the September/October 2004 issue (#55) of “Paper Wars” (published by Omega Games), written by Rick Lechowich, detailing AETO’s sequence of play. Mr. Lechowich’s review serves as an introduction to the game’s engine, and touches actual combat mechanics. From the review:
Advanced European Theater of Operations combines good looks with size and combat system fun with a very large overlay of chrome to live up to its name. The game is indeed advanced and reflects the dedicated efforts of serious players, devoted fans, and the occasional rules lawyer. Depth and thoroughness in the rules is another reflection of the game’s complexity. This is not an introductory level game by any means. It does provide fans of the previous game a much deeper, involved, and realistic look at the strategic issues facing both sides in World War II.
The Summer 2006 Issue (#142) of “Fire & Movement” (published by Decision Games) includes an Example of Play article, written by Darin Leviloff, recreating the German assault on Crete in 1941, a scenario included in AETO.
Designer’s Notes
Though never officially published, a designer’s notes Word file was included [on CD] with the reissued AETO rules, which explained the design process in great detail. Its primary theme pertained to Eric Harvey’s design rationale, and the derivation of AETO’s unit ratings (and the meticulous research invested to that end.) Additionally, some general economic strategies were intimated, as well as a brief overview of the game’s overall structure and balance.
While certainly somewhat gregarious in style, the designer’s notes provided very interesting reading to detail-minded players, and gamers interested in wargame design in particular. But despite its 8-page length, the designer’s notes made very little mention of any actual AETO rules, and did not expound much beyond the game pieces themselves (there was no specific mention of any actual mechanics, or much reference to the innovations of various new rules). They readily acknowledged AETO’s excessive complexity (albeit rationalized), but the reader was accordingly compelled to believe in AETO’s acclaimed accuracy, as it was quite clear that AETO was indeed designed with little...if any...guesswork, and many examples of the actual research devoted to its design process were thoroughly explained.
East African Theater of Operations (AOI)
In 2004, Eric Harvey conceptualized a full expansion game for Advanced ETO known as Africa Orientale Italiana (Italian East Africa) encompassing the East African Theater. Harvey had stated that AOI was initially envisaged as a pet project, and then as a convenient medium to incorporate all of AETO’s errata. From that, the concept eventually expanded to also include the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, and even an entire Spanish Civil War expansion for AETO. Both scenarios would thus be incorporated into the overall AETO campaign game, allowing ambitious players to recreate the entirety of the Second World War in the Euro-African hemisphere from 1935 to 1945.
AOI as designed includes an additional 22”x34” expansion map of East Africa and the Middle East which adjoins the AETO east map edge, including all of Egypt, East Africa, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and eastern Persia (modern day Iran). AOI includes 480 additional counters, half of which are supplemental combat units specifically for AETO (i.e. not specific to the East African Theater of Operations). The units inherent to East Africa include a complete Ethiopian Order of Battle, as well as additional Commonwealth and Italian units that historically remained stationed outside of the European Theater.
Advanced PTO
From the outset of development of AETO, a Pacific Theater companion had been envisioned, and the AETO rules even occasionally make reference to an eventual Advanced PTO, albeit without any definitive rules pertaining to the so-called “combined game” (intended to allow AETO and APTO to be played together as a conglomerate, linked game.) To date, not much is known about the pending APTO except that Eric Harvey has stated to have already completed a workable prototype (as of 2006), which is currently in the final stages of development and undergoing outside playtesting.
What is known...according to the Decision Games’ newsletter (“Dispatches”) is that APTO will feature 6 counter sheets (1,440 counters), two maps (22”x34”), and a substantially smaller set of rules than AETO. Moreover, Harvey has made repeated references to the compatibility of the APTO rules with AETO, featuring only a few new rules in an attempt to give AETO players an essentially identical game system.
Eric Harvey's public commentary indicates there are only about a dozen “new” additional rules for APTO specific to the Pacific War, such as Kamikazes, A-bombs, etc., and development was helped in part by the thorough research that went into the monster game “War in the Pacific”, which was playtested by Eric Harvey during its own development.
AETO 2
In 2007, Decision Games announced that an updated Advanced ETO would be re-released as a second printing run, to be known as “AETO 2”. In addition, AETO 2 is also to include the East African expansion game (AOI), for a total grand game of 10 counter sheets (2800 pieces), 3 large maps (22”x34”), and 2 mini-maps (8.5”x11”.) More significantly, though, Eric Harvey has stated that AETO 2 would be a complete makeover, taking full advantage of the refinements that AETO has undergone since its release in 2002, as well as a streamlined integration of the AOI rules (i.e., all coalesced into one conglomerating rule booklet.) But contrary to any expectation that AETO 2 will be more complex, Mr. Harvey has stated that he will endeavor to actually streamline AETO 2 (deleting numerous redundancies, and simplifying some mechanics), as well as (and perhaps most significantly) a re-rendering of all of the artwork and graphics, particularly the game piece artwork. To this end, Mr. Harvey has enlisted the aid of professional graphic artist Tom Willcockson (to date, Mr. Willcockson’s wargame graphics credits are the comprehensive ship artwork for “War in the Pacific”.) However, at the time this Wikipedia article was written, there has been no definitive publication date announced by Mr. Harvey or Decision Games.