Let us set the Wayback Machine to review Frank Chadwick’s ETO’s past year of development and bring you up to the present with a look into this project’s future.

The multiple volumes of ETO have seen the “completion” (always subject to further playtesting, but there have been very few changes to the rules .docs as things have come together very nicely, greatly assisted by the regular examples of a rule or system, and the extended examples of turns of play which illustrate important system interactions) of their counters, maps, rules, and player aids. The research is done for most of the scenario OOBs (except some “what if” Spain and Mid-East scenarios we would like to include), and the main corpus of the core rules has barely changed over the past year, meaning the core systems and mechanics are very stable. The development team has been piling up accomplishments as we work on completing every volume concurrently (to ensure that when a new volume is published, you will not need a bunch of errata to fix the previous volumes).

The ETO Economy

On the playtesting front burner right now are the cards – smoothing out the wording of their effects and cost/size. We are taking a 360-degree look at each Faction’s Resource Point (RP) expenditure and integrating that with the series’ cards, political rules, and naval technologies and smoothing some of their “edges” to ensure ideal integration. This “spreadsheet work” has proven revealing to explain “the numbers” behind the history and make sure that:

1. The RP “books balance” closely along the historical timeline, with the production and expenditure of Resource Points supporting the game’s systems in the historical timeline.
2. A Faction’s cards (Event and Diplomacy cards) undergird the historical storyboard (and mesh properly when selected and played on the historical timeline).
3. A normal player’s “min-maxing” production (e.g., using your Equipment Points to purchase every possible Air unit to the detriment of Armor and Naval units, etc.) or “table tilting” from political rushes of fortune do not unduly imbalance The Long Game (i.e., Campaign Game play). Players can always drive history off the rails a bit (why else would we play wargames if not to try such things?), but the design’s “fences” must remain solid enough to keep an evolving alt-history situation from shattering play balance.

That is, we are putting a lot of forethought into the outcomes generated by ETO. We want to ensure we are tracking The Big Picture properly (now that core systems and mechanics are so stable). Here; please have a look at a sample month from the Allied spreadsheet:

Playtesting and component completion are on a parallel track, and ETO is progressing well (if never as fast as we would like – but this is a legacy project for us; we are trying to get it right, not right this minute). When we have the complete ETO-wide Vassal module done with (hopefully) myriad scenarios circa early next year, we will be announcing our move from Alpha (“closed, in-house”) to Beta (“open, out-of-house”) playtesting led by our own Jay Johnson. There will be many things to playtest, from systems to scenarios to each of the four major individual fronts to the whole combined game. Bringing more of you in for greater playtesting remains our next major milestone commitment. Every typo, hex clarification, rule, design philosophy query, etc., will be yours to make and ours to address as we put the polish on this rather large apple.

The ConsimWorld 2024 Experience

Among our top-tier playtesters and standing head and shoulders among our ranks of game evangelists (literally head and shoulders, he is a man of prodigious stature) is “Ike” Eicher and his (NextGen ETO) son, the effervescent Jason Eicher. While doing multiple printed version playthroughs and demonstrations of Thunder in The East 2 (and with its connected Finland components from Northern Fire) and France ’40 from Decision in The West (from which we got useful feedback from both tables) at that convention, Jason stayed busy as the Axis in two games, vs. Brian Scott (in TITE2) and Paul McGuane (in Decision in The West).

While everyone was having a terrific time playing, Ike discussed with GMT’s Gene Billingsley the future of this project.

After talking with Ike, he then debriefed the ETO core team on those discussions after CSWX-24 was over. This begat internal meetings with the ETO’s core team to organize our thoughts before a recent Skype call between Frank Chadwick, Gene Billingsley, and your humble narrator. Important philosophies were reinforced at this summit meeting with firm publisher assurances on GMT’s commitment to seeing everything is done right. Crucial decisions were made for how this monster-size game series will be readied and brought to you when published, and the ETO team has a clear set of marching orders for publication. Fasten your safety belts…

What’s in The Box?

This is, perhaps, the greatest change of all, but how best to explain it? Perhaps…

<insert Twilight Zone theme music>

<insert AI-generated voice of Rod Serling>

“Imagine, if you will, a vast board wargame project. One of the industry’s finest, most experienced design and development teams working with the premier wargame publisher to bring to your game table all of World War II in Europe at Corps level, 30 miles per map hex, with weekly game turns. The original components for its multi-volume publication, however, will be consolidated. That is, instead of multiple volumes released to form the complete series, there will be one “treasure chest” box game published containing everything. In a single boxed game release, players will have it all, presenting aggregate savings in release time, overlap/component duplication costs, and, most importantly, shipping costs. Fiction becoming fact as we enter the GMT Zone.”

What this Big Box Change Means to You

Two things will most impact the consumer: the fiscal and the physical. Let us examine both:

Fiscally, purchasing everything ETO in a single bound will have a considerable upfront cost (probably somewhere in the few hundred dollars range). Still, it is too early to estimate exact costs until the final components for everything have been worked out. It will be what it will be when the time comes to calculate it, but for sure, this is a much less expensive way to purchase this series than acquiring a half-dozen “monster-size” game boxes over time. Add to that the GMT pre-order discount, and there will be no denying the value of its eventual price.

Physically, ETO will be the biggest commercial wargame ever published by GMT, starting with its dimensions. Guesstimating the box size to hold ETO (which, as we all know, must work for both shipping and storing your game for play) would be about… well if you were a retailer and received a carton of a dozen standard 2” thick, 9” x 11” game boxes from GMT for your store – a box about the size of that entire carton for one copy of ETO is about right. We plan to make that box beautiful on the outside to enhance your game shelves and functional on the inside. After all, why should Euro games get all the nicely divided and organized game box interiors? We are going to apply some engineering skills to determine what the proper storage solution is for ETO and see if we can pull it off.

Bottom line: one box for everything; no waiting (and hoping) for an entire series to be published.

In addition, there will be a package inside labeled “Start Here.” In it, we will present tutorial maps and scenarios programmed for stair-step learning. Currently, we are planning an introductory Poland ’39 scenario to teach the basic Ground Game and Air Strikes. Next is a France ’40 tutorial that adds Ground unit organization and Air-to-Air Combat (“Dogfighting”). Finally, we are planning an Arduous Beginning scenario featuring the adventures of Germany’s Army Group Center through Barbarossa (and beyond?), further teaching you about resource points (RPs), repositioning HQ markers, plus card play decisions and events. ETO is a classic “panzer pusher,” so after you have explored these tutorials and learned their rules, your next step will be to take command of a Front and manage the war effort!

What this Big Box Change Means to the Development Team

After working thus far on a half-dozen large, complete, stand-alone games, merging them all into one box affords us the chance to remove a lot of duplication and overlap. However, when considering how you will get ETO to the table, it would be foolish to assume that players will set up all the maps at once and play the full, combined Campaign Game. We need to retain, within the totality of the whole ETO package, the concept of “Front-size” playable games. By retaining all the work already completed for the previously envisioned game “volumes,” there will be Front Packs inside, allowing you to play just the Arctic (North), West, East, or South Front(s) in isolation or combination with another Front and myriad scenario setups and victory conditions for each.

To see what the physical layout of each Front and the full combined game will be in-game table-size dimensions, let us refer you here: https://www.watchword.biz/post/eto-s-combined-tabletop-footprint

So, what this means to the development team is rejiggering everything to neatly combine and fit into a single package instead of multiple boxes (as we have already largely completed). Each separate Front within that box will have its individual storage section (Slot? Bag?) inside the box containing its exclusive rules, OOB Events mats, unique cards, etc. So, if you want to play the South Front, you will have a complete (The Middle Sea) gaming experience that you can assemble with the components in the box.

Fortunately, for those without the table space available for a complete Combined Campaign Game, we are building a Vassal module that is a wonder of wargaming. Ken Keller, ETO playtester and seasoned (retired) computer programmer for big corporations and projects, has been adding his code enhancements directly to Vassal in the ETO game module and developing it as we playtest using the Vassal engine. Ken is big on simplicity and player ergonomics, as our myriad Vassal ETO playtesters can attest. We are not only building an extraordinary Big Game; we are building an extraordinary (free!) Vassal module that you can play on (with others, in real-time, or by exchanging turn files, and you can even play solitaire).

What this Big Box Change Means to the Schedule

Ah, yes, the release schedule… As you might have predicted, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that internal project items already completed must be reviewed, considering the change to a single-boxed product format. Not only will this take some time to think about, it will take many of my ETO work cycles to perform/update components; this will be an unknown time sink. The good news is that, ultimately, the whole of ETO will be done much sooner than previously anticipated than if published in multiple volumes (that is for sure)!

Meanwhile, playtesting continues for the ETO project. The Alpha (closed, in-house) testing of the core systems and mechanics for ground, air, and economics (pieces, rules, and examples) is very solid. For those familiar with the 80/20 principle, that is really 80% of gameplay, and it is humming along very smoothly. Our Alpha testing includes the (previously described) “spreadsheet” tests and further development of the naval systems (although we are confident that we have really nailed a great naval combat system). The big pieces still to be tested are, in fact, the “big pieces” for the game itself – strategic warfare and politics! Oh, we have those systems built, but as you might imagine, those have been the least playtested as the individual Front games evolve.

Our next big playtest milestone will be Beta (open, out-of-house) testing, and that is where you come in. We will be inviting the wargaming public to push the pieces around and discover all the fun built into ETO. Yes, fun. From the outset, this has been a game to bring back those days of wargaming discovery that you had in High School when playing wargames was fun.

Obviously, we cannot send out physical Beta playtest kits of a game this size (can you imagine?), so the Beta testing will be open for Vassal players when we have a solid kit with scenario setups available for you to experiment with. We have a corpus of Alpha testers ready to help teach the game and answer questions, opponents (hopefully) standing by (and new friends to make!), plus the designer and developers standing by to answer questions and iron out any problem spots discovered. We hope to announce ETO Beta testing in GMT’s newsletter in the first half of 2025.

Overall, right now, think of the ETO project completion as a horse race where the pack is in Alpha testing on the backstretch heading into the Far (i.e., final) turn. When we hit Beta testing, we will be rounding the Far turn, and when we finally get this game to the art department, the race will be in the stretch, heading home to the finish line. We do not anticipate a photo finish (more like an oil painting), but the race is inexorably running to its conclusion.

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