Designer Frank Chadwick and I have crossed paths a few times in our decades as wargamers. In 1986, I wrapped the Fire & Movement Beginner’s Guide to Strategy Gaming around Frank’s new Battle for Moscow game design. Years later, I would republish Battle for Moscow as a stand-along game with a Winter Counteroffensive expansion kit courtesy of developer Lance McMillan.

Out of the blue, Frank asked if I was interested in publishing a new board wargame, the first from him (I think) since closing Game Designer’s Workshop. Called The Arduous Beginning (inspired by a book of the same name and subject), it used the venerable Battle for Moscow game engine to show the first bounds into Russia of Army Group Center during Operation Barbarossa.

“Am I interested? Frank Chadwick’s return to board wargaming? Huh. Yeah, let me get back to you on that…”

Okay, that reply makes for a better story, but the truth is that I was very excited and we quickly got to work, Frank, Lance, and myself, and The Arduous Beginning marked Frank Chadwick’s return to board wargame design. Ere long, this would grow into a series including Target Leningrad (Army Group North’s adventures during that same time period) and Objective: Kiev (for Army Group South).

Along with Battle for Moscow (at the same scale – Corps size ground units and approximately Weekly turns – and using the same game engine – special move, fight, regular move), we had a series of games (Campaigns in Russia) that everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted to see “link together” somehow. That seed, now firmly planted, would become a new series: Frank Chadwick’s ETO. Moreover, we planned to deliver the lot, all based at its core on Frank’s classic introductory game, Battle for Moscow.

Fast forward to ConsimWorld Expo 2014 and, by the end of that show, we agreed amongst ourselves to begin exploring this project. We scoped out its size (at that scale) and what would be necessary to make it “go” and, just as importantly, how to produce it. Boy has this project come a long way since those first “blue sky” discussions!

At ConsimWorld Expo 2015, Frank shared enough of the design so I could make all the physical maps and counters while Frank brought the rules and scenarios. We met over a huge gaming space and, rather than trying a Campaign Game from start to finish, we agreed that certain “moments” of WWII had to work right or there was no point in producing this series. Consequently, we focused on France ’40, North Africa, Barbarossa (although, given the series’ pedigree, we had some experience how that played out), D-Day, the Battle of Britain, the invasion of Norway, and air assaults – lots of air assaults (to make sure that they all worked properly at this scale). Those were long days exploring these facets, but everything passed the “credulity test.” We left the convention with copious notes and have proceeded to hammer away at Frank Chadwick’s ETO series every year since.

The Vision

We will be releasing this game in Volumes. The first, Volume I, is Thunder in the East (because every big monster-game series should start with the Russian Front, right?); it is the equivalent of a “3 mapper” wargame. Volume II is on the operating table right now. It is The Middle Sea where land-air-naval all get a fair workout with interlocking systems at this scale and complexity level; it is the equivalent of a “4-and-a-half mapper” (the largest single game in the series). Volume III is Decision in the West featuring the campaigns in France, the lowlands, and western Germany from 1940-45; it weighs in at about a “2-and-a-half mapper.” Volume IV is Fire in the North covering all of the arctic adventures; it is a “3 mapper.” Then there is Volume V: Victory at All Costs which is the piece that locks together the other four volumes into a grand campaign game. It will include peripheral maps for the North Atlantic, Spain, the Urals, and the Middle East (all of which exist and were brought to ConsimWorld Expo back in 2015) and whatever else is needed to bind the series together. We plan to conclude with a prequel game, Volume 0: Dark Beginnings which provides all sorts of pre-war options and war-opening situations in the ETO universe.

The Past

We released the first volume, Thunder in the East (TITE), early last year and, after all that we poured into it, it is very edifying to us that it has been so well-received. I can personally attest to how much fun it is to play. Normally when developing a new game, I’m fairly sick of it by the time it ships and am ready for the next one; not so with TITE. I’m still playing three sessions per week on Vassal and it is really the highlight of those days. Playing TITE reminds me of all the fun I had playing wargames in High School when I spent more time looking at the map (thinking) and less time looking at the rules book (referencing). ETO is a classic “panzer pusher” series that fits wargamers very comfortably and that is exactly what we were aiming for.

The Present

Our energy has been greatly focused on the largest (by far) game of the series, the second volume: The Middle Sea (TMS) which covers the Mediterranean Theater. Where Thunder in the East provided six full theater scenarios, TMS has fourteen! The OOB work has been meticulous and we are constantly combing through the scenarios and refining them.

It is in TMS where the Naval System comes to light. TITE offered an ersatz Naval System adequate for the limited scope of the naval war in the east, but now the spotlight is on the ships as well as the tanks and planes. Iterations and evolutions later, TMS has progressed relentlessly down the playtest track. At ConsimWorld Expo 2019, our playtest plan was to set up and play the first few turns of each of this game’s fourteen scenarios (which we did). How many games have you played where the setup listings were incorrect or the game came off the rails on the first couple of turns? Yeah, us too. That is not going to happen with TMS and that’s saying a lot given our meticulous efforts to ensuring that every unit knows where it lives each scenario, and that scenario’s history is well represented from the very first moves.

We should have a new, post-CSWX version of the Vassal playtest kit for TMS closer to the end of the year. Watch this space for announcements!

The Future

We never stop learning. At the end of CSWX 2019 we took stock of the series. Was The Middle Sea going to be a strictly stand-alone game (that would link at the end, as TITE was), or should we include things that link it to TITE right away (the “TITE fit”) so that the first two volumes could be more easily combined? For that matter, perhaps TMS should be the first truly ETO game with one rules book (to “rule” them all) and components that will more adaptably mate into a larger ETO universe.

We had been developing TMS as the former (another stand-alone game) but realized that most people acquiring it will very much want it for series play, so we took a hard turn on development and have since been “ETO-izing” The Middle Sea. Rather than a rules book “retrofit” to synch up TITE and TMS, you just use the “latest ETO rules” (as they will be the most current) found in TMS for both games. When Volume III is published, it will have the latest version of the rules that applies backward to everything in the series (and so on) – the bits from the latest release take precedence over those of earlier releases.

There will be plenty of developer and playtester updates about this coming up, so let’s shift our vision to the far future. We know that Volume V: Victory at All Costs is probably going to be a very work-intensive effort for us to create and develop since it features the strategic elements of the U-boat war, shipping pipelines, and Strategic Bombing campaigns in addition to all the gameplay wrinkles that its new maps bring to the party. Beyond that, perhaps after or concurrently with our work on Volume 0: Dark Beginnings, we want to dial things back a notch or two and carve out smaller “Battle for ____” series games. These would be great little throwbacks harkening to Battle for Moscow and would present a much smaller picture of the larger whole created in the ETO series (with Standard and Exclusive rules; you know the drill). These games would be great to teach new players, fun to play with other grognards, small enough to fit of your table, and serve as an introduction to both our great wargaming hobby and the entire ETO series.

I must away now; further ETO game development beckons! If you want more information about this series, look here: https://www.victorypointgames.com/eto_hub (for now; I am currently creating an entirely new ETO Web Hub in the weeks ahead at: https://www.watchword.biz/eto-support). In the next part of our ETO story I should like to share Frank’s design philosophy and then the team’s development philosophy.

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A previous article from Gene Billingsley telling the story of how Frank Chadwick’s ETO series came to the GMT family can be found here. Enjoy!