Advanced European Theater of Operations - AETO Rules

AETO Rules

Without a doubt, the AETO rules are verbose. Written from scratch and filling 144 pages, the AETO rules are the example of an extreme intent to attain impossibly perfect clarity with no ambiguity.

Though not totally absent of ambiguities, the AETO rules are not saddled with any “wargamingese” whatsoever (such as acronyms specific to the game.) The result is an attempt to express nearly every conceivable eventuality that players may encounter. The rules are intimidating at first glance, though fairly complete, and their application tends to produce a very accurate simulation of the war in Europe...perhaps even uncannily so (players often report game sessions that seem to mirror history, even when unintended.) That said, the AETO rules are fragile (in other words, forgetting some seemingly minor and/or obscure detail can disrupt a particular game’s delicate balance), and it is fair to say that a good comprehension of the rules and their interwoven relation with sub-rules and the game’s overall "engine" requires practice (at least one full ‘campaign game’.)

The initial AETO rules suffered from extremely poor layout and formatting, due to problems converting a document in Microsoft ‘Word’ into a file format compatible with an in-house program (probably ‘InDesign’.) Mr. Harvey has stated that he did not know how the rules would appear until he received an actual production copy, by which time it was too late to make any changes. Worse, the rules had also been edited so poorly by Decision Games that some deletions and altered phrasings of key rules occurred. To add insult to injury, the first production run of the rules had pages missing, and the initial customers were forced to wait for weeks while Decision Games corrected the problem (likely the fault of the printers.) The fiasco was so disconcerting to Harvey that he privately produced a new AETO rulebook (known as the “AETO Kit”), based on his original files, and offered it for sale; these rules were even spiral-bound (perhaps necessarily so considering their length), and also included four new Optional Rules. As an additional bonus, a CD was included which contained bonus files (including the rules files themselves) such as player-aids, and an interesting designer’s notes article (verbose in its own right at 8 un-spaced pages). Mr. Harvey has also provided unrelenting on-line support (which appears to be limited to the consimworld.com forums.)

Since Advanced ETO’s release in 2002, it has benefited from hundreds of players’ game sessions, and the rules have undergone a paced and methodical update by Eric Harvey. Important errata and clarifications have been steadily introduced, and occasional glitches have been hammered out when discovered. Thus, the present incarnation of AETO is a reasonably smooth-running game system, albeit no less complex. However, a full campaign game (1939 to 1945) can last two to four months (assuming fairly regular sessions), depending on the experience (and number) of participating players.