Counters
The Advanced ETO playing pieces are not especially unique for a strategic-level game, sporting a combination of icons for air and naval units, and standard NATO symbols for land units. However, an effort was made to improve on the original ETO pieces.
Advanced ETO includes 2240 game pieces (eight sheets of 280 counters each) representing most of the nations of Europe during World War 2. In this regard, AETO bears no resemblance to ETO at all; AETO’s “Order of Battle” was a complete re-mastering by Harvey. The variety of game pieces includes numerous unit types (for example, panzer-grenadier divisions) not present in ETO.
The most effort was devoted to the data of each AETO game piece. Even before production, Harvey claimed prolific personal research of every combat unit, and his fervent desire to achieve as much technical accuracy as possible. The ratings of the original ETO pieces were largely disregarded. Mr. Harvey claims to have conducted redundant research to compensate for conflicting data from different sources. Some research mistakes have been noted (for example, the armor value of the U.K. aircraft carrier HMS “Eagle” should be rated a 9, not an 11), but less than a dozen technical errors have been uncovered since AETO’s release in 2002.
Read more about this topic: Advanced European Theater Of Operations