- from War as I Knew It  by General George S. Patton, Jr.

There is a certain elegance to good design. Sometimes you don’t realize it immediately, but over time, the more familiar one becomes with a product of good design, the more one appreciates the thought processes and time spent in producing it.

Being gamers ourselves, we have seen the once countless hours of youthful gaming give way to the time demands of job, family, and other priorities. And in the ever-changing game industry, generally-speaking, we witnessed a trend toward playability over historical correctness and sales quantity over game quality. There were exceptions, of course. But we were guilty, too, for buying titles that we played, yet didn’t like, thereby further perpetuating the trend.

Or did it matter after all?

What if there were others out there? Could there be?

Self-proclaimed grognards, wargame geeks, other gamers who actually did care if game play made historical sense and reflected a plausible outcome. A game that was actually somewhat historically accurate, that allowed us armchair generals to call the shots, but didn’t funnel us into any one strategy-- something where our strategic and tactical genius (or lack thereof) allowed us to live or die by the cardboard swords we pushed around our tabletops. But, alas, one that played a little faster than some of the old hex-based titles we once loved and called our own.

And so born from our frustration, came the original NEPPAGames: ETO. Driven by a love of history, gaming, and perhaps a search for some connection to our family members who had actually fought and died in World War Two. Countless hours of research, design, playtesting, revisions, more playtesting, more revisions, and so on. And during the design process, we discovered that the more we played and tested our game, the more we wanted to play it again. Not because we had to, but because we wanted to. And then we thought just maybe other gamers might want to play it too. Until finally, we produced a game we are proud to have published and that we love to play.

As we state on our website in describing the game: "Players are free to pursue their own strategic course of action, with every move having both short term and long term economic and military consequences. How players plan, act, and react will ultimately decide their fate."  We think that about captures the essence of our title. It is our hope that the revisions and updates to our original design provide a certain polish to what we now present to you in ETO: European Theatre of Operations WWII.

We will leave it to the gaming public to decide if we’ve gotten anything right. We thank Shrapnel Games for the opportunity to partner with them. And most of all, we hope you enjoy playing our game.

Chet Makuch & Pat Merkel, NEPPAGames
Designers: ETO: European Theatre of Operations WWII

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