I’m with DrLarsen on this. France is the late-comer in the A&A franchise, and compared to the other countries there’s a great lack of pieces for it. The US, UK, USSR, Germany and Japan have appeared in every global version of the game; every regional version of the game has included either Germany or Japan; the UK has appeared in some of the regional versions; and the US has appeared in every single A&A game ever published. That’s a couple of decades worth of pieces, with a fair bit of colour and sculpt-design variations over the years, so there are lots of units from which to choose for game variants.
Italy – another late-comer like France, but one that appeared in Anniversary too – has a rather poor selection of OOB pieces for it, but at least it has its own OOB tank and, more importantly, it’s the only country for which FMG’s enhanced nation-specific sculpt set is available, so it’s in good shape. (It also has HBG’s Italy-coloured Axis Minor pieces as a further expansion to its sculpt range.)
France so far, on the other hand, only has the OOB pieces – which apart from the troop sculpt are all Russian in design. HBG’s blue Neutrals set doesn’t fill this particular gap adequately: the pieces are Dutch and Polish, the shade of blue used is too pale compared with the OOB French set, and the range of pieces is limited (with the heaviest naval unit being a cruiser). This lack of pieces is compounded by the fact that France, for gaming purposes, can be seen as being anywhere from one to four different entities: the Third Republic, the Vichy regime, the Free French forces, and the post-liberation Provisional Government of the French Republic. No more than two of those entities existed simultaneously, however, so having enough variety to distinguish between just two of them is plenty.