You know, I am kind of surprised that WOTC didn’t come out with pieces with the same level of detail and accuracy. I remember when I first got my copies of Revised, Europe, Pacific and D-Day in Summer 2006 (yeah, I was a little behind the times). I was so excited to see these tiny pieces that actually represented the equipment used by the different countries in WW2 rather than the simple generic pieces we got from Milton Bradley. Back then, I didn’t so much notice the lack of detail (compared to FMG’s and HBG’s pieces) but I was a little bummed out that only the Axis powers had all unique equipment. The Allies all used the same artillery, transport, destroyer and submarine classes, which were actually USA classes. Plus, poor Russia didn’t have ANY ships of their own because their battleships and carriers were British models. At least with the 1942 game, Russia finally got their own BB, CA and DD.
Of course, then came games with Italy and they have the Italians using all German equipment, with Japanese bombers and artillery in the Anniversary game.
I just wonder what process WOTC went through in designing the game pieces. Did they go through the same process as FMG? First sculpt the pieces, make any corrections, pre-production molds and then into final production molds? Or do you think they had some kind of simpler process?
Obviously, when they made Italy, they just used existing Axis molds and changed the color. Couldn’t they get their original sculptor back to design real Italian units? If not, how were they able to design the new Russian ships for the 1942 game? It came out after Anniversary, didn’t it? I just don’t understand how they could design such a great game with the Anniversary edition yet go all “slap-dash” on the pieces like they did. As far as Italy is concerned, they still didn’t do well with Europe 1940, or France for that matter. They couldn’t research French equipment either?
Anybody out there have any ideas as to why WOTC did things this way?
