Well, we’ve now finally seen the culmination of a remarkable string of releases from WotC with the release of 2nd editions of AA40 Europe & Pacific, with more new sculpts in one round of revisions then I think they’ve done since at least the release of the original AA Europe/ Pacific/ Revised. I think it’s pretty clear that the aftermarket piece sets and maps being produced by upstarts like HBG and FMG have had an effect on the corporate monopoly known as the Hasbourg, forcing them to listen (a little anyway) to their customer base and offer more. So how does the sum of these new releases (and the set of new scuplts that they represent) impact the ongoing project of replacing and/or supplementing oob with small-company/ aftermarket items?
On this forum, I know many are eager to know and many (most?) have their own strong opinions. For what it’s worth, here’s my 2 cents:
1. RE the New Italian sculpts: a shot across the bow of FMG, of course, but maybe not as directly aimed a shot as you might think. Yes, they picked mostly the same units to do, but the choices for Italian pieces were 90% no-brainers IMHO. What other choices would you make but Littorio for BB, Aquila for CV, Zara for CA, Soldati for DD, C. 202 for fighter, SM-79 for at least one of the bombers and one of the last three of their versions of a medium tank (which look mostly alike on this scale anyway) for a tank? The key thing is, in not one case did the new oob sculpt come close to the detail of the FMG equivalent. The real question on everyone’s mind is whether FMG is a one-trick pony, or can they get past their recent reverses and start producing new pieces again… to that I wish I had an answer.
2. RE the New ANZAC sculpts: paradoxically, I think that the new ANZAC sculpts both take off some short-term pressure for new Commonwealth pieces, and yet actually improve the long-term prospects for HBG or FMG to succeed with such a set. Yes, they give the fan base some satisfaction that new pieces are finally available for a previously-neglected player, but both FMG and HBG had had ANZAC at the bottom of their list for new piece sets anyway. Since everyone knows that, like all Commonwealth countries, the ANZACS made use of mostly UK and/or US gear, I don’t know that there was much expectation for much more than a new, unique, infantry sculpt. Long-term, though, WotC’s mistakes in implementing a new ANZAC set will make this even more of an opportunity for either FMG or HBG in, say, a year or two. The new piece set consists of:
a. A new infantry piece scaled to look like Goliath next to the others and with the most deformed, misshapen, misinterpretation of an Aussie field hat I’ve ever seen. FMG’s Italian infantry were a little small, true, and HBG’s do tend to be a little bobble-headed, but this colossal production error dwarfs those by at least as much as its end product does theirs on the gameboard.
b. Obscure US and UK bombers disguised as “uniquely ANZAC” ones… and not even especially good or iconic ones at that. For the cost of adding 2 new sculpts to the game, sticking with Mosquito and Lancaster (and/or Halifax) would have made infinitely more sense… and to make it worse, 2 bombers of nearly the same size and capability were just assigned two different roles and one scaled up a notch and the other scaled down a notch so that they could call them “tactical” and “strategic!”
c. Mediocre and little-used homemade tanks and fighters replacing iconic ones that actually had an impact in theatre. Yes, under the circumstances the rapid development of the Boomerang fighter and Sentinel tank were remarkable achievements for the Australians… but that didn’t make them fully competitive products on the first attempt (though arguably the Sentinel wouldn’t have needed to be, since Japanese tanks were so bad…) Neither did it mean that either had much of an impact. The Boomerang at least found some useful life as a tough-as-nails ground attack fighter. The Sentinel barely got out of the warehouses before it was replaced by the increasingly plentiful British and US designs. So, to the question of what tank and plane actually made the most impact in Australian hands… I’d say the fighter choice would actually have to be the P-40, which was used by fully half the squadrons of the RAAF’s First Tactical Air Force upon its foundation as Australia’s premier tactical air unit. (The rest of the squadrons were split evenly between Beaufighters and Spitfires at this point.) So, for a fighter the logical choice would have been for them to simply mold their already-existed P-40 sculpt in the ANZAC colors (which, not incidentally, also happens to be one of their best sculpts and one of their few that is competitive with HBG’s equivalent in level of detail.) For a tank, it would have made more sense to stand pat with the Matilda II, strangely enough. Though ridiculously slow for fast-moving armored warfare in open country it proved excellent in jungle terrain, and since Japanese tanks were not competitive with the standards of the European theatre, it was perfectly adequate as far as protection and firepower went.
d. A Canadian APC, presumably chosen solely because it was known as the “Kangaroo.”
e. BB and CV designs that never got near the place before the end of the war…
And some other odd choices among the lower-profile piece choices.
Given this series of mis-steps, and add in that it’s unlikely now that WotC will redo the ANZAC piece sculpts now for at least a couple of years now that they’ve just completely redone them, and I’d say that this actually opens up an opportunity for HBG and/ or FMG once they’re ready to contemplate doing UK/ Commonwealth piece sets. In fact, I’d say that while it might have decreased immediate opportunity, it increased long-term opportunity; you see, short term everyone is excited about the new pieces and absorbing all the new stuff. Long-term, though, given that a whole new set of ANZAC pieces has been released, expectations have increased for Commonwealth uniqueness. As players learn more and more about the odd collection of pieces the ANZAC’s have been given, and as they are continually confronted by the incongruity of the ginormous ANZAC infantryman next to his rivals on the board over time, the desire for new Commonwealth pieces may actually grow larger than it ever would have if WotC had left the ANZAC piece set alone in the first place.
3. RE the lack of new French sculpts: This may be the biggest mistake of all. WotC would have met and exceeded expectations for a revised AA40 Pacific if it had made all necessary corrections and upgrades to rules and board added a new ANZAC infantry piece that wasn’t radically out-of-scale and simply replaced or added one or two other pieces. For example, the new P-40 in ANZAC and Chinese colors! What an obvious choice, since it was so widely used by Australia and so iconically used in Chinese service. Instead, they seem to have decided that they needed one complete-country set of new sculpts for each of the two new AA40 games, and this led them to do all kinds of obscure pieces for the ANZACs and, I believe, to neglect the French entirely, again in the AA40 Europe game while they concentrated on redoing the whole Italian piece set over. They didn’t even do the smart thing and give the French a US and/or UK non-infantry piece set, which would have made so much more sense overall, than a Soviet piece set. This means that the TRUE French piece set continues to be a yawning vacuum begging to be filled by the aftermarket. The sooner the aftermarket fills it, the bigger will be the yawn when WotC finally gets around to fixing this.