Idea time - Brecourt Manor Board (Part 2)

...where were we....oh yes!

Look what I found!

A huge board of Xtratherm. 10cm deep, 81cm wide and 169cm long. I was thinking of making two different Arcworlde boards for Troubles in the North. I also toyed with the idea of a cross roads map. In the end I settled on making the battery at Brecourt Manor. The only problem was modularity and mobility. the board as is is huge and unweildy (hence the chipped/torn edges). I wanted to make it as two boards with interchangeable positions - I love the assault on the guns, but not enough for it to be all I play!

Taking the line diagram above, along with the satelite image from google, I started to use GIMP to work out a board. GIMP allows images in cm measurements so things can be scaled appropriately.

Although the guns line up with the hedge row quite well, the fields to the left of the image dont...GIMP to the rescue!

This plan, to scale with my board, has the hedges moved and re positioned to match the google earth view. This fits nicely with a two part board where the left hand board can be moved and rotated to match any of the other edges!

Unfortunately there is a minor hitch...at this scale 6 inches and the 25mm bases don't quite work...and to run an 80cm x 80cm board I need to lose 10cm from one end!

Idea time - Brecourt Manor Board (Part 1)

Hot on the heels of another unnecessary purchase [Brother Handro: "Is any of it necessary..."] we have another project lined up.

Everyone loves Band of Brothers, right? Anyone who says they don't is a liar! Of course, best episode is hotly contested with Bastogne often winning out. Best individual battle....now that is a question. Foy is of course legendary, as is cross roads, but I have to say the assault on the gun battery at Brecourt manor is something else all together.

For those that don't know the operation, there are some great descriptions here, here, here, and here!

The general premise is that Winters, tasked with taking out some presumed 88mm artillery, takes a small force from Easy Company and successfully assaults a fixed position to eliminate 4 German artillery pieces which are shelling the landing zones on D-Day. The operation, and Winters' tactics, are reportedly still taught at West Point today.

The area around Ste-Marie-Du-Mont includes a manor house at Brecourt. Various maps are available at the sources linked to above, and some of these help give an idea of the exact position of the field.

Some careful google mapping, and it is possible to find the corner of the field today - note that North is now roughly at the 8 O'clock position.

The sattelite photo graphs dont give much of a clue, but thankfully the history keen community have drawn up a number of handy maps giving an idea of the locations of guns and various important details.

This diagram gives a nice range of detail. but can be nicely cut down to the important details as seen below.

In the next post I'll give more detail on how we can recreate this terrain for wargaming!