Main Project - The Table

Okay back to the Sword Beach table…

I’ll be using the map on Page 32 of Battlefront’s D-Day supplement as my guide. I’d like to post it here to show you but don’t want to thread on BF’s toes in anyway. So I’ll just have to describe it briefly to you.

The table will need to be 6’ x 4’. The battle will run from short edge to short edge with one end being the sea and the other being the area where the German reserves arrive from.

Officially the sea zone and surf zone will be 8” wide followed by an 8” beach section. The rest of the board will be a standard flat playing surface. The beach will need to slope down very gradually to the water and will have some kind of exit up onto the flat area. Much of the beach will have a sea wall separating it from the “farm” type land.

Along the beachfront will be roads and some houses. Three bunkers sit above the beach. The first is a Panzerstellung – which is a Tobruk style bunker with an out-of-date tank turret placed in it. I’ve already completed this – yeah and it came out quite well. Once I get a camera I put it up.

The second is a 5cm defilade bunker which I’ve got the structure largely made. This looks pretty odd as it faces away from the beach and has a thick wall protecting it from the seaward direction. Its 5cm gun is pedestal mounted and can fire sideways in either direction.

The final bunker which I’ve made the basic structure is a real brute with an 8.8cm PaK43 anti-tank gun mounted in a Type 667 bunker, that also has a thick way protecting it from seaward fire. It was designed to fire lengthways along the beach rather than out to sea.

The houses are all done so that’s not a problem.

The table includes a couple of fortified positions and at the moment I’m thinking of making these as separate MDF pieces that can be just placed on the board. One will represent Strongpoint ‘Cod’ and the other is Strongpoint ‘Sole’. Cod will be slightly more complex as it needs a couple of gun pits built into it for the 7.5cm Pak97/38s.

That’s enough for today, hopefully some more soon.

Have fun…