Expanding the Frontage

The coastal defences around the town of Courseulles were particularly challenging for the Canadians, with significant fortifications including bunkers built in front of the town, fortified houses, and connecting tunnels.  The mouth of the river Seulles on the west edge of the town has been heavily altered with the construction of a man-made fishing harbour, with a separate more natural channel for the river winding west of this almost to the coast then turning east back to rejoin the harbour exit.  The complexity of the water courses in the area is visible in this image:

Google Maps: Courseulles-sur-Mer

The Defence Overprint map shows the same situation from the Allied planners' point of view.

The triangle of land immediately west of the harbour mouth and north of the river channel was very heavily fortified with bunkers along the coast, heavy machine-gun positions, observation posts, and an interconnecting tunnel system.  The Royal Winnipeg Rifles were tasked with clearing this western fortified area.  (The Juno Beach Centre museum is now located behind the beach here, with many of the larger fortifications still visible along the coast and dunes.)  The same area is visible in the foreground of a contemporary photo of Canadian troops inspecting a German sand table model of the defences.

So a funny thing happened on the way to our battle.  First, we talked about a larger scale of forces, and in talking about the fortifications it seemed unwise and ahistorical to leave out this section of Juno Beach which presented such a challenge to the Canadian attackers.  I then started to plan to add two further boards to the western end of our table taking it from 12' wide to 16' - but this new development took quite a bit of map work, sketch plans, and a decision to reorient these two boards relative to the rest.  I'll call Step 12 the detailed planning work to add significant water features while maintaining a modular road network - now needing bridges.  More on the reason for the board orientation decision later, but the river boards have been by far the most complex piece of terrain I've built, and even a few weeks after the game the rivers are not fully finished.