Juno Terrain Boards: Starting Out

Our local game club, the Calgary R.E.G.I.M.E.N.T., was launched in the winter of 2010 after we lost the venue for our regular play evening. The four founding members share a common interest in the aesthetics of wargaming which probably matters more to us than who wins. The club charter emphasizes our expectations around the painting of armies and quality of terrain for our battles.

Our usual game system is Flames of War, an easy-to-learn 15mm WWII game. At our previous venue our major annual event was a D-Day recreation, so as our first major activity we had decided to relaunch that event, improving the visual quality of some of the forces, the fortifications, and the terrain. Our existing beaches were visually appealling, but the redesign meant reimagining the rest of the landscape, including setting the beaches at a lower elevation than the towns and countryside.

Because we're a Canadian group and a number of us focus on Canadian units, we decided to model Juno beach, the D-Day sector assaulted by 3rd Canadian Infantry Division on 6 June 1944. This sector stretched from St. Aubin-sur-Mer in the east to Bernieres-sur-Mer and then to Courseulles-sur-Mer in the west. We hoped to represent the beach assault and part of the breakthrough into the Normandy countryisde south of these towns.


The area for our battle is the western two-thirds of this sector, roughly the area represented in this map, a Defence Overprint image used by the Allies in planning their assaults.