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When I decided to take the plunge into Bolt Action, I wasn’t going to do things halfway. I started off getting two starter armies for my birthday: the US Infantry Starter Army, and the Waffen-SS Starter Army. I painted them up in no time (I have since learned that painting Warlord Games’ Bolt Action miniatures is absolutely my happy place) and then began expanding into more tanks and vehicles.

But what was I going to do with all of this stuff? I was having too much fun with it to just put it in a box, and besides, I really wanted to show it off. But a display case just didn’t seem like the right kind of place. What was I to do?

Answer: build a massive Normandy gaming table.

I wanted to depict all of the hedgerows, the stone fences, the orchards, the ruined house, and everything else that the US army encountered in the days after D-Day.

I got a 22″ x 42″ sheet of MDF (the size was based purely on the size of my desk) and I began by laying down some foam which would determine where my train tracks and raised town would be.

With the foam down, it was time to smooth out all of the surfaces with spackle (or filler, as it is often called), as well as sprinkling down what The Terrain Tutor refers to as “the grit”, which is basically just sand and small rocks for texture. I put down extra rocs along the train tracks to represent the ballast, as well as along the roads. You may also note that I molded some of the spackle into the furrows of plowed fields.

The next step was getting some paint which, at this point, was all just cheap spray paint.

Next came the hedgerows, which were made from common kitchen sponges cut into thin strips and then covered with Woodland Scenics Clump Foliage. You can also see that I started a small orchard which was made using armatures and more clump foliage. In this photo I’ve also started to put down a little static grass.(I used 2mm grass in this shot, though I went for 6mm in a later area).

Here I began to lay down the basis of what would be a ruined building, first the foundation,

And then the brick walls (constructed from bricks that were made for doll houses):

I then went to work on the buildings of the town, constructing them from foamcore and balsa wood.

You’ll notice that I also started to add bricks to the town wall.

The signs all over the buildings were taken from this sheet of French street signs that I found online (I’m sorry, I don’t know the original source. I found it through an image search).

I made a nice little garden using multicolored static grass tufts

: Then the last of the bricks go in and it’s time for a final coat of paint and some last-minute flock and grass:

And now it’s just time to add the models!

And that’s all there is to it! This was a ton of fun to build–so much fun that I built a North Africa board shortly thereafter. If you want to know where you can get any of the models or materials I used in this build, follow the links in the article, or go here to my products page.

Happy wargaming!