My partner conceived of a Battletech event that would commemorate the Canadian troops’ D-Day landings in Normandy, on Juno Beach. He wanted to make a Battletech tournament where players would face each other and re-enact the battle, but with battle mechs instead of 1944 forces.
I made a poster for the tournament and 6 maps — 4 beach maps representing four of the major Juno beach sections that the Canadians landed on and 2 maps for the tournament final, representing major battles that took place shortly after the D-Day landings.
The background image for the event poster – a 1944 photograph with two mechs in the background.
The Maps
This first map is of the town of Graye on the lower right side. Game maps are around 32″ x 24″ when printed.
I used aerial photography as a foundation for the background images of the sea and land, then layered additional visual elements on top to communicate various game-related points of interest like roads, built up areas, areas of tree cover and movement obstacles like dragon’s teeth and Rommel’s asparagus along the beach.
Town of Courseulles on the river Seulle, including a canal, situated immediately to the East of the first map. I sampled the colours from a contemporary photo of the river to figure out the colouration for the river.
The town of Bernières, immediately East of Courseulles.
The town of St Aubin and the last map used in the initial two rounds of the tournament.
The Final Match Maps
This is the airport near the town of Carpiquet, which you can see a little of in the upper section of the map. This was the site of a battle in July of 1944.
Finally, the above is the town of Bretteville-l’Orguilleuse where the road and railway that connect the cities of Caen and Bayeux are relatively close together. It was the furthest point that a Canadian armoured unit reached on D-Day, but had to pull back as well as a site of a large night time battle between the entrenched Allies who were trying to defend the position and the attacking Axis forces who were trying to take it back.
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