Chef-du-Pont scenery planning

Merderet; Lower Normandy; France
Looking over the creamery (centre right).

Since we're putting Bloody Omaha out to grass (with possibly one more outing this year), it's time for another IABSM showcase table for 2020, I think. This is Chef-du-Pont, a plan from a few years ago I'm now confident to resurrect (which, you guessed it, is why I've been painting US 82nd Airborne!)

The action is available as an IABSM2 scenario in both "Where The Hell Have You Been, Boys?" (by Rich Clarke) and then again in "All-American" (by Dave Parker), and my aim is to upgrade it, nicking the best of both scenarios, for IABSM3. (At this rate I may have to make good on my threat of rewriting all the former's scenarios for IABSM3!)

I got some playing around with Google Maps and various things done this morning (before the cricket started), and I have a rough idea of what the table layout is going to look like.

The tricky bit is positioning the three areas of interest, the bridge at the SW end of Chef-du-Pont (with the Nestlé creamery, and the other factory to the north), Hill 30, and the Château de L'îsle Marie such that their relative positions are about right, and not too much of what's probably an 8' x 6'  board is wasted on flooded fields. Obviously some of it has to be, as the whole point is that the three areas are linked by causeways across the flooded Merderet, but equally I don't want massive areas of the board that are unused patches of wet, and I do want to be able to model enough of Chef-du-Pont for various scenario events to be meaningful (I'm being slightly cryptic in case you haven't read the scenario :D)

Work in progress in Omnigraffle.

Things have been skewed a bit to fit, but the general relative
positions are fairly close. I'm still considering tweaking the
town and Hill 30 round and down a bit more, but don't want
to compromise on the length of the main street in
Chef-du-Pont.

Having done that, the other problem is scale. I'm doing this in 15mm, and the ground scale is roughly 6mm, so all the buildings are 2.5x too large. Hence, the scenery is pretty much always going to be a sktetch rather than an exact replica.

The creamery, adjacent large building and chimney are pretty iconic, so no-will notice or mind overmuch if they take up too much 'real' space in the area allocated for them. What's now the Rue du Capitaine Rex Combs is lined on both sides by terraces, semis and a fairly distinctive farmyard, and I'm anticipating sketching that with some smaller terraces etc from Sarissa, 4Ground, Empires at War and anyone else who's ended up in my Normandy town collection. Then (if you look at the 1944 picture), the rest is hedged, tree filled fields to the water's edge, and a moderate expanse of empty field across the side road from the other factory (which needs to be there because Reasons). The Chateau is easy as Sarissa make one, and it'l be half hidden by woods anyway.

Not perfect, but it'll do to start work. Tomorrow, though, is play testing for the show day!