Everyday Bocage

Today Martin brings us a quick review of the new Battlefront D-Day Bocage Terrain Mission Pack (FW264A).

So lets start with the obvious;what’s in the pack. Aside from the advertising flyer, you get an eight page A4 pamphlet which includes all the terrain rules for the terrain typical of the bocage fields of Normandy, a five game linked campaign to play, plus the three “bocage” scenarios, “Brew-up”, “Bocage Country” and “The Meatgrinder” (these are all also found in the D-Day British book). Alongside this is over 27 feet (8m) of cardboard 3D boccage terrain pieces, which came in three bundles to stop them getting damaged in transit.

Now, first up, don’t be fooled by what the text in flyer pack says; this does need some assembly, as the boccage comes flat pack style and needs to be folded up to make it stand up ready for use. That aside the individual pieces are well printed on good quality card and come with all the folds ready creased and, unlike the D-Day Mission terrain pack, theses are proper 3D pieces of terrain.

No specific tools or equipment are need to make them up but I found a pencil invaluable in helping open up the triangular base.

They are a little tricky to get to stand as the fold along the bottom goes the wrong way but there is no way to avoid this to make them flat for the packaging. The easiest option to avoid the tendancy for them to fall over is simply to reverse the fold along the middle of the base but, be warned, do this before you start to fold in any of the ends or tabs.
To improve the stability you could add some air-dry modelling putty into the base or some other form of weight to stop them moving too easily on the table top. Even a Popsicle stick glued on the inside will help to ensure the base stays flat and the bocage keeps upright on the table top.

You get a mix of types of piece; either 6″ (15cm) or 12″ (30cm) lengths with either two flat ends or a mix of flat and mitred ends. The mitred ends allow you to creat T-junctions in your bocage field boundaries. You also get corner pieces made up of two shorter sections held together with connecting tabs. These need a little care in inserting but not overly so as the card is thick enough to withstand you doing this a few times, but you might want to consider permanently fixing them together.
Finally you get three bocage gate pieces made up of two sections printed in reverse, which was a nice touch as it makes the off centre gate image line up nicely and illustrates the thought that was behind the production of these.

The tabs for folded parts are nicely sized and once folded there is no need for glue to keep them table ready. I chose to use a bit of sticky tape to fix the ends in position. With the slightly shiny printing this doesn’t show up on the finished pieces in a noticable way and will keep them a bit stronger.

Lastly, as it says on the flyer, “it all fits in a box file”, so is light and easy to transport around to a fiends or take to your local club.

For comparison the Battlefield in a box bocage sets which I also have are heavy and fragile and, to be honest, were very expensive to get a tables worth of.
I also own another set of bocage made by a well known internet terrain maker/retailer which looks great. but again is difficult to store and set up for the one or two times a year when I play with this type of terrain.  For a new starter, this set from Battlefront is ideal.

Overall the terrain is well produced and easy to put together and doesn’t take up too much room to store, its cheap by comparison and even if you only use it a couple of times its well worth picking up. Who knows we may even see some bocage tables at tournaments in the future thanks to this.