The most important thing to decide on was scale. The game consists of 4 boards of 12x12 squares, usually arranged in a 2x2 grid, making for 24x24 squares per side. One of the missions has three boards arranged in a row, making for 12x36 squares, but the rest follow the 2x2 pattern.
Going for the same square-size as the original boards was not really the right choice for two reasons:
1) I was going to put walls on there, and as such, models couldn't expect to "spill over" frames whenever they needed to
2) I wanted a more heroic scale
My initial idea was 5cm x 5cm squares, as it'd be a nice, round number and leave plenty of space. However, that would mean the board would end up being 1,2 meters per side, which was a little much. So I decided to cut it down to 4cm x 4cm, with walls being 1 cm thick, thus taking up ½ cm on either square. This meant that corner squares would be down to 3,5 x 3,5 cms - a little small, but just big enough for a Space Marine - I hope!
My day-job is as a 3D Artist - and as such I have access to 3D drawing software, as well as a home-license, and so it felt natural for me to model the board in 3D, to aid in the planning. This isn't really necessary, especially since the boards are relatively simple, but I wanted to do it, and it will help figure out which sides, if any, are always (or never) facing out, and that might come in handy for adding additional details and end-pieces.
I scoured the web for scans of the actual game boards, and found some semi-decent ones - a little warped, but much better than what I could produce, since I don't own a scanner, and so would be reduced to taking photos with my rather mediocre mobile phone camera!
one of the four (all different) game-boards
And so, armed with a decision on the size, and reference material in the form of scans, it was off to 3DS Max (my software of choice).
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