5 Inspirational non fiction books for wargamers

5 Non fiction books that have inspired my wargaming and ideas on the rules to game them.

Pegasus Bridge Stephen Ambrose

Ambrose has his limitations as a historian, but he is an excellent storyteller and the coup de main at Pegasus Bridge is a remarkable event and an example of careful planning and execution. The actual capture of the bridge would not be a particularly great wargame as the attackers vastly outclassed and outnumbered the defenders, but there are some good scenarios for the Too Fat Lardies I Ain't Been Shot Mum in the 2006 Summer Special and the Kampfgruppe Von Luck scenario pack for Chain of Command. 

Black Hawk Down Mark Bowden

A really well written narrative of an operation where things went wrong and lead to a major surprise to the US and ultimately their withdrawal from Somalia.The film is pretty decent as a war film, though the cast is surprisingly multinational for the US forces. In terms of wargames rules there are plenty of options, but Ambush Alley was designed for just this sort of asymmetric warfare game. The original AA rules are available as a pdf or the updated Force on Force published by Osprey cover this, with the Say of the Rangers scenario pack. I've not actually tried gaming this yet myself trying to get other projects done, but my choice of minis would be 20mm with Elheim having suitable figures  

Setting the East Ablaze Peter Hopkirk
The Bolshevik revolution in the eastern parts of the Russian Empire. Plenty of scope for both role playing as well as wargames actions with the different agents, and colourful characters like the Bloody White Baron, von Ungern-Sternberg.

In wargaming terms this is often called the 'back of beyond' and can be gamed with either 20th Century skirmish rules or with WW1 period rules for a larger game. My choice would probably be Through the Mud and the Blood by Too Fat Lardies. 

Gettysburg - Stephen Sears
Out of the many books on Gettysburg I think Sears is one of the best as it gives a clear narrative of the campaign and battle including enough detail to give a flavour of one of the decisive battles of the American Civil war. 

The obvious set of rules for this is Fire & Fury Brigade level as that is in many ways designed as a set of rules for the battle of Gettysburg, it is still a good set for the ACW in general though. There are scenarios for Gettysburg both in the core rules and available online, so it is possible to do anything from a smaller action such as Little Round Top up to the full battle itself. 

Campaigns of Napoleon - David G Chandler

If I have to pick one book to cover the Napoleonic wars then this would be it, though there are many others that are inspirational.

My current choices for Napoleonic wargaming rules are the Portable Napoleonic Wargame by Bob Cordery. This has rules for games at the brigade, divisional and corps levels using a gridded table. It does not require huge numbers of figures or a massive table to play a game unlike some of the popular sets of rules. 

And one extra that is not specific to one period.

The Atlas of Military Strategy David G Chandler. This is an inspiration for campaign wargames as it shows the importance of not just battles but the use of manoeuvre to force an enemy to battle on your terms or avoid battle. It does cover a wide period unlike many of my other books.