"Which Osprey Series for Scenarios?" Topic

I've picked up a few Osprey books for the first time.

I'd like to find which series usually has the most meat for scenario making at the (mostly) platoon level. Not too worried about theaters. I'm interested in ALL of them at that scale.

So far, I'm finding the Essential Histories and Campaign books aimed at to high a level for my needs. Not surprised as they cover pretty big topics, but like I said, I'm looking to build Squad to even Company level scenarios.

For platoon level games? I can't think of a single Osprey which includes stuff like that, maybe the odd extract in some of the campaign series and very occasional after-action reports in things like the New Vanguard series.

IMHO Osprey is the wrong choice. You need small unit stories, histories, such as Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers" or Charles MacDonald's "Company Commander" or Robert Crisp's "Brazen Chariots", or good fiction like "Cross of Iron".

Don't discount the Osprey campaign series.

I have gotten a LOT of good scenario material for platoon level from those books. In each one, there at least 3 color paintings depicting action. In most of these, the action in the text is described in detail down at very small levels. I have gotten a ton of scenarios from those alone. The best example is the Monte Cassino book which has a painting of the fighting in the town in the rubble of the Continental Hotel.

Also, often you can bathtub the larger actions down. If the book gives you a map with unit positions, you can easily zoom into a smaller slice of the map and do a scenario based on that.

The Anzio one has a good depiction of the fighting at the Factory (Aprilla IIRC) with good lower level info.

They are good starting points in a lot of ways.

With squad and company level gaming, anything you can imagine, given some very broad historical parameters, did happen. So like IIK says, use your reference source to draw a few more parameters for the sake of historical accuracy, and have at it.

Now if you want historical accuracy down to say the 3rd Platoon of the 1st Company of the Queen's Bohemian Regulars fighting the 35th SS Das Duke 'em Battalion, 1st Battalion, then you do need those detailed narratives like Charles MacDonald's Battle of the Bulge narrative ("time for Trumpets?") or the books by Paul Carrell

The Osprey Campaign has good details on some battles that would lend themselves to the platoon level. Isolated by weather and terrain, much of the Bulge was a whole lot of platoon engagements.

Thanks for the help.

I'll have to broaden my library a little.

For detailed low-level scenarios build yourself a Canadian force and read books like this one:

link

We had such a small army that there are more than a few histories that get down to company detail. Zuehlke has correlated the Canadian and German sides reasonably well as well.