"Best Literary Fictional Battle" Topic

To complement 14Bore's search for fictional battles in movies which can be wargamed: What are your favorite battles which only exist as words on paper? Can't be historical. Can't already have been made into a movie, and let's leave RPG/skirmish for another poll. Battles big enough to have units.
Starting the ball rolling with Two-gun Bob Howard" The relief of Shamar from "The Scarlet Citadel" the battles of Valkia and of the Valley of Lions from "The Hour of the Dragon"--and Shamla Pass from "Black Colossus."

And remember: "not man nor devil comes up Shamla Pass this day!"

And for something a little more obscure, try the cavalry action of Dankoi from the Russian Civil War in Jphn Harris' "Light Cavalry Action," which I highly recommend. The whole book keys on the difference between the "real" (in the book) action at Dankoi and the glorious full-scale battle a war correspondent makes it out to be. Me for the war correspondent's version, of course.

Prince of Foxes by Shelabarger has both field and siege battles in Renaissance Italy.

Not a battle persay but my group did game "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon". The game was great fun, unfortunately the Indians captured Miss Dandridge and they got the rifles too!

H. Rider Haggard's "The Return OF She", Chapter 22 (The Loosing of the Powers). The battle before Kaloon A fantasy battle that begs for an AI rendition.

The Lord of the Rings battles kind of rely on Eru Illuvatar to pick sides without actually picking sides. Sorry to say that.

George MacDonald Fraser took pains to make the Flashman books as accurate as possible, with Flashman appearing as a … ghost? 🤔
So, no for them.

First thing I could think of was Glenn Cook's Black Company series. Pretty realistic historically correct (🙄) Renaissance battles, until the series went off the rails.

Definitely "The Scarlet Citadel" (and any other of Robert E. Howard's big battles, but this story should be the torch bearer for the Conan vote).

As standard bearer for David Drake's Hammer's Slammers, I nominate "Under the Hammer". John Treadaway had published a scenario of that name some time ago in Miniatures Wargames.

For BattleTech Alpha Strike, the Battle on Kittery from "Warrior: En Garde" by Michael Stackpole. Green training battalion of the First Kittery Borderers ambushed by a skilled Liao company. Leave out the off-table duel between the two mighty hero types over the hill and out of sight (with completely unexplained plot magic going on), and the ambush itself makes a great scenario.

Hmm. Does anyone know the legal penalty for fictionalizing an actual battle? Not inserting your hero, you understand, but filing the serial numbers off the battle and acting as though you'd invented it? Jerry Pournelle does this for the Nikka Riots in a Falkenburg story, And E. R. Eddison swipes Cannae and Auldearn for "Mistress of Mistresses." "Grand Theft History" perhaps?

Eric Flint's 1632 series deals with a coal mining town in West Virginia being zapped into Franconia during the 30 Years War.
He handles how it happened with appropriate doses of handwavium.

Who hasn't wanted to attack pike blocks with Ma Deuce machine guns on an armored dump truck?
How are they supplied? Don't worry. Handwavium comes through once again.

Silly, but if someone else wants to do all the heavy lifting, I would play.

Again, dragging out the concept into multiple volumes does nothing but introduce more silliness. Fierce debates about Lutheran theology!

Game of Thrones follows the time honored idea of turning the map of Ireland upside down. ☘️
Plenty of battles. Drag out your HYW armies.

Hrolf Kraki's Saga.
Poul Anderson.

The Broken Sword
Poul Anderson

The Battle in Lord Kalvin of otherwhen by H. Beam. Piper are great.

The Battle of the Five Armies, from The Hobbit (novel only)

The Destroyermen series is chock full of battles, heavily described and with detail maps indicating maneuvers, etc.. Includes naval battles, too, with tech from age of sail to WW2. Plus you've got lines of spearmen, muskets, rifles, semi-auto and automatics, cannon, torpedoes, not to mention intelligent carnivorous dinosaurs as the primary foes.

🤔

"The Lost Regiment series by historian and author William R. Forstchen is the exact set of fiction books you are looking for. It follows the 35th Maine Volunteer Infantry and the 44th New York Light Artillery Batteryas they are swept through a dimensional rift during the American Civil War and deposited on an alien planet."

Book 1

"The series features nine books, all written by Forstchen:
* Rally Cry (1990): Swept through a time-space warp, Colonel Andrew Keane and his men arrive on a planet populated by various human civilizations (Romans, Carthaginians, medieval Russians). They must learn to survive and fight against the Tugars: a 10-foot-tall, cannibalistic alien horde that circles the planet demanding human tribute."

And 8 more books, just as bloody and violent.

Huge battles of all kinds of troops and weapons and an enemy you can despise, but on occasion respect, if they don't use you as a meal first.

More tribes like the Tugar's, but worse.

Should give you all you want.

Battle of Liberty in Liberty 1784 by Robert Conroy. AWI battle but with the continentals building booby traps and trebuchets. Good fun.

1979 Russian assault on NASA's Hadley Base from "Hot Moon" by Alan Smale (Apollo Rising book 1 of 3). Moon buggies, dirt bikes, and rocket launchers, woohoo!

A friend not a TMP member sent the following:

First, any of the books by Harold Coyle have good scenarios and often maps. These are for WW3/Cold War Gone Hot. See: "Team Yankee", "Sword Point", and "Bright Star".

Also in the WW3 category, we have "First Clash" by Kenneth Macksey. And from training for WW3, there's "The Defense of Hill 781" (the admitted modern version of "The Defence of Duffer's Drift") by James R. McDonough.

For WW2, one book I really liked was "The Soldier" by Richard Powell. See: link There's only a strategic map in the copy that I have, no tactical maps. It does, however, have some great ideas for some actions.

Likewise, "The Lionheads" by Josiah Bunting has some good ideas for action in the Mekong Delta as well as at least one tactical map.

Finally, for some 19th Century action, there's "The Siege of Krishnapur": link

I must admit I hadn't thought of "Cold War Gone Hot" books, though I've read a number.

I recall "The Sword of Shannara" had a good battle scene.

Battles in the "Stiger's Tigers" fantasy series are very well done, essentially Roman legions in a fantasy setting by Marc Alan Edelheit: link

BfL, yeah, I thought of Shannara, too. It's been decades since I read it, but there's a big city siege late in the book that whispers into my memory as being one I liked.

The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell has some solid space battles, though I don't know how game-able they would be. He deals directly with light-lag as an element in (very) long range space combat, as well as the speed of contact and passage of enemy combatants. Kinda hard to pull that off with miniatures.

Shannara siege would have been just a re-skinned siege of Gondor, no?

As well as Piper's Lord Kalvan I enjoyed enjoyed the battles in Pournelle's Jannisary books.

I'm thinking Rosas Bay from Captain Horatio Hornblower.

Literary fights? S.M. Stirling's "Marching Through Georgia". Always wanted to game this type of fight. For those who don't know, south Africa due to early building of railroads (I think, it has been a while) developed tech at a faster rate then the rest of the world. They were fighting the Nazis with 1980 type tech. No over run of the Germans…always guessed it was a numbers thing. Tried setting up such a game using the old Traveller RPG Striker rules.