Napoleonic Newsdesk

Obituary: George W. Jeffery
Rules Innovator and Author

by David Commerford

It is with much sadness that I record the passing of George Jeffery who died suddenly in his native Scotland on 19/11/01. Those of you who have been kind enough to read my several ramblings on Command and Control in Napoleonic wargames, via First Empire, will be familiar with the debt I have long felt the hobby owed to George’s ideas. George was a semi mystical figure in Napoleonic wargaming and an author of two related books on his favourite period. Jeffrey’s Tactics and Grand Tactics of the Napoleonic Wars published by The Courier Publishing Co. in 1982 and the earlier Napoleonic Wargames published by Almark in 1974.

In 1984 and 1985 he wrote a series of articles containing the out line of his lasting contribution to wargaming The Variable Length Bound (Miniature Wargames #14) and The Wargame: Game or Simulation? (Miniature Wargames # 21 # 22 & # 23). In which explained his views on how Napoleonic battles were controlled and how this could be represented on the tabletop. VLB challenged the standard, fixed turn, approach to gaming where by both players repeat a set series of actions, that are ascribed a nominal period of time, within the game. Using fixed representations of time and fixed movement distances.

George’s rules, Code Napoleon, like real battles, were event driven. With time being assessed in terms of movements and actions that occurred between and as part of, these events. His intention was to give players the means to control armies in the true fashion, not just drift through games, following the rules designer’s ideas.

So for example, if you wanted to take the hill in front, where the battery of guns stood, you did not make five, six inch moves to get there, doing casualty calculations as you went, spread over a number of turns. You measured the distance once, moved thirty inches and then on a time/distance chart calculated the losses on route. When this was settled you did the next action, and so on.

He also sowed the seed in the minds of many, about how orders and outcomes were tied together, by demonstrating that commanders took geographical points that would not move, as objectives. Orders to ‘Take the crossroads, by the wood, to your front’ being the norm. As opposed to the more familiar gamers ‘Attack the infantry in front of you’ given without thought as to what would happen if the said infantry moved off somewhere else!

In the 1980’s, writing’s in The Courier magazine, led to visits and much interest in the United States but tragic family events caused George to drop out of Wargaming for nearly two decades, with his rules unpublished. Having disappeared to the point where very few knew what had happened to him. Last summer he was encouraged to revive his ideas on the Internet and was soon working and exchanging views with gamers from all round the world. He was actively engaged in this and thoughts of a final publication of his own rules, right up to his untimely death. In recognition of his friendship and generosity of spirit, members from the Internet group are intending to publish a version of Code Napoleon containing both his original and additional ideas in a new format. He will be greatly missed.

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