"looking for these particular rules" Topic

Hi
I have had no luck finding these online to neither in pdf or to even buy 2nd hand:

I would like to know if anyone here might be familiar with and or even have on hand to sell:

"Napoleonic Rules for a Large-Scale Wargame With Small-Scale Miniatures" by Peter Dennis and Cliff Knight

the rules being for 2/6mm and for regiment/brigade units is exactly the rules scale of play i have been after

Georg,

You might have some luck by contacting Peter D at peterspaperboys.com , where he promotes his wonderfully-drawn paper figures for many periods and in a few sizes.

If you do get your hands on the rules, do please share your opinion of them, since your criteria may be of interest to others.

thanks, yes i wondered if it is the same Peter Dennis

ooo, those sound interesting. If you're successful, Georg, I'd love to hear more. Thanks!

I have a copy in my files.

mark@scalecreep.com

Ah yes, the Dennis and Knight Napoleonic rules. They also did a set for the American Civil war. Both use the "variable length bound" concept pioneered by the late George Jeffrey.

Here summat from olden vlb yahoo group:

Postimg.cc – Dennis/Knight/Jeffrey – PNG

I have a copy of them but with an orange-ish color cover and their ACW rules. They are a great read and sound so simple. Not a complaint about these particular rules. I've heard stories in which Mr. Jeffrey would run games at various conventions and everything worked fantastic. An old friend of mine had the best quote of VLB rules. 'We will have nuclear fusion before we have a set of VLB rules that work.'

@dw

There is probably a special place in hell for those that wish to puncture the balloon of belief and magicke.

The OP should be allowed to download, ingest, and savour the possibilities before someone kicks over the bean can and p*sses on their camp-fire.

PS The uploaded files match my printed second-edition which has a blue-card cover, white pages, and golden-rod-yellow quick-reference card.

The OP should be allowed to download, ingest, and savour the possibilities before someone kicks over the bean can and p*sses on their camp-fire.

Yes indeed. I along with a handful of others was involved with the development of Jeffrey's rules "Code Napoleon". The problem with them was that half of the rules were in his head and not in the draft written text. Sadly, he passed away before we could get a working system together that could be understood and played without the man himself being present.

As far as I am aware the Dennis and Knight rules were the only successful versions of the concept that made it into print.

Thanks for the replies guys I will email extra crispy and I did ask Peter Dennis about them and looked through his things to see if he still owned a copy but couldn't find any, so he too would be very keen to get a copy of these again alsob

@gb

Did you click the link? All the pages from the booklet are there; including a scan of the qrs.

@majB

That is my understanding too – these rules are the only ones that got into proper print.

I saw Jeffrey's wargames ideas as a re-working of a TEWT (tactical-exercise-without-troops) into a TEWM (tactical-exercise-with-miniatures). Unfortunately you need an umpire for a TEWT – which is probably Jeffrey's function during his TWEMs.

In order to keep Jeffrey's memory alive – the VLB yahoo group was very enjoyable up until his demise – here are some of his books:

Worth getting:

Amazon – JEFFREY, George: George Jeffrey's tactics and grand tactics of the Napoleonic wars

From 1974 – getting a little long in the tooth:

Amazon – JEFFREY, George: Napoleonic Wargaming

thanks Stoppage, i did now click on the link and see that you have all the pages there – thanks for that!

@gb

Pleased the link worked for you – please let the author know too.

PS. Thanks for asking about this rules set – I much enjoyed digging-out my printed copy and finding the files on my PC.

hi Stoppage – just a question – for the play aid page 1 – the bottom is a bit cut off, would it be possible to get this page image again with the bottom details fully visible?

@gb

Here you go – total pain in the @rse – had to create Adobe account to convert scanned pdfs to png and then create new postimg gallery.

This gallery includes the leadership – preface.

Postimg.cc – Dennis/Knight/Jeffrey – PNG #2

Enjoy.

PS From memory (probably faulty): The Late George Jeffrey was an RSM in one of the Foot Guard regiments (prob Scots or Coldstreams). Parade-ground drill was his thing. He researched the Napoleonic grand tactical foot drill and applied it to his wargaming.

thank you thats very interesting and his book on napoleonic tactics is one i would love to get for sure

His book on Napoleonic tactics is very good; gives all the detail on how long different formation changes took under different tactical systems. The wargame book is not great; he spends most of his time complaining about other rules.

A later book which approaches grand tactics from a different direction:

Amazon – NAFZIGER, George: Imperial Bayonets

Appears to be in print!

These match my printed copy. It's a small booklet of 22 pages.

The old Yahoo Variable Length Bound [VLB] Group now exists on the groups.io site.

Link: groups.io/g/vlb-rules

THANKS ALLAN! I thought the Group dies when AOL killed them off. I am so happy to "get the gang" back again!

I'm looking into putting these up on DeepFriedHapyMice.com as a PDF for free. meanwhile:

link

@ Dexter Ward, The problem with Jeffries tactical book is that the basic premis appears to be flawed. There is plenty of evidence of Prussians filing at the start of the Seven Years War and other countries caught on and copied as the war progressed so the basic position 'French better due to more modern drill' just doesn't stand up.

I had the idea stuck in my mind from many many years ago and aired it in a SYW forum, where I was provided with several links to re-educate me.

@Dye4minis
Hi Tom
Pleased to remind anyone that the group still exists! I took over as Moderator in late 2019 to keep the group going. All the files are present but I didn't manage to save all the messages.
Good to see you posting again!
Vive la cohesion!
Kind regards
Allan

Thanks, Allan! Ned Zuparko contacted me. Ned started the group and I am thankful you took it upon yourself to keep it going! Hope to see some of the old hats start posting there again. We sure had some really great inputs from a lot of folks.

Very Respectfully (V/R)
Tom

George W. [Waugh] Jeffrey was very proud of his regiment:
"Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard": The First or Royal Regiment of Foot The Royal Scots (The Royal Regiment).

Also Peter Dennis is another fine fellow. He now has a line of paper products as mentioned above. Years ago he had "Hardcover Designs" which had different sets of thin card 1/300 buildings and bridges for Musket age villages and towns. They were superb. If you can find them, buy them.

@Mark J Wilson
Hello Mark,
GWJ's thesis about the floating pivot, etc., in his Tactics and Grand Tactics came from John McDonald's explanations in his 1803 English translation of the French 1791 Rules and Regulations. I do not say that to prove that George or McDonald are correct. I am just pointing out that this was a more or less contemporary source that put forth the idea. Around that time there were many English translations of different different French or German-language works being published as the British army was trying to understand and cope with French success on the battlefield. (As illustrated by Richard Glover's book Peninsular Preparation, the British Army at this time was by no means as effective as it later became). Many of theses books reference the SYW as examples to learn from, and it would not be surprising if some of them are ignorant about foreign practices. George himself was always open to new research and maintained that his rules were written such that their mechanisms didn't need changing if new historical information was found; one only had to change the data (the "numbers"). He also didn't put himself out as a scholar and was always interested to hear about sources and research by others. He did consider someone like George Nafziger to be a scholar. Nafziger could speak more languages and and dug into more primary sources. Nafziger's Imperial Bayonets is thus at a deeper level than GWJ's book. However, just as there are now flaws found in Jeffrey's book, there are also now critics who have found flaws in Imperial Bayonets. Such is the way of the research world. Writers stand on the shoulders of others. So in this particular case, George Jeffrey's book still has value; one could just use the "French System" he describes for all armies during years new research indicates it was in place. For me the striking and unique point about George's book for the English speaking wargamer in the pre-internet era was that he was the first to recognize and create this "time-motion" analysis of the formation changes for wargamers. This was ESPECIALLY true for his description and elevation of "Grand Tactics". For Napoleonic wargamers used to basing everything on the battalion (and perhaps how fast it could form square) the idea of operating by Brigade or Division or Corps sized changes of front and changes of formation was important and new. The importance of the "directing" or the "regulating" battalion, and the positions of the general officers (they weren't there just to rally troops or give a +1 in morale to a battalion), etc was made clear in GWJ's book. These maneuvers took time to effect and George provided the calculation method in the book to allow wargamers to appreciate how long it took to implement on the historical battlefield, what that implied for studying and analyzing Napoleonic historical battles, and for wargaming.

Everyone in this thread who tried to develop George's original VLB rules (later titled "Code Napoleon" or "CN" by GWJ since a set of rules is like a series of laws) into a playable, commercial set in the ‘80s or through the Yahoo VLB group after 2001 knows that the proof is in the pudding. If there is no such set by this time is it because perhaps it may have required an umpire but was trying to write a game without an umpire? Was it because it used written orders? Was it because the game tried to do too much and should have focused more narrowly? Was it because there were too many interruptions in play for player calculations and decision-making? Was it because there were too many places where one player could become a chokepoint and stop the game flow? Were the elegant ideas just not translatable into anything other than a minute-by-minute game, or were they just poorly explained or understood? Whatever the reason(s) it could not get done. Since that time, though, several "veterans" of the GWJ CN VLB rules experience have gone on to develop their own designs or concepts which were in some way influenced by CN, even if they do not literally match all elements of the definition of "VLB" as conceived by George Jeffrey. The Peter Dennis rules are one example. Michael Collins wrote Grand Manoeuvre, where "regulating battalions" etc get their full due.

Therefore, it is fair for critics to say "I told you so, VLB is impossible to make into rules" because there is no GWJ commercial set in existence, there is just HIS home-grown set that he played (and interpreted and umpired and didn't have problems figuring out answers) and anybody can do that. If the goal is solely (and it is and should be for almost every player) to pay your money and receive a tested, playable commercial game then CN isn't worth your time to keep discussing.

For me, though, there has always been great value in George's VLB material and, separately, in his Napoleonic material (they are not necessarily the same thing). I also think that the two complemented each other and resulted in unique insights about the history and the Napoleonic wargame. As I mentioned earlier, new research or ideas can produce modification of those insights, (for example, see Tom Dye's ideas about cohesion) but the GWJ approach was and is still worthy of discussion.

For example, many wargame rule writers have written about "Command" or "Control" or "command Control" etc. Essentially they just mean they have a system where players "tell" their units what to do on the tabletop by physically moving them, or by rolling dice, or by choosing from a menu of options etc. George, on the other hand had definitions and explanations of
what Command is and what Control is, and how that relates to the chain of command in military systems, especially the Napoleonic version. He then wrote wargame rules to reflect that. In the 1970s-1980s this was a unique approach in wargames, most importantly when it came to "Grand Tactics". And one who understood his Command and Control ideas would also look at a large Napoleonic historical battle account differently as well. The use of high level formations (not just battalions) how much time it took to maneuver, what generals did in that environment, was different than just adding a bunch more battalions running around the battlefield.

The battle was more staged or had different phases than 2 sides just facing off long a ping pong table and marching at each other. In wargames, GWJ was unhappy with the (typical at the time in the 1960s 1970s) 2-minute turn in WRG rules. The genesis of "VLB" was that he thought that instead of taking 10 turns to move into combat across the table, one should just "bound" forward and get to the tactical engagement. However, with his Command and control ideas, he also recognized that the job descriptions of the generals was not to make decisions every 2 minutes about what to do next. Combine that with the stages or phases of committing Corps or Division to battle at different times during the day or in sequence, keeping second and third lines to renew attacks or engage in follow-on attacks over the space of hours, or in counterattacks, or to cover a retreat hours later… all of this was different from current wargames where in 4 or 5 hours of play you had one mass attack that represented 60 minutes of real time and then you estimated who won and you went home.

This is also where the timings in the Tactics and Grand Tactics book come in. George analyzed the grand tactical maneuvers used in setting up formations for battle and for using them during the battle. Large formations could take a long time to change front or do other things, and this makes a difference to a general's calculations about when and where to give orders. Starting the march across the valley and then later reaching the enemy lines and changing formation for the tactical engagement would take time. The important (requiring a general's attention) separate events in a battle (and therefore represented in a game) can be sequential over many hours or a whole day of real battle. Sometimes hours between elapsed between "critical events" or "changes of situation" that required orders from Army and Corps generals. VLB was the idea that in a game those necessary sequences be implemented, but the game mechanics would bound through them so the game players would spend their time on necessary decisions and related calculations and not on the minute by minute movements of units across the tabletop.

George had other valuable rules ideas about Napoleonic warfare when it came to morale and ordered troops, "tactical engagements", breakpoints, etc etc. Even if people differed about those, his approach was always useful for deeper discusson, but I don't need ot get into them here. The point I am bloviating about is that with rules or without rules, I think that most of those who tried the VLB road certainly found some frustration, but still got a lot out of the experience and found it intellectually worthwhile.

@Stoppage
The Tactics and Grand Tactics book had some errata pages printed after its publication. If anyone buys the book but does not have the errata pages I can provide them.
Also, in my posting above I mentioned that most who worked on the VLB CN project found it worthwhile even if ultimately frustrating. I should note that that might not apply to people who put money into the project, and understandably so.

@n-z

Hola! Mighty glad you're still around! Call-out to your original vision:

TMP – ZUPARKO, Ned: Vive L'Empereur: Grand Tactical Miniatures Rules for Napoleonic Warfare

Who knew Georg's enquiry would engender such a serendipitous response?

Hola, Stoppage! Thank you for the link.( I don't trust my memory anymore, but I think the first time I corresponded with Allan Mountford was about those rules). We should caution Georg about going down VLB-related rabbit holes, you never know who or what you might dredge up.

For me, the problem with the VLB system – apart from those already mentioned – as that the constant need to consult with one's opponent to agree on the next 'critical event' destroyed the element of roleplay, the atmosphere – or illusion? – that one was commanding an army, rather than modern analysts engaging in a discussion about what happened historically – not unlike the late Paddy Griffith's 'Muggergame', which was exactly that.

It may be an interesting simulation of activity on a Napoleonic battlefield, but it simply does not, IMHO, work as a game as it removes the emotional involvement with one's own troops and the limited awareness of the enemy's intentions.

wow Ned thank you for your input, i also really like the concepts in Vive l'empereur and find it ideal for how i want to base things too

@Extra Crispy and arthur1815

Extra Crispy's link hs a review which says about Peter's rulebook: "REVIEWER'S COMMENTS:

"These are clearly an old school type of rules. They are really more broad guidelines for a game master than rules expected to answer any question. They give an outline of combat, orders and CV and the rest is kind of up to the players and the judge." So while Peter's rules reference "VLB" they are still vulnerable to the same criticisms about Jeffrey's Napoleonic rules design like "Without George there to be the umpire the rules won't work). This was precisely the rock I kept stumbling on with GWJ during the years we spent trying to translate his original short "Blue Book" rules (my nickname for them because they had blue card covers) into a set we considered "publishable" for a commercial market. GWJ believed that his system did not need an umpire while having a simultaneous movement game, which is what made the game seem so novel and worth publishing. A grand tactical game which allowed whole battles to be played out in a few hours, without an umpire, and had some historical features such as grand tactical formations presented like this was unique and had elegant concepts This was very attractive. (Most rules at that time didn't specifically SAY an umpire was needed, but in reality they really did. Or, at least, they told readers that one should not play with "rules lawyers" and instead should play with friends who could come to agreements whenever something in a set of rules was unclear. Which to me is the same thing). So I kept trying George to provide definitions and examples of play and diagrams to make things clear enough that an umpire was not needed. George was annoyed and resentful that these were needed. And as playtesters can tell you, this led to an extremely thick mass of pages of rules. In fact it grew so large (and expensive due to the weight for me to mail to playesters) that I called it the "Three-pound set". As an American, I meant three pounds of weight compared to the slim Blue Book rules. It didn't occur to me that UK residents thought I was referring to the cost of the rules in pounds sterling. George would reply to this by saying it was not the fault of the rules, it was because players didn't know how to fight Napoleonic battles. By that he meant that the playtesters wnated to use their old habit, honed on other rules, of trying to make a decisoin for every battalion for every minute for every action they could think of to try and outfox the next countermovement the opponent might make. He thought that if we included "How to fight a battle" instructions where Brigades/Divisions/corps were being used in grand tactics, and players needed to plan for sequential action of the period of many hours etc etc then a lot of the typical umpire-needed fights about which battalion could simultaneously move a half-inch further than his opponent would not be needed. I wish we had the internet and Zoom video etc 40 years ago. Things would have been so much easier. George never stopped insisting that the game could work without him, and that no umpire was needed. I colud never find a printed text way to explain the sequence of play and consultation of players . To advance (or "bound" – to use the verb) the game to the next "change of situation" critical event needed to explain to playtesters, to their satisfaction, how to make that happen. I was unable to do that. As Arthur1815 points out, the consultation with the opponent, which is what would make an umpire unnecessary, is an important part of the game. For Arthur, that process ruins his enjoyment of a game. For the rest of us, people couldn't figure out how to explain the "consultation process" in a set of rules. They assume that opponents in a game do not trust each other and cannot do such a thing without one or the other abusing the process to gain an "unfair" advantage. Maybe I should be writing these things on the io.group site instead of here. I find the discussions interesting but I don't pretend that the TMP community should. Tom, if you wish to cut and paste any of this old history there, feel free. Old anecdotes are about all I have left to contribute on the subject, anyway.

At Georg,
Hi Georg. I was very proud of my Designer Notes in Vive L'Empereur and hoped they might become a model for other sets of rules. Of course this was back in 1980 or so, so I don't know how they hold up against current rules books. If you would like a PDF copy of those rules I can send them to you or anyone else who wants to collect old rules. My @gmail email address is nedzuparko
For that matter, leaving GWJ's rules aside for a moment, if you would like to see a couple of old letters that George Jeffrey wrote describing his interpretation of how a Napoleonic battle was fought, I can send you that, too. I don't claim that George is necessarily correct, but just for the sake of curiosity it might illuminate some of the discussions we've referenced here. -Ned

thank you Ned i will email you as i am interested in those for sure. I do hvce the physical copy of Vive L'Empereur and yes you are right those design notes make for a very interesting rule book that also i found was educating me too on the period more so than some other rules out there