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Hnefatafl

Norse Scandinavia — the board the Vikings played before chess reached them.

Who moves first?

The two sides of this game are not the same — whoever moves first also takes the other army.

No account, no email, nothing to install. You get a link to send to whoever you want to play.

How to play

The board

Eleven squares by eleven. Twenty-four attackers stand in groups along the four edges.
Twelve defenders and their king start in a diamond at the centre, with the king on the middle square.
The attackers move first.

Moving

Every piece moves like a rook in chess: any distance in a straight line, up, down or across.
Nothing moves diagonally and nothing jumps over anything.
The king moves the same way as everybody else.

The five special squares

The four corners and the centre square are not ordinary squares. Only the king may stand on them.
Nobody else may enter a corner or pass through one. The centre square can be crossed by anyone once the king has left it.
They also help capture. A piece caught between an enemy and one of these squares is taken.

Taking pieces

You take a piece by getting your own on both sides of it, in a straight line. Diagonals never capture.
Your move has to close the trap. Stepping into the gap between two enemies yourself is safe.
The edge of the board is not a side. A piece with its back to the edge is not trapped by one enemy.
The king helps capture, like any other piece.

Taking the king

The king needs all four sides at once, which is harder than taking anybody else.
Beside the centre square, three attackers are enough — the empty middle counts as the fourth.
On the edge of the board the king cannot be taken at all.

Winning

The defenders win by walking the king to any corner.
The attackers win by taking him.
There are more ways than these two to finish a game, and they are in the next section.

Which rules are these?

Copenhagen Hnefatafl, on an 11 × 11 board. It is the World Tafl Federation's tournament standard, settled in 2012.

The rule set matters more here than in most games. Nobody knows how the Vikings played. Every modern tafl is a reconstruction, and they disagree about rules that decide games.

Copenhagen adds four rules to Fetlar, the standard it was built from.

The shieldwall: A row along the edge is captured together when it is bracketed at both ends and each piece in it has an enemy in front.
The exit fort: The king wins by reaching the edge inside a formation the attackers cannot break.
Encirclement: The attackers win by enclosing the king and every defender in an unbroken ring.
Repetition: Repeating a position forever is a loss, and it is a loss for the king's side.

Two more differences are worth knowing. The king here is armed, so he joins in captures. And a player with no legal move loses, which is the opposite of stalemate in chess.

The full rules are published by Aage Nielsen at aagenielsen.dk.