Hnefatafl forum

Maybe all of the dots, crosses and X symbols and all other weird symbols are just some religious explanations and signs and are not related to the game rules. In that way the game reconstruction of Damian Walker (cyningstan) might be correct or at least the best thing we have so far. Regarding the b...

We don't know much about Alea Evangelii to judge about its balance. However, for me it is clear that the illustration shows the starting position and not a game in progress. I think so, because the pieces are very simmetrically placed over the board. The question that I am trying to figure out is wh...

The Tablut set of rules is the best documented variant of the game. In 1855 a sea battle variant called Imperial Contest was produced and sold as a commercial product. I think the vikings played something like Tablut (the Tablut ruleset) on different board sizes. The initial setup was the cross setu...

I might be wrong but I think there were games in which the time buffer was reduced and to less than 1 hour and then the time increment was about 2 hours. I think the minimum amount of time increment should be 6 or even 8 hours despite how much time is left in the player's time buffer.

Here is my evaluation on the last World Championship and some proposals for improvements. 1) Additional criteria: Last year I won because of the game length (I won against Alex Hnefatafl in less moves than he won against me). However, this criteria seems too thin in my opinion. Here is my proposal f...

Well, regarding Historical Hnefatafl 7x7 (Irish Brandubh 2) I think that all of the players who regularly play on 7x7 board will agree that this variant is the most interesting, deep and well-balanced. Walker and Scottish Ard-Ri are not so well-tested and from my personal experience they are more st...

In my opinion it is good to start supporting no more than 3 maximum 5 variants in the beginning. At first, we need to teach new playes how to play tafl and some well-known, well-balanced and easy to learn variants should work best. I think there are three board sizes which are good (7x7, 9x9 and 11x...

In the previous post I mentioned the 'Flock formation'. It could be very useful for blacks to slowen whites attack and to build a defensive line between the king and a corner or between the king and his warriors isolating either the king or the warriors depending on the goal. Let's see some examples...

In one of the previous posts we saw how Jrton80 implemented a structure similar to a fort but used it as a defensive tool. Let's see more of this technique. On the image below Floki (whites) managed to create a strong attack to the bottom left corner. However, Draganov (blacks) answered it with some...

After couple of moves, the game reached a position in which the blacks (Alex Hnefatafl) used 'the Tower' defence to trap the king on the edge. This game is a true masterpiece showing great understanding of two defencive techniques- 'the Tower' and 'Defence line'.