Hnefatafl forum

10. ... If one of his own people happens to be in this fourth square, and one of his enemies in number 3 next to it, the soldier thus enclosed between his king and the enemy is killed. The rules as such are attested here: http://tafl.cyningstan.com/page/170/tablut We've not used the rule 10b on thi...

Damian Walker did this excellent summary on the Historical Hnefatafl Rules process:
http://tafl.cyningstan.com/post/1529/hn ... ame-design

Our tournament tests showed that - Brandubh (cross) is the only well balanced setup for brandubh. http://aagenielsen.dk/board_brandubh7.png - Saami Tablut, this setup was given directly by the Linné diary. http://aagenielsen.dk/board_tablut9.png - Tawlbwrdd (Bell), only two setups are well balanced,...

We've now reached a point where a clear picture of the Historical Hnefatafl has emerged.
See
http://aagenielsen.dk/historical_hnefatafl_rules.php

Game lengths. Here's a list of game lengths drawn from the statistics. The table shows for each game variant the geometric average of the number of moves for all games, for games alone where defenders (white) won and games alone where attackers (black) won. Average gamelengths all white won black w...

Ten starting setups for tawlbwrdd 11x11 was tournament tested, and the Tawlbwrdd Lewis cross 11x11 was found to be the distinctly only well balanced setup with no throne, balance -1.06 ( http://aagenielsen.dk/tawlbwrdd_summary.php ). However, the tests showed that there exist also two balanced setup...

Magpie was outlined by the author Nigel Suckling in his book "The Leprechaun Companion", 1999 (hat tip: Damian Walker) and is a Hnefatafl 7x7 game with a strong king and win in corner. But the king can only move one step at a time and can be captured on the edge. Nigel Suckling gives three intitial ...

As a paid-up member of the awkward squad, I see an alternative interpretation of the find, though. Please take a look at this full resolution photo of the Oslo board (thanks to Adam Bartley for sending this detailed photo!): http://aagenielsen.dk/oslofullrez_20140206.jpeg What can be seen of the ma...

The usual number of tafl game pieces is the Walker number p = 6w - 29, where p is the number of pieces and w is the width of the board in squares (hat tip: Damian Walker). I like Damian's equation for the ratio of pieces to board size - I guess Ard Ri is no good because it violates this principle. ...

8/2/2014 Hagbard wrote: I've attempted to deduce logically what can be seen in the Oslo board fragment. Here's my interpretation of the Oslo board: http://aagenielsen.dk/board_tablutwalker15.png The 15x15 board was tournament tested with the Tablut rules as outlined in the forum note above. The Dam...