Alea Evangelii intrigues me.
I am not aware of any compelling explanation of the application, in the Corpus Christi manuscript, of a Christian religious context to what appears to be a large, probably 19 x 19, Tafl board. I have also seen no persuasive explanation of the arrangement of pieces shown in the manuscript, and whether it is a starting set up or an illustration of a game in progress. If it does illustrate a starting set up, I understand that the game would be pretty hopelessly unbalanced in favour of the attackers and against the king.
By the end of the Viking age, Christianity had come to Scandinavia, but it is almost certain that the Scandinavian Tafl games were developed before Christianity came to Scandinavia, when the old Norse gods were worshipped. I therefore find it difficult to accept any inherent linkage between Christianity and Alea Evangelii as a game.
Medieval monks, however, had a fascination with complex religious allegories. Personally, I therefore suspect that the Corpus Christi manuscript was such an allegory, and not an attempt to describe any actual game.
We have archaeological evidence of variously sized Tafl boards from elsewhere, for example 11 x 11, 13 x 13 and 15 x 15. I’m not aware of any other 19 x 19 boards (I understand that the Vimose board was probably Roman), but they may exist unbeknown to me. Tafl therefore appears to have been played in formats ranging from 7 x 7 to (possibly) 19 x 19.
The recent 21st century retranslations of Carl Linnaeus’ 1732 notes of the Lapland Tafl (Tablut) game are the best set of rules surviving. Personally, I find the argument that those rules were also probably broadly the rules that were used in all sized variants of Tafl to be persuasive. Why would that not be the case? There is no historical evidence that I am aware of that would undermine that argument.
I doubt whether anyone will ever come up with a clear explanation of what the Corpus Christi manuscript means for Tafl games (or, for that matter, what it means in religious terms!).
So, has anyone ever tried playing Alea Evangelii using Linnaeus’ 1732 Tafl rules (in their 21st century retranslated form), with 48 attackers and 24 defenders plus the king, and using his initial set up of a simple cross with serifs? If so, does it produce a reasonably balanced game?