Scottish Ard Ri 7x7

[Hagbard]

This tafl board was found in Ireland (supposedly for Brandubh):
Ballinderry, Ireland, late 9th century



Modern reconstruction of the Orkney board (Antiquity Gamecrafters):



Although the Irish and the Orkney boards are both of size 7x7, they are clearly different in the markings. The Irish board has marked corner squares, whereas the Orkney board has no markings of corners.

We know that the Historical Hnefatafl rules are well balanced on the 9x9 board with no marked corner squares (Saami Tablut). But reducing the board size to 7x7 would make the Saami game very unbalanced in favour of the defenders. To rectify this, the king can be required to go to a corner instead of the edge, and then the game is balanced again (Irish Brandubh).

An alternative way to rectify the balance is to drop the throne square and with it the special protection of the king in center. Then the king still wins on the edge, and the corners are still unmarked.
We tournament tested this setup and found a good game balance of +1.11 (111 defenders' wins per 100 attackers' wins).


Could this be the ancient Scottish game played on the Orkney board, i.e. the Scottish Ard Ri: Historical Hnefatafl rules but with no throne?

[cyningstan]

I certainly like the idea better than the one I came up with (weaponless king), and I'm pleasantly surprised that removing the throne's protection is enough to make the game balanced. I'll be keeping an eye on this and keeping my fingers crossed that the balance holds up with further play. Though sadly I don't have the time to participate in the tournaments nowadays.

[Hagbard]

Various Ard Ri configurations were tested, and the Ard Ri throneless 7x7, which is mentioned above, was found to be still the best balanced.

Yet one strong player, casshern, was able to win all his games, both as black and white, in the Ard Ri-1 7x7 test tournament (board with throne, king moves only one step at a time). This is usually a strong sign that a variant works, however no other players were able to do this, and the measured game balance ended at -2.20.

Summary here:
https://aagenielsen.dk/ardri_summary.php

[gulo]

I can't seem to find a way to play "Ard rí throneless" with regular cross setup on this site. This is the only version I could find:


In my opinion the 4 defender and 8 attacker cross variant is just a simple tafl version of Brandub (i.e. edge win, and no special squares), no need to give it another name - I assume "Ard rí" was assigned to the variant at some point without any historical references to such a board game?

[Hagbard]

We investigated various setups of the Ard ri game; here's a summary of the result:

https://aagenielsen.dk/ardri_summary.php

The best one found then, was actually the cross variant. But the game balance is +1.71 from 264 games, and we use to only keep setups with balance better than 1.50

The name "Irish Brandubh" was used for 7x7 with corners, and "Scottish Ard ri" for 7x7 without corners, because of a board with corners found in Ireland and a board without corners found in Scotland.


Replays of these games is found here:

https://aagenielsen.dk/visallespil_soeg.php

Choose "Search more than two years back".
Choose "Historical Hnefatafl 7x7 (Scottish Ard Ri throneless)".

[gulo]

Thank you for the info!

I read the summary, and that’s why I wondered why it wasn’t available

I guess it’s not the most viable variant. In my limited experience it usually requires severe errors by the defender for the attacker to win. But yes, perhaps for now the most viable candidate for the 7x7 boards without marked corners.

My objection to the modern name Ard Ri for the simple variant (distinguished from “Brandub” as found in Old Irish, aka Old Gaelic sources) is also due to the anachronistic division based on modern borders.

The 7x7 game boards are pretty much all found within the Norse-Gaelic areas of the British Isles, and the owners of the boards would likely all belong to this mixed culture with Old Gaelic as the dominant language (many would speak both Old Norse and Old Gaelic). Some of course from the Northern Isles with Old Norse dominating, but within the same cultural and political sphere (e.g. the Kingdom of Man).

The 7x7 board is rooted in this cross-border area, and it doesn’t make sense, in my opinion, to distinguish the sub-variants based on modern borders. “Brandub” would make as much sense in Gaelic Scotland as in Ireland at the time, no need to make up a new name.

I won’t labour the point further, just putting my views out there

[Hagbard]

There's a point!

[gulo]

After playing the simple cross version some more on Fellhuhn’s app (called ”Historical Ard Ri” there), I have only found one viable way to start as attacker in order to have a chance:

Classic Brandub opening d2e2; defender will likely open up the whole line with d3d2, forcing a close; in any case, the attacker must close the whole quarter with f4f3.

From there the attacker must bide his time and avoid losing pieces, hoping for suboptimal play by the defender.


I’m tempted to theorise that the simple variants are the older forms (closer to the even more simple and likely predecesor, Ludus Latrunculorum) and then the other rules developed organically – in the case of the 7x7 board they likely found, like us modern players, that the defender had too much of an advantage, so they started experimenting with special centre and corner squares, ending up with a more interesting game of Brandub.