General rules

[Hagbard]

Generally white begins or black begins?

In start of our tests and practising the Hnefatafl game here from 2010, we chose to have the attackers (black) begin the games.
(Before 2010 there was only the AI opponent to experiment against.)

Now from a balancing point of view, accidentally most game variants are changed to white begins.

There's the question, whether white begins should now be considered the more standard option, and black begins considered to be the exception.

I think it was one of our German players, who wrote that he asked in a class of beginners, which of defenders begins or attackers begins would be more natural, and practically everyone answered defenders begins (white).
I searched for the note but cannot find it right now.

Alex Hnefatafl advocates for the same thing:
Прошлые варианты, где первым ходит чёрный надо удалить и обновить теорию на сайте. Теперь в историческом Хнефатафле первыми всегда ходят белые. И разночтений на эту тему быть не может.

[gulo]

It makes sense. I also observed that most new players will let white start intuitively, probably since they’re familiar with chess.

Then again, if we can go back in time, we should have black/dark defenders and white attackers – but it’s probably too late to change that now(?)

As I wrote in the small forum:
“In Hervarar saga the defending pieces are dark (or red/brown depending on the source text) and the attackers white. However in Old Irish brandub the pieces might have been the other way around (poem says “My famed brandub ... five voiceless men of white silver and eight of red gold”).”

It fits quite well since brandub is the only (?) historical variant which lets the attacker start (for balance reasons I assume, since no sources designates starting player).

So either:

1. We keep current colours, but white starting is the new standard.

2. We flip all colours in historical variants, except for brandub.


PS. The colour choice was also discussed previously here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=33