Hnefatafl forum

Colophonius wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:37 pm After having played a match of ten games against Draganov, where Black won 9 times out of 10, we began to speculate, if Walker's rules could favor Black too strongly, given, that the player is experienced enough. That leaves the question, whether the rules for Brandubh 2 were actually more balanced than we thought with the majority of players just not being experienced enough, or whether the Brandubh 2-rules should be changed a little more in Walker's direction - not too much of course - for example by capturing the king on the throne with 2 pieces instead of 4.

I think that's a good idea to try: the king might be overly protected on his throne with Brandubh 2 rules.

According to me, throne friendly rule puts defenders at too great a disadvantage because they are only 5: without the throne to help them it takes almost half your forces to capture an opponent (compared with only 25% for the attackers).

Colophonius wrote: Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:37 pmWhat do you think about re-introducing Brandubh 2 in general (to give the more experienced players the opportunity to further test the balance) and capturing the king on his throne with just two attackers also in this variant in particular?

It should be Brandubh 3, then (or maybe Brandubh 4?). Anyway, I'm ready to test this.

Here is a PDF of the proposed test rules:

The more I think about it, the more I think that the Brandubh 2 rules are fine. Sure, the king is well protected on the throne, but that's not winning him the game. It's good though that he protects the white pieces from being captured against the throne, so that they can try to clear his path or to break a gap for him.
However, black doesn't have to capture the king on the throne; black can simply react to white's plan. So the king captured by four white pieces on the throne is okay for me.
And the friendly throne of Walker's Brandubh is interesting, but it does feel a little strange to me, I'm not sure, but is there another tafl variant where the empty throne is friendly? Whose advantage is that actually?

The friendly throne is interesting indeed. I think it has the added benefit of making the board feel larger as pieces can more freely land on the squares next to the throne.

Small changes to the 7x7 board can have a huge impact. I wonder how the Walker variant would play out if we either 1. removed the last attribute of the throne (only the king can land there) or 2. we barred the king from reentering.

EDIT: Both would probably make it slightly harder for the king’s side – which according to current balance record might be good, but perhaps not for higher tier games judging by Colophonius’ experience above…

Here is a draft of the proposed Brandubh2.5W rules, as discussed in the small forum.

I shall edit the format and add images for the final version, but I wanted to post this draft first.