1732 Carl von Linné, Sweden, wrote down in his Lapland excursion diary the rules of the Saami tafl game Tablut.
1811 James Edward Smith, UK, translated the Latin parts of the Linné diary, like the Tablut rules, into English.
The Smith translation introduced some errors, which are in contradiction with the Linné description:
The friendly throne square; the Linné throne square is hostile.
The king being captured from 4 sides everywhere on the board (and this has in some later attempts of reconstructon lead to another error, the unarmed king, to keep up the game balance). The Linné king is armed and captured from 4 sides in the board center and 2 sides everywhere else.
1855 Jaques of London, UK, produced the commercial game Imperial Contest, based on the Smith translation. It's identical to our Sea Battle 9x9, except that the king's moves are limited to four squares at once. (Hat tip Damian Walker.)
1913 H. J. R. Murray, UK, identified the game described by Linné to be Hnefatafl, based on the Smith translation.
1980 David Brown, UK, made a reconstruction including the errors of the aforementioned works:
King unarmed and captured from 4 sides.
Throne square friendly.
The king wins on the edge. And David Brown increased the board size into 11x11.
Though based on some early translational errors, David Brown obviously did his home work and tested his reconstructed rules thoroughly, because our test tournament found a game balance of 11 defenders' wins per 10 attackers' wins. See more here.
September 2011 Adam Bartley, Norway, proposed a Sea Battle Tafl, which is a simplified version of David Brown:
No throne square, i.e. no forbidden squares at all on the board.
Board size 9x9.
This game works and is well suited for teaching of beginners - we measured a game balance of 100 defenders' wins per 100 attackers' wins.
November 2012 Aage Nielsen (Denmark) drew the dragonship pieces for online Sea Battle tafl.
