King against the horde: asymmetric Norse strategy games of the Viking Age. Asymmetric Norse board game family. Defenders protect a King trying to reach safety. Attackers control a larger force trying to capture the King. Capture by surrounding enemy pieces on two opposite sides. Variants differ in board size, escape goals, and special rules.
Every rule of Tafl below is frontmatter in the rules corpus, played by the chess plugin. The board beside each is the game itself, live.
Tablut is the most reliably sourced variant in the tafl family, recorded by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus during his 1732 Lapland expedition among the Sami people and published in Lachesis Lapponica (English translation 1811). A corrected translation was produced in 2013 by Finnish linguist Olli Salmi. Tablut is the only tafl variant documented from living practice; all other variants in this hub are historical reconstructions.
engine:
topology:
type: grid
rows: 9
cols: 9
players: [attackers, defenders]
plugin: chess
plugins:
tafl:
regions:
throne:
cells:
- [4, 4]
interior:
rows: [1, 7]
cols: [1, 7]
edge:
not: [interior]
common:
not: [throne]
royal:
not: [throne]
pieces:
attacker:
type: rider
dirs: orthogonal
# …Tablut
Brandubh (Irish: "black raven") is the Irish form of tafl, played on a 7×7 board. The game is mentioned in several medieval Irish texts. The rules here follow the reconstruction by H.J.R. Murray (A History of Board Games, 1951: 35) as formalised by the Ludii Project (Maastricht University). All tafl variants other than Tablut are historical reconstructions; no original complete ruleset survives.
engine:
topology:
type: grid
rows: 7
cols: 7
players: [attackers, defenders]
plugin: chess
plugins:
tafl:
regions:
throne:
cells:
- [3, 3]
corners:
cells:
- [0, 0]
- [0, 6]
- [6, 0]
- [6, 6]
common:
not: [throne, corners]
royal:
not: [throne]
pieces:
attacker:
type: rider
# …Brandubh
Every Tafl variant is playable against the AI or another player.