How to play Hnefatafl
The Viking board game of raid and defence, also called Viking chess, tafl or the King's Table
Before chess took hold of Europe there was Hnefatafl, the strategy game of the Norse world, played from Ireland to Ukraine for close to a thousand years. One side defends a King and tries to get him to safety; the other, twice as many, tries to trap him. High Kings lets you play it free in your browser on a 3D board, against the computer at three levels or against people online.
The core rules
Every tafl game shares these rules. Each variant changes one or two of them.
- Two sides. The attackers surround the board and outnumber their enemy. Their goal is to capture the King. The defenders are outnumbered but guard the King and must escort him to safety.
- The board. A square grid. The centre square is the Throne, where the King begins. The four corners are escape squares. Only the King may stand on either.
- Movement. Every piece moves like a rook in chess: any number of squares in a straight line, with no diagonals and no jumping. Other pieces may pass through the empty Throne, but corners block them.
- Capture. Sandwich an enemy piece between two of your own on a straight line and it is removed. Moving into a sandwich yourself is safe; the trap only springs when you close it. An empty corner or the empty Throne can take the place of one of the two pieces.
- Capturing the King. In most variants the King must be sealed on all four sides, by attackers or by the empty Throne. In the "weak King" variants two attackers are enough.
- Winning. The defenders win when the King reaches an escape square: a corner, or any edge square in the edge-escape variants. The attackers win by capturing the King, or by encircling every defender so none can reach the edge. A side with no legal move loses, and repeating a position three times ends the game.
The 14 variants
Each has its own page with the full rules, the starting position and a link that opens it in the game.
Quick games
Small boards, a few minutes each
One-Step Ard Rí
Ard Rí with every piece moving one square at a time — the usual cure for its crowded board.
Modern Ard Rí
The 21-piece set with house rules: throne, strong King, and only the corners will do.
Scottish Ard Rí
The World Tafl Federation's Ard Rí — thirteen pieces, no throne, and the King runs for any edge.
Scottish Hnefatafl
Damian Walker's reconstruction for the Scottish boards — the King can't fight back.
Classic
The full-size game
Tawlbwrdd and Historical Hnefatafl
The game as the old sources have it — a vulnerable King who runs for any edge.
Battle games
Luk Martens' Tyr family
Epic
A long game on a huge board
A little history
Tafl games spread with the Vikings wherever they sailed. Boards and pieces have been found in graves from Birka in Sweden to Dublin, and the game appears in the Norse sagas as the mark of a cultured warrior. Hnefatafl means roughly "the fist's table": the hnefi is the King. Each culture the game touched left its own version, from Tablut in Lapland to Tawlbwrdd in Wales and Brandubh in Ireland, until chess arrived from the south and slowly took its place.