Viking Board Game Hnefatafl Rules Programs Running
Play Hnefatafl Online. The origin of the Viking board game Hnefatafl and the Berserk rules. Links to more information on the Viking board game Hnefatafl. Play Hnefatafl Online. The origin of the Viking board game Hnefatafl and the Berserk rules. Links to more information on the Viking board game Hnefatafl.
Hi, This is the first game I've ever posted here and is one of the first games I've ever written (technically the second but the first still has placeholder graphics). Hnefatafl was a real board game played by the vikings who spread it thoughout Europe before it got pushed out by the later and more popular game of chess.
The rules are quite simple compared to chess and can be found in the game. Here are some screen shots. GUI: Board Ready for Play: Board with Interface: If your tempted to try it, you can download the full game. The file you want is Hnefatafl 1.1.zip. The game has been tested to work on 3 computers, 2 running Windows XP Home Edition and one running Windows Vista Home Edition (vista is slower). I have no idea how it will work for you pioneers with windows 7 though.
Anyhow I hope you enjoy it and your comments would be greatly appreciated. Downloading it now. Just from the screenshots in your post though, the score and stuff don't look too easy on the eyes. Especially compared to that board which looks great but is a lot darker. The entire game should keep with that theme, in my opinion.
I'll edit with any more feedback when it's done downloading. EDIT: Going on quick game right now. I think the graphics style on the menu and suchlike isn't the easiest to read - the sort of yellow text on a yellow background especially Also finding the bit where you type your name for a quick game a little dodgy. Keeps getting things like JJ instead of J and my name's at Jaameess at the moment because I couldn't be bothered to delete it and start again. EDIT 2: Playing the game now; one time, a defending piece (I'm playing attacking) moved to between 2 of mine, and one of mine disappeared. I thought it might have just been a rule I didn't read properly or which wasn't written down, but now another one's done it and nothing's happened - both of my pieces are still there. EDIT 3: Maybe I just need to reread the rules but the king's just bumbling round now, and one piece he landed next to just disappeared but the rest don't.
I don't know. He just won himself the game though. I'll give it another bash after re-reading the rules but I do find the colour scheme on them quite hard to focus on. EDIT 4: Ok a few turns in now. Couple of points - first, sometimes I can't get it to go to the tile I'm clicking on. I'm not sure why, but it just doesn't want to move sometimes. Secondly, there are a couple of things that have taken me by surprise so far (the things that I mentioned earlier, and also I just got taken by the king moving so my piece was between him and an empty king square).
I'm not sure about these things - whether they're glitches, or whether you just need to extend the documentation for the rules - but I found them a little offputting. One suggestion as well - would it be possible to have a moveable camera in this setup? Something along the lines of when you right-click and move the mouse the camera moves around, while staying pointed at the center of the board? I've also figured out I'm a bit rubbish. EDIT 5: OK Last one I think. Just played as the defender (they're the ones with the king, right?).
It was ridiculously easy compared to the other side. It may well just be the way the game is naturally weighted, but if not, then is there some way you can redress the balance? Also, would it be possible to have something show when a certain piece has been selected? If you're clicking on one in the middle of several others, it's sometimes not so easy to see that you've got the right one. Quote: 'Playing the game now; one time, a defending piece (I'm playing attacking) moved to between 2 of mine, and one of mine disappeared. I thought it might have just been a rule I didn't read properly or which wasn't written down, but now another one's done it and nothing's happened - both of my pieces are still there.'
OK that doesn't sound right but I can't say its ever done that to me. The thing to look out for is that if a hostile piece moves between two of yours, it is not taken. Thus in a horisontal row of the board, there are the following pieces: Attacker - Empty - Attacker - Defender And a defender moves into the empty space, the result will be a row which goes: Attacker - Defender - Empty(taken) - Defender I don't know if this was the reason the piece disappeared. Quote: 'I just got taken by the king moving so my piece was between him and an empty king square' Yes I'm afraid the defender may use any of his pieces to take an attacking piece by having a king square on one side acting as a defending piece. This should only work on the corner squares though. It is just to prevent the attacker placing a piece on all 8 ways to the corner squares, thereby stopping the king from ever escaping. I had forgotten that this was not in the rules though.
I will add that to a new page of the documentation. Quote: 'maybe make a amarker dofferent color were u want to move.' Not quite sure what you mean by this.
The program highlights the squares which you can move to and you click on the square you decide to move to. What would the marker do? Anyway thanks for all the comments.
That should give me lots to do - shame its back to school tomorow so I'm unlikely to get any of this done much before Christmas! Please to continue to comment though. I'm noting everything down on my to do list for Hnefatafl 1.2. Quote: 'Version 1.2 will have a more contrasting text and background. Any thoughts on what colour might be better?' I think the menu and the GUI are a little dodgy colour-scheme-wise.
I really like the appearance of the actual board and the game environment, but the 2D stuff seems a little off. Possibly more muted colours? Something parchment-y? Maybe you could even stick with a similar palette to the pieces - cream, textured background with darker brown text? (I think that was what you were using, I'll load it up in a bit and check). Quote: 'quote Also finding the bit where you type your name for a quick game a little dodgy.
Keeps getting things like JJ instead of J' Yeah. I find this too. I've been working on some text box modules separately because this is a problem I've had in both the games I've made but I've still had no luck. Either it duplicates letters or misses them out. Any thought on how to fix this would be great but I think I may post a separate thread to discuss this./quote I don't remember having this problem, but possibly the same sort of thing which people have with mouse clicks? If the key is down (and it's a letter key) don't accept any more input from that key until it has been released?
Could check with if keypressed(j)=0 sort of thing (not sure about the actual code you'd need but I'm sure there is a command which does in essence what that suggests, haven't done much of this coding malarkey in ages though so I can't remember the exact commands). Quote: ' Yes I'm afraid the defender may use any of his pieces to take an attacking piece by having a king square on one side acting as a defending piece. This should only work on the corner squares though. It is just to prevent the attacker placing a piece on all 8 ways to the corner squares, thereby stopping the king from ever escaping.
I had forgotten that this was not in the rules though. I will add that to a new page of the documentation. ' I think some of the things I thought were glitches might have had something to do with this. I'll try again later with this in mind.
A little known fact about the vikings is that they really liked board games, and their favorite game was Hnefatafl. Hnefatafl is a game of strategy, somewhat similar to chess, though it is not derivative. Hnefatafl predates chess, and was the game to play until chess ousted it during the middle ages. Hnefatafl was the game of choice for the vikings, and much of its popularity was due to the vikings spreading it around to the places the travelled to. Unlike most other strategy games, Hnefatafl features two unequal teams, which different goals, an attacking team, and a defending team.
The attacker's goal is to capture the king, while the defenders goal is to let the king escape. The attacker also gets twice as many pieces, yet it is the defender that really has the advantage. Though the game was the most popular game in the world during it's time, the rules were never actually written down. We know some rules by marked game boards which have been discovered, some rules from viking poems and song, and some rules written by an observer that couldn't even speak the language. However, by piecing together bits and pieces from different places, we can be fairly certain how the game was played. I had never played the game before, in fact, I built this board just so that I could play the game. It turns out that it's really a fun game.
The rules are simple but the game play is interesting and requires good strategy. I also discovered that my brother is much better at it than I am, which is a little embarrassing. Hnefatafl requires 36 regular pieces and one 'king' piece for a total of 37 pieces. To make the pieces, cut out sections of the 1 inch diameter dowel.
I just marked the dowel lengthwise every half inch and then cut it with a band saw until I had 36 pieces. The king has to be easily distinguishable from the other pieces, so you could just paint that piece differently, but I decided to do a little more, and cut that one piece just a quarter of an inch taller than the others. I made a few extra pieces just to be safe. Also, I cut out two inch long semi circles from the other end of the dowel.
These are for the two ends of the turn counter. I really recommend building the turn counter.
The most authentic rules we have for the game make it pretty unbalanced, so the easiest way to make the game fair for both players is to play 2 rounds and see who can win in less turns. The turn counter makes this a lot easier. There are other methods of balancing game play, but it feels wrong to change the rules of the game. I wanted to get as close to the same game the vikings played as possible. Like I mentioned before, the turn counter makes the game a lot more fun to play because it helps keep it fair for both players. My idea was an abacus style device where beads slide from side to side representing turns taken.
The wooden beads already had 1/8 inch holes drilled in them, but it wasn't exact, so I ended up re-drilling the holes in 25 tiny wooden beads, which was a lot easier than it sounds. The idea is to get them to fit on one of the smaller dowels. The should slide easily along it, if they do not, then either drill the hole slightly larger or sand down the dowel.
I ended up doing both. Then, drill your two end pieces so that the ends of the dowel fit into them. I drilled a hole all the way through one and then about a half inch into the other so that I could still remove the dowel from the center even when the end pieces were affixed to the board. Next we need a game board to actually play on. There are several variants of Tafl that we know of, each of which uses a slightly different game board. Hnefatafl, the variant played by the vikings, and uses either an 11x11 board, or a 13x13 board. I decided to go with an 11x11 board because it seems that was the more common type and because I don't much care for the number 13.
Plus, most other variants such as Tablut use smaller boards, so with an 11x11 board, you can still play any variant that uses a smaller board. You could just draw or paint on the squares, but I chose to use my rotary tool to carve grooves into the board instead of drawing lines because I thought it would be cooler.
My board was 15x15 inches, so I just measured 2 inches from each side and cut a groove there, then moved 1 inch inward and repeated until I reached the center. Turned out that my measurements weren't that great, but the end result was passable. I also glued some eucalyptus wood veneer on top of the playing surface because I thought it would look cool and I heard once that eucalyptus oils can keep spiders away, and I hate spiders.
I didn't glue it down very well and I didn't wait long enough for the glue to dry, so some of the pieces of veneer came off or broke. Gluing them back on made it look alright though. In the end, I had an 11x11 board with 1x1 inch squares. Some of the authentic viking boards that we have found had pegged game pieces. I decided to build my board the same way. To make the pegs for the pieces, I taped 4 of the 1/8 inch dowels together, then measured and cut them into 3/4 inch pieces. I did this until I had 36.
Then I cut one more at a full inch because my king piece is 1/4 inch taller. Using my drill press, I drilled a 1/8 inch hole in the center of each piece. Try to get this as close as possible, otherwise they might not fit great in the holes in the board. Once you have the holes drilled in each piece, slide a dowel segment into each one so that it sits flush on one side and sticks 1/4 out the other side.
Glue these all in place, but be careful not to get much glue on the side that sticks out, because we want this to fit pretty tightly into the board. Then you will need to drill a hole in the exact center of each space on the board. I ended up drilling my holes a tiny bit bigger using a 5/16 inch drill bit, just so that the pieces wouldn't get stuck to the board. Now all your game pieces are complete, you just need to paint the two sides different colors. Remember that one team will have 12 pieces and a king, and the other side will have 24 pieces. I chose to paint the king and kings men red, and leave the attackers unpainted.
I also used my extra dowel segments to make a crown for the king by drilling holes partway into the top of the king and fitting those dowel segments into them to form a circle. The end result looks more like a birthday cake than a crown, but it's close enough. You will also need to mark the very center square on the board. This is the throne, a special space that only the king can enter. Some boards that have been discovered also included markings for the starting places of each piece, but I didn't include that in my board. Piazzolla concierto para quinteto.
Playing Hnefatafl is simple. Players take turns moving their pieces. Each player can move one piece each turn, any number of spaces in any direction (but not diagonal). Pieces cannot jump over other pieces. Pieces can be captured by placing one opposing team's piece on each side of that piece, forming a 'sandwich' around that piece. Captured pieces are removed from the board. The king can only be captured if surrounded on all four sides.
Moving a piece into a space between two opposing player's pieces is a valid move and does not count as being captured. The attacker attempts to capture the king, while the defender just needs to evade capture long enough for the king to escape.
The king can escape by moving off any side of the game board. After each turn slide one bead to the other side of the turn counter to record the number of turns taken.
If the king escapes, then the board is reset, and players switch teams. The original attacker then must be able to escape in fewer turns than the original defender.
The player that escapes in fewer turns in the winner. If a king is ever captured (unlikely), then players switch teams, and the original defender must capture the king in fewer turns to win (a feat which is extremely difficult). It is definitely recommended that you drink a bunch of mead while playing, preferably from large wooden mugs.
The Game Board
It helps you get into the viking mood. However, authentic viking mead was probably more similar to beer, mead recipes are another thing that has been poorly recorded.
However, most evidence suggests that viking mead incorporated malt grains as well as honey, and the yeast used was very similar to yeast strains used for ale. Modern mead tends to be more like wine than anything.
Regardless, vikings drank mead, so grab the most authentic mead you can get your hands on, drink it, and enjoy playing Hnefatafl. I have been playing for a while now and I agree with CobraTester, that the game is played with the king escaping into the corners. I really recommend to play it thus for it makes for a whole different game play. I am not sure but I believe that the rules are different when the size of the playing board and the settup of the pieces is changed. Hnefatafl is refering to the 11x11 gameboard. On that note I'd love the challange to play against anyone who has a mind for it.
Playing Hnefatafl (Rules)
So please do contact me:) ps. I added a picture of an old drawing reffering to Hnefatafl. From what I can tell, the game was likely played both ways. I know a lot of modern players like to use the corners as escape points because it helps balance the game, and modernizations of tafl games seem to always include this rule. However, I did not include that rule because I wanted to get as close as possible to the game the Vikings might have played.
While there is a lot of historical evidence to show that sometimes the corners were used, it was certainly not the only way the game was played. Carl Linnaeus's account of the game did not include this rule, which is mostly what I used for reference. Next time I make a board, I will probably be marking the corners, but I rather enjoy playing the game with any border as an escape point. There really is no shortage of variations of this game.