Brandubh Rules and Online Play: The Irish Tafl Game
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Rules at a glance
- Every piece, king included, moves like a rook: any number of empty squares along a row or column.
- Capture a soldier by trapping it between two of your pieces along a row or column (custodian capture).
- The attackers make the first move.
- Armies: 8 attackers against 4 defenders plus the king.
- The defenders win when the king reaches any of the four corner squares.
- The attackers win by capturing the king: he is flanked from two opposite sides, like a soldier.
- The king is armed: he can act as one side of a capturing sandwich.
This summary is generated from the same variant data the engine enforces. Details beyond it, such as throne behavior and special captures, follow the attestation in the fact box and the write-up below. Shared mechanics are covered in the rules reference.
Brandubh (also spelled brandub) is the Irish tafl game, a two-player board game played on a 7×7 board with just 13 pieces: 8 attackers against 4 defenders and a king. The name means “black raven” in Irish. It’s the smallest, fastest game in the family, and the best one to learn on. You can play brandubh online on the board above, against the computer or a friend.
Brandubh rules
No medieval rulebook survives, so this site plays the World Tafl Federation reconstruction.
- Board and pieces: A 7×7 board with five marked squares, the central throne and the four corners. There are 13 pieces in all: 8 attackers, 4 defenders, and the king.
- Setup: The king starts on the central square, the throne. His 4 defenders stand next to him in a cross, and the 8 attackers stand two to each arm of the cross, out to the edges.
- Turns: The attackers move first, then the sides alternate one move at a time.
- Movement: Every piece, king included, moves any number of empty squares along a row or column, like a rook in chess. Only the king may stop on the throne or a corner square. Other pieces may pass over the empty throne.
- Capturing soldiers: Trap an enemy soldier between two of your pieces on opposite sides, along a row or column, and it is removed. The four corners and the empty throne count as one of your pieces for this. Moving into a gap between two enemies is safe. The king can help make captures.
- Capturing the king: Off the throne, the king is captured like a soldier, by two attackers on opposite sides, and a corner can stand in for one of them. On the throne, attackers must surround him on all four sides.
- The defenders win when the king reaches any of the corner squares.
- The attackers win by capturing the king, or by surrounding the king and every defender with an unbroken ring.
- A player with no legal move loses, and a player who repeats the same position a third time loses.
That’s the whole game. To play brandubh online, use the board at the top of this page; the engine enforces every rule above. The family-wide rules reference covers the mechanics every tafl game shares.
A game known from poems and a bog
Ireland left us two kinds of evidence for brandubh, and neither is a rulebook.
The first is poetry. Medieval Irish verse mentions brandubh by name and gives us the armies: five men against eight, with one of the five being the branán, the chief. Those numbers, tiny by tafl standards, are why brandubh is reconstructed as the family’s pocket edition. The game clearly mattered culturally; it turns up in lists of accomplishments expected of a well-raised noble, alongside its sister game fidchell.
The second is wood. In 1932, excavation of a crannog (an artificial lake dwelling) at Ballinderry turned up a tenth-century game board, wonderfully preserved: seven holes by seven for pegged pieces, a decorated border, two carved faces as handles, and marked squares at the center and corners. Scholars have argued for decades about whether it’s a brandubh board or a fidchell board, and honesty requires saying nobody is certain. But marked center and corner squares fit the tafl pattern exactly, which is why the Ballinderry board has become brandubh’s emblem. The board’s Irish-style carving suggests it was made for an Irish owner, not a Viking visitor, evidence of how thoroughly the Norse game had gone native.
No Irish rules text survives, so modern brandubh grafts those piece counts and that board onto the mechanics Linnaeus recorded for Tablut. It’s a reconstruction, openly, but a well-anchored one.
How Brandubh differs from Copenhagen
Scale, most obviously. Copenhagen fields 24 attackers on a 11×11 board; brandubh’s whole war involves 13 pieces on 7×7. The armies start almost touching. There is no opening phase to speak of, no slow wall-building, no quiet moves. Nearly every turn threatens something.
The king is weaker, too. Two attackers can capture him anywhere off the throne, where Copenhagen needs four, and there is no shieldwall or exit fort. With so few defenders, the king can’t hide behind his men for long. He has to run early, which suits the small board’s breakneck character.
What carries over completely: rook movement, sandwich captures, hostile marked squares, attackers moving first. That’s why brandubh is such a good trainer.
Who Brandubh suits
Beginners, first and foremost. A brandubh game often finishes inside ten minutes, so a new player gets more complete games, and more instructive losses, per hour than any other variant offers. Every capture pattern you drill here works on the big boards.
It’s also the variant for people who like their strategy games sharp. Brandubh has the flavor of a knife fight: one careless move and it’s over. Some experienced players keep coming back to it for exactly that reason, the way chess players keep blitz in their lives.
If the tension appeals but you want more room to think, Tablut is the natural next size up, and the tafl games overview compares the whole family. The board is ready at the top of this page.
FAQ
What does brandubh mean?
“Black raven,” from Irish bran (raven) and dubh (black). Nobody recorded why the game carries that name. The obvious guess connects the dark attacking pieces to ravens, birds heavy with battlefield meaning in both Irish and Norse tradition, but that remains a guess and is worth labeling as one.
Is brandubh Irish or Viking?
Both, in sequence. The tafl family arrived in Ireland with Norse settlers and traders around the ninth and tenth centuries, and the Irish made a version their own, with its own name, its own poems, and (probably) the Ballinderry board. By the time that board was carved, it was simply an Irish game.
What’s the difference between brandubh and fidchell?
Fidchell is the other famous early Irish board game, and the sources don’t fully describe either. The usual scholarly position is that brandubh was the asymmetric king-escape game (tafl family) while fidchell may have been a symmetric two-army game closer to Roman latrunculi. The Ballinderry board gets claimed for both.
Is brandubh too small to be strategic?
It’s tactical rather than deeply strategic, and that’s its charm. You won’t build long-term structures on a 7×7 board; you’ll calculate short, forcing sequences where precision decides everything. Think of it as the blitz chess of the tafl family: less planning, zero forgiveness.