Tafl Games: The Norse Family of Board Games

Tafl games are a family of asymmetric strategy board games from medieval Northern Europe. All of them share one core: a king and his defenders start in the center, a larger attacking force starts at the edges, and the king tries to escape while the attackers try to trap him. Board sizes and armies vary; the idea doesn’t.

The word tafl is Old Norse for “board” or “table,” and it became shorthand for this whole class of games, the way “cards” can mean a dozen different games. Hnefatafl, “the king’s board,” is the most famous member, but the Norse weren’t the only ones playing. As Scandinavians traded, raided, and settled across Europe from around 800 AD, the game traveled with them, and local versions took root: Irish, Welsh, Sámi, Anglo-Saxon. Each region kept the skeleton and changed the dressing.

That’s why “tafl” is the honest name for the family. Calling every variant “hnefatafl” is like calling every trick-taking game “bridge.” Close enough for conversation, wrong enough to annoy a historian.

What every tafl game shares

Four things define a tafl game, and all six variants playable here have them:

1. Unequal sides. The attackers field roughly twice as many soldiers as the defense.
2. One royal piece. The defenders have a king; the attackers don’t. Only the king can win the game for the defense, by escaping.
3. Rook movement. Every piece slides any distance along a row or column.
4. Custodian capture. You take an enemy piece by sandwiching it between two of yours. (The full mechanics live in the rules reference.)

Everything else is negotiable: how big the board is, whether the king escapes to a corner or any edge square, how many attackers it takes to kill him, whether he can fight. Those small dials change the games more than you’d expect. Edge escape on a big board makes the defense terrifying; corner escape makes the attack a wall-building exercise.

The six variants you can play here

The table on this page gives the exact numbers for each game. Here’s the character of each one, which numbers don’t convey.

Copenhagen Hnefatafl is the modern competitive standard, played on 11×11. Its rules were finalized in 2012 by the community around aagenielsen.dk and have run world championship play since 2013. Corner escape, a tough four-sided king capture, and two clever additions (the shieldwall capture and the exit fort) that close loopholes older rule sets left open. If you only learn one variant, learn this one.

Tablut is the 9×9 Sámi game, and historically it’s the crown jewel: the botanist Carl Linnaeus watched it played in Lapland in 1732 and wrote down the rules, the only near-complete ruleset of a living tafl game ever recorded. Modern reconstructions of every other variant lean on his notes.

Brandubh is Ireland’s version, 7×7 with just 13 pieces. Fast, sharp, and the best teaching game in the family. Medieval Irish poems mention it by name.

Tawlbwrdd is the Welsh game on 11×11. It shows up in medieval Welsh law texts, which priced the pieces, and in a 1587 manuscript that describes the setup. Plays like a heavier, older cousin of Copenhagen.

Ard Rí is attributed to Scotland: 7×7, dense with pieces, claustrophobic from move one. Its historical pedigree is genuinely shaky, and its page says so plainly.

Alea Evangelii is the strange one: a 19×19 monster from a twelfth-century Irish manuscript that dresses the game up as an allegory of the Gospels. Long games, huge armies, oddly meditative.

How the variants actually differ in play

Three dials matter most.

Board size sets the tempo. On 7×7, the armies are in contact almost immediately and a single capture can decide the game. On 19×19, you spend a dozen moves just developing, and games become sieges.

The escape rule sets the balance of fear. Corner escape (Copenhagen) gives the attackers four fixed points to fortify, so the game becomes wall against breach. Edge escape gives the king dozens of exits, and the attackers have to play far more nervously. This single rule is the main reason some hnefatafl rule sets feel broken; pairing edge escape with a large defense famously makes the king nearly unstoppable. The balance question has its own page.

King strength sets the endgame. A king captured on two sides dies fast and must hide behind his men. A four-side king (Copenhagen) can stand in the open and even help make captures, which turns him into a fighting piece rather than cargo.

Where to start

Play Brandubh until captures feel automatic, then move to Copenhagen and stay there; it’s the version with a living competitive scene and the best-tested balance. Try Tablut when you want to touch the actual historical record, and Alea Evangelii when you have a spare hour and patience. All six are playable now on the main board.

For the story of how these games spread and died out, see the history of hnefatafl.