Break Away

Break Away is a board game dating back to 1984, and clearly one derived from hnefatafl.

The board and pieces are made from plastic, with the pieces fitting within the squares of the 9 x 9 board. While not in play, the pieces are stored into two compartments on either side of the board, and these compartments can also be used for captured pieces during play. Basically, Break Away can be considered a portable travel version of hnefatafl.

Two differences between Break Away and traditional hnefatafl are clear. The most obvious one is the number of attacking pieces: 12 rather than 16, which means the game does not have the 'normal' n +1 vs 2n number of pieces. Secondly, whereas the attacking and defending pieces move like the normal hnefatafl pieces (i.e. like the rook in chess), the king can only move one square horizontally or vertically. To make up for this restricted movement, the king can escape via any edge square rather than only in the corners. 

The game does include an extra four white pieces, to allow the attackers the use of 16 pieces. This 'Master Break Away' option restores the n +1 vs 2n formula, and makes the game more similar to Tablut (except for the limited movement of the king).

'Brexitafl'

For a while, I've been thinking of creating a topical hnefatafl set using coins as playing pieces. So I collected UK coins (one £2 coin plus 10p coins) and asked my sister in the Netherlands if she could collect a bunch of 5c euro coins for me.

For the board, I ordered a 50x50cm sheet of blue perspex, as well as a pack of adhesive small yellow stars. Does anyone see where this is going?

The board is for a 13 x 13 hnefatafl set. Hnefatafl boards come in several sizes, from 7 x 7 to 19 x 19, and there is some historical evidence for 13 x 13 boards.

There are no historical details regarding the number of pieces, but given the size of the board, 16 + 1 vs 32 seems appropriate. Not surprisingly, there is no historical evidence for the starting configuration of the pieces, so I've adopted one that is circulating on the internet (no doubt following test play):

So here's my 'brexitafl' set!

Why do I refer to this set as 'brexitafl'? Clearly, the old Vikings were blissfully unaware of Brexit ... 

First of all, I guess it's pretty clear that the blue board with the yellow stars represents the EU. In the centre of the board, we have the UK coins (led by a £2 queen; not by a king as normal in hnefatafl) trying to escape from the EU. Around the board, we have euro coins trying to prevent this escape. Sounds familiar? The final reason for this being 'brexitafl' is that if the UK queen indeed escapes from the board, she'll suddenly realise there's not much beyond it, and life on the board actually wasn't that bad ....  

Breakthru

Breakthru is a board game dating back to 1965. The board consists of 11 x 11 squares, with a 5 x 5 area around the central square highlighted.

The game is meant to represent a naval battle, with a gold-coloured flagship and 12 escort ships pitted against 20 silver-coloured ships.

The aim of the 'gold' player is to let the flagship escape to the perimeter of the board, whereas the aim of the 'silver' player is to capture the gold flagship. Pieces move like the rook in chess, but capture one square diagonally (like the pawn in chess). Each player can make two moves per turn; more details of the rules of play are given here.

The starting array for both players is not fixed, as long as the gold pieces are within the central 5 x 5 area at the start of the game. Several alternative starting arrays are given in the rules coming with the game:











The respective numbers of pieces in Breakthru differ slightly from the typical 'n + 1 vs 2n' formula, but it remains an asymmetrical game, with the aims for both sides being identical to those for hnefatafl. Even though the rules for movement and capture also differ from traditional hnefatafl (capture is not by custodianship, but by displacement), Breakthu is clearly a game inspired by hnefatafl, and, as such, it definitely belongs in my collection.

Fidchell / Gwyddbwyll - hnefatafl, or ???

Do a google search for 'fidchell set' or 'gwyddbwyll set', and you'll get plenty of images like the one below: clearly a member of the hnefatafl family.

But were fidchell and gwyddbwyll really hnefatafl? The words 'fidchell' and 'gwyddbwyll' are frequently mentioned in, respectively, old Irish and Welsh sagas and myths. The two words have the same root, basically meaning something along the lines of 'wooden wisdom'. What is clear is that they refer to a board game, one with high standing in Irish/Welsh society. What is far from clear, however, is what that board game actually was ... 

It is not my intention to list here what little evidence can be squeezed from the old texts; that job has already been thoroughly done by Jonathon George in his book on hnefatafl.

Bottom line is that there isn't much solid evidence, and what little evidence there is is often ambiguous and contradictory. So that leaves plenty of room for speculating, leaving, as I see it, three possibilities as to the identity of fidchell/gwyddbwyll:

1 - Hnefatafl. This appears the most commonly-accepted hypothesis when you surf the internet for 'fidchell' or 'gwyddbwyll'. According to this hypothesis, the game is thought to be a Celtic variant of the Viking hnefatafl game, either identical to it, or only differing from it in minor ways. The commercial Gwezboell set in my collection was created based on this hypothesis.

2 - Ludus Latrunculorum. The Roman game ludus latrunculorum is known to have been a strategic board game for two players, each having the same number of pieces. Capture was by custodianship (as in hnefatafl). Board size (and so presumably numbers of pieces) varied, as shown by the many archaeological finds associated to the game.

Some sources suggest that each player had a single special 'dux' piece, which had additional powers of capture and/or movement.

The Romans most definitely spread their game throughout their empire, as evidenced by archaeological finds across Europe, including the British Isles, and it is generally accepted that hnefatafl evolved from ludus latrunculorum.

3 - Something entirely different altogether. Although there is no literary or archaeological evidence to suggest it, the lack of solid evidence for either of the two hypotheses above means that it can't be ruled out that fidchell/gwyddbwyll was neither hnefatafl nor ludus latrunculorum. This is the approach taken by Nigel Suckling in his reconstruction of fidchell. He came up with very imaginative way of creating a strategic board game that fits with what little evidence there is, and at the same time is very different from both hnefatafl and ludus latrunculorum. Pity there isn't any actual evidence to support this being fidchell!

So we have three seemingly mutually exclusive hypotheses as to the identity of fidchell/gwyddbwyll. Or do we? What follows are my own thoughts on the issue ...

The modern Irish and Welsh words for chess are 'ficheall' and 'gwyddbwyll', respectively. What is certain is that the board game mentioned repeatedly in the Irish and Welsh stories cannot be chess, as chess didn't reach the British Isles until centuries after the time during which the stories originated. So that means the words fidchell/gwyddbwyll jumped from one game to another ... What if that jumping happened not just once, but twice? What if fidchell/gwyddbwyll was first used for ludus latrunculorum and later for hnefatafl? That would explain some of the conflicting evidence from the stories: in some stories, the game referred to is essentially ludus latrunculorum, in others it is essentially hnefatafl. And, as we can't rule out a game completely different from either, the words could have jumped three times. 

As we're firmly in speculation mode, allow me to speculate a bit more, on an aspect of the origin of hnefatafl ...

As I mentioned above, it is generally accepted that hnefatafl evolved from ludus latrunculorum. But how did a symmetrical game with armies lined up facing each other evolve into an asymmetrical game with one army surrounding the other? 

A very different, and much simpler board game was known across Europe since ancient times, and that's a game belonging to the 'Fox-and-Geese' family. Members of this family are known from around the world, differing in the size and shape of the board, the number of pieces, and the words used to refer to the pieces. But they all have in common that they're asymmetrical games, with a single piece (or sometimes a pair of pieces) pitted against a much larger group. The aim for the larger group is to hem in the singleton; the aim for the singleton is to capture as many pieces from the larger group as possible.

So, speculating away, could it be that someone, back in the mists of time, came with the idea of incorporating the asymmetry of fox-and-geese into ludus latrunculorum, thereby creating a new family of games we now refer to as hnefatafl? We'll probably never know, and part of me secretly hopes we'll indeed never find out ... speculating is fun, and maybe some things should remain mysteries ...

Brandubh

When it comes to archaeological finds of hnefatafl games, the Ballinderry board is among the most spectaular. Found in a bog in Ireland in the 1930s, it is thought to be at least 1000 years old, and is fantastically preserved.

The board shows a 7 x 7 grid of holes, with the central and corner holes highlighted. Does remind you of hnefatafl, doesn't it? And if you then think of the game of brandubh, mentioned in the Irish myths and sagas as being played with a king and four men against eight .... you do the maths!

I wanted to make myself a brandubh set, inspired by the Ballinderry board. So with holes as playing fields. We have no idea what the pieces used for the Ballinderry board looked like, but they must been, or have had, pegs, to fit in the holes. With that in mind, I came upon the idea of using pieces of carbon tubes and fibreglass rods, and adorning these with feathers: pigeon, crow and pheasant feathers to be precise.

For the board, I took a square of relatively rough plywood, and drilled 49 holes in it. As 'brandubh' means 'black raven' I painted the silhouette of a raven on the board.

I really wanted the board to look rustic, so finished it with discs sawn from tree branches. Besides the raven silhouette, nothing was painted, just plain wood, with most of the bark still present on the discs. 

Really pleased with it! And adding the pieces to the board makes it look like this:

Neat, huh? And the use of crow feathers is an extra nod to the 'black raven' ...

Thud

If, like me, you're a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, you may well have read Thud!

And if you have indeed read Thud!, you may remember it features a board game, called by its dwarfish name "Hnaflbaflwhiflsnifltafl" ...

Given the popularity of the Discworld novels, it's probably no surprise that a commercial version of hnaflbaflwhiflsnifltafl was produced, in 2002, under the slightly easier-to-pronounce name of Thud.

Why am I including Thud in a blog on hnefatafl-like games? Because it is clearly inspired by hnefatafl, as you might have guessed from the dwarfish name ....

But there is more than just the name to show it being an offshoot of the hnefatafl family. First of all, the game is asymmetrical, with one of the armies (dwarves) at the edges of the board, surrounding the other army (trolls) at the centre. The asymmetry is stronger than in hnefatafl itself: not 1:2, but 1:4.

At the centre of the board, surrounded by trolls, is the 'thud stone'. Although this essentially takes the place of the hnefatafl king, the thud stone does not move and can't be captured.

The moves of dwarves and trolls are different from the normal move in hnefatafl: dwarves move like the chess queen and trolls like the chess king. In addition, dwarves can hurl a dwarf, and trolls can shove a troll. As the thud stone does not move, the winner of the game is decided on counting numbers of captured dwarves and trolls. Anyone interested in more details on the rules of Thud can find them here.

Thud: clearly different from hnefatafl in many ways, but equally clearly inspired by it.

Tablut

Tablut is a 9 x 9 version of hnefatafl, known from the Sami regions of northern Europe. It was played there until at least the 18th century, and was described in detail by Linnaeus in 1732. His description provided the key to understanding how hnefatafl, as repeatedly mentioned in especially the Icelandic sagas, was actually played.

When I first became interested in hnefatafl games many years ago, I got myself a Tablut-playing software programme. I still have it; it's on a 3.5" diskette, clearly showing its age ...

While deciding what materials to use for a physical Tablut board and pieces, I remembered I still had part of a pig leg somewhere, an old museum piece 'surplus to demand', which I once decided to save from the skip.

Bone is a material that was often used for hnefatafl pieces, so what better material to use for my tablut set? The leg was large enough to make 25 pieces (one king, eight defenders, 16 attackers), so that worked out nicely. The knuckles would turn into king plus defenders, while sections of the long bone would be the attackers. Originally I intended to stain the attackers, but as they're so different in shape, it's very clear which side the pieces are on, so I decided to keep them in their natural 'bone' colour.

On to the board, and I still had some (fake) leather from when I made a board for Klin Zha. Leather board would go well with bone pieces, wouldn't it? Plan was to have two layers of leather: a black grid on top of a brown base.

The board was then finished by inserting beige leather squares in the key squares of the grid: the starting square for the king, and the four escape squares in the corners of the board.

Final step: put the bone pieces on the board!

I think the bone-leather combination works pretty well. And I also think my decision not to stain one of the two sides was a good one in the end; the two sides are clearly different from each other, and their natural colour works well on the darker leather board.