Nuts

A number of years ago, a group of hnefatafl enthusiasts in Formby created a hnefatafl variant called "Nuts". The 'story' in Nuts is that eight red squirrels must get their acorn to the forest on the edge of the board, while 24 grey squirrels attempt to steal their acorn. That immediately makes it different from the traditional 2:1 ratio, but to make up for that, the red squirrels are protected on the 9-square centre of the board.

In making my own Nuts set, I wanted to stick largely to the original design, but make it a bit fancier, and add a bit more 'squirrel'. 

Judging from the only picture I managed to find of an original Nuts set, glass pebbles were used for the pieces. I used red pebbles for the red squirrels, and grey pebbles for the grey squirrels; three green pebbles on top of each other represent the acorn.

For the board, I took a piece of plywood, painted brown, and used glass mosaic tiles, left over from making board for Rebel Fury, for the squares. 

Here's the completed board; looks pretty neat, I think!

But .... it isn't yet very squirrel-y .... In order to add a squirrel dimension, I searched for small squirrel figurines, and found these, dirt cheap, on eBay. Four wee squirrels, one on each of the four corners of the board.

That's already a step up from the original cardboard (I assume) Nuts board, and with the glass pebble pieces it ends up looking like this:

And because they're cute, close-ups of the four squirrels ...

I'm really pleased with how my Nuts set came out; actually even better than I thought it would!