heXentafl

People have repeatedly changed the squares in chess to hexagons, as this changes the moves of the pieces in interesting ways. Guess it's no surprise that someone has also done this with hnefatafl! Say hello to heXentafl, designed and marketed by NXSgame.com.

The board is made of a tough sort of plastic, featuring hexagonal 'squares'.

The pieces are 3D-printed; a king plus three defenders pitted against six attackers. Note that the game retains the 'n + 1 vs 2n' ratio of pieces.

Even though the moves of the pieces are still like those of a rook in chess, i.e. in straight lines, due to the hexagons, each piece now has three directions of movement rather than two ...

Hnefatafl app

If you want to learn how to play chess, there is a vast amount of books available on chess tactics and strategies, openings, end games, etc. In contrast, I am aware of just one book solely dedicated to learning how to play hnefatafl: Jonathon George's "A Kingly Pattern".

Reading about hnefatafl tactics and strategy is one thing, but the best way to learn to play the game is obviously to try and put the theory into practice and play. For this reason, I surfed the web for hnefatafl-playing software, and came across this app:

The app is able to play lots of different variants, historical as well as modern, including hnefatafl, tablut, brandubh, tawlbwrdd, alea evangelii, berserk hnefatafl, tyr hnefatafl, and even magpie. Hnefatafl with the modern Copenhagen and Fetlar rules is also included. For this reason, I picked this particular app over others. The reviews suggest it doesn't have the strongest AI, but that's fine for me for now. I may in time become too strong a player for the AI, but I'll cross that bridge if and when I get there!

Catch the King

Catch the King is a commercial hnefatafl game, released by Studio Twin Games in 2020. 

The board in the box is a cardboard 9 x 9 board.

And superficially, the game appears identical to tablut; same size, same number of pieces on both sides, same initial set-up.

But, when you look closer, you notice that there are differences among the two armies. The 16 orange attackers come in three versions: twelve vikings, two jarls and two godis. Whereas the vikings move as normal hnefatafl pieces (i.e. any number of squares orthogonally), the godis can also move diagonally, and the jarls limit the movement of a piece on an adjacent square to one square only.

The defenders also come in more than one version (besides the king, of course). Half of the eight defenders are bowmen, which can capture like a knight in chess.

A further addition to the game are the 'forest' pieces, which each player has one of, and which can be placed on the board at the start of the game to block certain lines of movement and attack. 

Of course, the game can be played as traditional tablut, without the forest pieces, and ignoring the differences among the pieces.

'Trondheim' hnefatafl

In several of the old sagas, pieces for playing hnefatafl, fidchell or gwyddbwyll are said to be gold and silver. Given that, I was keen to create a sparkling gold and silver set myself. At the same time, I like to create sets which are somehow a bit different from other created sets. Looking for a different version of hnefatafl I remembered part of a hnefatafl board found at Trondheim in Norway:

Besides the central square, several other squares, in a radially symmetrical pattern, are highlighted by a cross. What the function of these additional crossed squares is is anything but clear. They could simply have been decorative, playing no role in the game. They could have indicated the edges of a smaller board, allowing players to use the same board for playing 11 x 11, 9 x 9 and 7 x 7 versions of hnefatafl. Or they could indicate 'safe squares' for the king. I opted for the latter hypothesis for my 'Trondheim' set.

I wanted metal pieces, and decided on using screws and nail on metal washers, painted gold (for the attackers) and silver (for the king and his defenders).

As to the board, I wanted something to really set off the gold and silver pieces, make it sparkle as much as possible, so I thought of using a mirror. The gold and silver pieces reflecting in the mirror could make the set quite spectacular. And to increase this 'mirror effect', I ordered small mirror tiles to use for the squares themselves, with gold mirror tiles for the crossed squares of the Trondheim board.

So that's the board done!

I really like how the mirror tiles appear to be almost floating on the mirror.

How does it look with the pieces? Judge for yourself. I took one set of pictures in the garden ...

... and one set of pictures in the dining room.

I feel it came out even better than I envisioned at the start, and I feel this is by far the best hnefatafl set I made myself.

Subway

Subway is a commercial game from the 1980s. It's recognisable as a game inspired by hnefatafl, but only just ...

The game board is reminiscent of an old LP  sleeve, and folds open to reveal the rectangular playing area. The game came with rules in Greek only, but a friend of mine was happy to translate these for me (thanks, Dia!).

This playing area is meant to represent a Scandinavian fjord, showing coastlines and a few islands. Present in this fjord are a number of submarines (including one Submarine Commander), being hunted by a flotilla of destroyers. The playing pieces representing these ships are small wooden discs, yellow for the destroyers and red/purple for the submarines. At the start of the game, the eight plus one submarines are situated in the centre in a typical hnefatafl formation, while the 16 destroyers are scattered throughout the fjord in a pretty random fashion.

Destroyers and submarines can only move one step at the time (usually orthogonally, but diagonally in a few places) and capture is by interception, as is the normal rule in hnefatafl. The aim of the destroyers is to capture the Submarine Commander, whereas the submarines win by eliminating all destroyers. This latter aim is made a bit easier by the existence of a few position on the board, which, when becoming occupied by a submarine, result in the elimination of a destroyer.

As I said at the start of this post, it's just recognisable as a hnefatafl-inspired game. There is the 'n + 1 vs 2n' number of pieces, the asymmetrical aims, and the capture of the 'king' winning the game for the attackers. But the defenders winning by escaping from the board is replaced by the need to eliminate all attackers. This, plus the few board position resulting in direct elimination of a destroyer, show how far the game has moved from traditional hnefatafl. Nevertheless, there are enough traces of hnefatafl left to warrant it being part of the collection.

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!

Surprise Attack!

Surprise Attack! is a commercial game dating back to 1976, and one which is clearly inspired by hnefatafl

The (cardboard) board has 11 x 11 squares, and also has several landscape features: a defenders' camp, a lake, and anti-tank obstacles.

The pieces are plastic squares, triangles and cylinders, representing infantry units, tank units, and air support or command units. The exact set-up for attackers and defenders is determined by the throw of a die.

The aim of the game is different for the two sides, as in traditional hnefatafl. The defenders win by getting two of their three command units to the forest at the edge of the board. The attackers win by capturing two of the defenders' three command units.

Surprise Attack! is hnefatafl-inspired as is obvious from the asymmetrical aims of the game, and the key to winning being the escape or capture of command units. At the same time, there are clear differences. First of all, both sides have (almost) equal numbers of pieces rather than the normal 'n + 1 vs 2n' numbers (the attackers can bring in air support during the game, giving them slightly more pieces than the defenders). Both sides have several different pieces, unlike traditional hnefatafl, and the throw of a die determines the exact configuration at the start of the game. And, finally, whereas in hnefatafl there is a single king piece, here we have three, and the capture or escape of two of these three determine the winner.