Well over three years ago, I got myself a job lot of Star Trek micro-machines, and used many of these to create a set for Klin Zha. I didn't use all of them, and when I recently opened the box where the remaining ones were stored, I realised there were exactly enough of them to create a hnefatafl set ....
For the 'king side' I used Borg cubes and Terek Nor space stations as pieces and a Ferengi D'Kora Marauder as king:
For the attackers' side, I used a collection of Klingon, Romulan and Federation ships. I decided not to paint the pieces, and so, to distinguish attackers from defenders, the attackers were all mounted on plastic stands:
Given the number of pieces, the board had to be a 9 x 9 board, and I chose to use matches to mark the squares.
The tops of the matches were painted fluorescent green/yellow, suggesting some sort of electronic grid lines.
And to make the board a bit more space-y, I added stars and constellations. Brownie points to whoever sees what's hidden in plain sight ...
Finally, the central square was marked with a golden Emblem of the Ferengi Alliance:
If you're familiar with hnefatafl variants, you will be surprised that the kings side has six defenders rather than four or eight. This is purely because I didn't have more micro-machines I could use, but it also allowed me to model my set on a hnefatafl version marketed in the past by Shannon Board Games, which has six defenders against twelve attackers:
When putting the pieces on the board, I did take the liberty of a slightly different initial array for the attackers, which I felt worked better from an aesthetic point of view.
<startreknerdmode>What this 'Ferengitafl' set finally makes abundantly clear is that the Ferengi are basically behind everything, and run the entire galaxy behind the scenes .... </startreknerdmode>
