King's Table

We have now arrived at the point where my makes have overtaken my blog posts but I'm just going to witter on until things even out again.
So, Hnefatafl,  then.

     Sometimes referred to as Viking chess, Hnefatafl was once popular throughout all of northern Europe up until its popularity was eventually usurped by chess with its hierarchy of pieces appealling to the medieval mind (and who doesn't love the horsies). Boards and written records have been found all over from the Balinderry Board to the laws of Hywel Dda. I am told the name translates to King's Table, and it is actually the basis for the Discworld spin-off game Thud. It is also the head of a family of games known at Tafl games. The board looks like this...

Hnefatafl

The first thing you will notice, unless you're odd, is that the opposing sides are not opposite; instead the white pieces are ensconsed within a threatening ring of red pieces. The second thing you note is that the white pieces are vastly outnumbered, to the tune of two to one. Lastly you will probably note that the central white piece is different to the others. This is the only king on the board. All these features are common to, and define all Tafl games. 

Corner Square,
the Holy Grail

The rules of all Tafl games are remarkably similar as well, so by outlining the rules of Hnefatafl you will have the basics of all them. The aim of the game is different for both players, the white defender is trying to allow the King an escape, vikings clearly believing discresion to be the better part of valour. The red attackers are trying to stop him, as simple as that. All the pieces, without exception, move as rooks in chess. That is to say in a straight line orthogonally any number of squares as long as nothing blocks their path. They cannot pass through the centre square whether it is occupied or not. The king escapes by landing on any of the four corner squares, which red pieces are not allowed to enter. Pieces are taken as in Latrunculi, that is one piece must be surrounded on two sides orthogonally by opposing pieces. Unlike Latrunculi, however, the king must be surrounded on four sides, or on three sides with a board edge/centre square blocking the fourth side.

Sound straightforward? Simple? Oh, dear. That's what I thought at first, too. But I took a copy of a Tafl game, Tawlbwrdd, to an event recently and actually got a chance to play! Rather than setting things up for the public to play.

My Tawlbwrdd game.

That all important first move.

Tawlbwrdd is one of two Welsh tafl games and the only one thought to be unique to Wales. It is mentioned in the Laws of Hywel Dda in the tenth century as a job perk for Judges and mention crops up again and again until the thirteenth. It is one of the a larger member of the tafl family, although not perhaps as big as Alea Evangelii or Large Hnefatafl. It has four more defenders and eight more attackers to maintain the ratio and is played on an 11x11 board, because the board is bigger you only need to get the king to any edge square to win. From the games I played on the day I noticed that this does give white a distinct advantage.

In the three games I played on the day I played white only once and won only two out of the three games, once as red. The game above led to me having my backside handed to me by a member of another Re-enacting group, as she managed whether by luck and flaw or design to set up the equivalent of a rolling mill where I blocked the king, she took my piece, I moved a piece up, she opened a path for the king to the edge, I blocked the king, she took my piece, I moved a piece up, she opened a path for the king, I blocked the king and essentially kept this up with very little variation until I eventually ran out of pieces. It was like playing against a mincing machine. This could not have happened anywhere near as easily if she had to get the king to a corner. But thats war and Tafl and I even enjoyed being beaten, it has given me a tactic to try when I am next playing white.

Swedes!

The board construction is covered here. The construction of the pieces was easy although not too tidy to begin with. I simply used a floreat cutter, but in order to give a more pawny (is that a word? Should be) quality rolled a ball of clay and cut into that. It did take quite a few attempts to get right and the finished articles are a bit rough and ready but I quite like the whole look of cheap, cobbled together pieces, I feel they are more authentic for a peasant like me. And the abstract designs match some of those of the medieval and earlier periods as on display at Jon Crumiller's page.

Ludicrous and Truculent

This make is of a Roman game. I hear there here are some accounts of this game being played in Scandinavia in the middle ages and if ever I find them I will link them here. For now take that with a pinch of salt. What is certainly true is that there is a lot to be recognised in this game, the equal sided opposition of chess, the lack of heirarchy of the playing pieces as in draughts and the capturing method of the tafl games. The game is Ludus Latrunculorum,  or Latrunculi or Latrones, which means the Game of Brigands, or Bandits or Mercanaries or Soldiers.

Not a chess board.

When it came to making the game I already had the board! I covered this in a previous article (Article! He calls it an article now!) I picked up some Fymo cutters and some self drying clay, and cut out some simple shapes I think are called floreats out of the clay, eight of each to give a complete rank (Beg pardon? You heard.).

Floreat Cambrensis

 They didn't look quite right but I found a dot on each petal added something. 

Shall we play a game?

Latrunculi is a reconstructed game, in other words one which no-one genuinely knows how it was played. However we are not entirely clueless. Cleverer people than I, who call themselves ludologists, have studied long and hard using contemporary records, similar games,  two yoghurt pots and some sticky-backed plastic to produce what are to believed to be a fairly accurate approximation of the rules. Unfortunately ludologists tend to be academics and there is no money in amity, so there are several different versions of the rules, all of which are truly authentic and accurate; for a given value of authentic, accurate and true.

Ranks assembled

So from the literature there are several possible set ups. There are 7x8 boards, 8x8 with 8, 9, 13 and 16 pieces. As you can see I've gone here for an 8x8 board for convenience sake (it's handy to have a board that can be used for several games), and an eight-a-side set with an additional, smaller "Duke" on each side. There are also differences of opinions as regards some of the rules but there are a few things that all versions agree on is the movement of the pieces. All the pieces, regardless of rank, move in straight, orthogonal lines as far as the player wishes without passing over any other pieces (friend or foe); just like a rook in chess. But you do not take your opponent's pieces by simply moving into a square occupied by them (which would make for a game shorter than my attention sp- ooh, look! A squirrel!). Rather a single opponent's piece has to be surrounded on two sides (horizontal or vertical) to be taken .

Variants include;

• the Duke cannot be taken (so will be the last piece on the board) 
• the Duke can jump over a single opponent's piece as part of it's move
• the pieces can only move one square at a time (slooooooooooowww)
• at the begining of the the game the players take turns placing their pieces anywhere on the board (why not just play morris?)
• roll a dice each turn to determine how far a piece can move (WTF?)

The game ends when one side has been reduced to one piece (so cannot take), or a player cannot make a legitimate move or 30 moves have been made without a piece being taken.

In conclusion then this looks like a really nice little game, with a couple of variants should lift it a bit although others I could happily leave behind (you'll never guess which).

If you have been effected by anything in tonight's blog...

Latrunculi at Cyningstan with a downloadable pdf leaflet. The wonderfully knowledgable Damien Walker.
The Game Cabinet although this has not been updated in over ten years the site still seems to be up (for now). Scroll down to the bottom for Latrunculi.
Roman Board Games a nice little site that does what it says on the tin.

Mini make: Games Compendium

Mini-medieval came home from school the other day whilst I was making some items and wanted to make something too, Daddy. So I grabbed a spare strip of linen and some ordinary poster paint and let Drogo have a go. The result was a really nice trio of boards, really clear what they were and good brush control. Once the paint was dry it has proved incredibly durable to everything bar water.

Three little game boards, all in a row.

Madelinette

Knockings In and Out

Noughts and Crosses

Having had a go with brush and paint I then let him loose on the self drying clay. He chose to make simple cone pieces, or 

pointy ones

 so, with a little bit of guidance he made the following.

I was about to cut out the three boards, hem them and then make a seperate bag to carry them all in when once more the wife waded in with another excessively good idea (if this ganging up and outshining me continues words will need to be had). She simply suggested I made the strip into a bag like those over the shoulder record bags with the flap over the top.

You would think with all this sewing that my backstitch would improve. No such luck . So now junior has a little compendium of games he has made himself to keep him occupied on the recreation field whilst Mummy and Daddy are talking to the punters.

Link
Abakhan again. I'm trying to make up for the time I forgot them still.

Fox and Geese and Alquerque - Travel Edition

These were my first attempts at making some game boards. They were done in a bit of a hurry in the couple of days before my first re-creation event.

I had a stroke of luck a few days before the event in a charity shop called Crest. Whilst wandering around I discovered a bin of furniture remnants including a leather seat cushion cover. The outside surface of this was tanned to within an inch of it's life, however the inside was still a very nice dark chamois like leather. Lacking paper and card medieval game boards were often on scraps of cloth or leather for potability's sake. So this was perfect for my first make.
I picked apart every stitch in it which left me with a good few pieces of usable leather, two of which I cut into circles with a radius of about 8cm. This left me with a good size board for a travelling minstrel and gambler like myself. Then it just came down to the board markings.
Fox and Geese
This is one of the more remote members of the Tafl family of board games, and was familiar throughout Northern Europe through this period. The board on which it is played is probably more familiar to people these days as the Solitaire game where marbles or pegs are used to hop over one another until you only have one left (this is more of a puzzle than a game and a much later invention).

The above picture is the basic board for Fox and Geese, you play on the intersections or points. A good geometric design which is easy to reproduce with a ruler and pencil. All I needed was a method with which to mark the board on the leather. I had always pictured doing this with a touch of pyrography, however the leather I had from the cushion cover was a rather dark colour beggars not being choosers. So I wracked my brain for a while to try to balance what would be available to a medieval person with what I had available to me. Then I had a flash of inspiration, I not only had my own arts and craft box, but there is also a small boy in the house with his supplies. So I ended up with a white wax crayon, which marked out the board clearly although it's permanence may not be the best or indeed the most permanent.
The pieces are modelled from air drying clay as a handy little shortcut. The geese are represented by thirteen crude cones and the fox is a simple fluted cylinder which, if I'd had more time, I would have painted with poster paint.
The game is played with the geese attempting to trap the fox so he cannot move and the fox needs to eat enough geese to prevent this. The fox jumps over the geese draughts style to eat them. For more info on how to play see the links below.
Alquerque
This is a precursor to draughts played on a 5x5 board however as with fox and geese above it is played on the points of the grid. I used exactly the same method for marking the leather as above. For this game however I needed two sets of twelve pieces, but only had one colour of clay. Thankfully my graduation gift from my mother is a seal ring that, along with my wedding ring, is the only thing I always wear. This seemed a fantastic opportunity to finally put it to its intended purpose. The picture I'm afraid do not do it adequate justice, for twelve pieces have a small Welsh dragon standing proud on them.

The other refinement to this board was to take a hole punch and puncture a series of holes around the outside of the leather disk (yes, I know I did one too many. Measure twice etc.). Through these I threaded a cord, courteousy of the piping on the seat cover. This means that all sides of the board can be drawn together around the pieces to form a self-contained travel pouch. Alquerque is played by moving one space or jumping over an opponent's piece as in draughts following the lines on the board. Multiple jumps are allowed.

So there we have two very successful boards to start off with. They were certainly very popular with the visiting horde of children, but some lessons learnt;

• These soft boards are great for travelling and transporting around but they need to be laid on a board or table to be played. Layed on the ground the pieces are liable to knock around everywhere.

Links

Crest Co-operative. The shop where I picked up some arts supplies and leather.
Traditional Games. Really useful site.
Fox and Geese. Great PDF
Alquerque. Same