Hnefatafl (Viking Chess)

How to play Hnefatafl (Viking Chess)

Hnefatafl — Old Norse for “the king’s table”, pronounced roughly “neff-ah-tah-fell” — was the great strategy game of the Viking Age. For centuries before chess reached Scandinavia, Norse farmers, traders and raiders played tafl games at home and carried them across the seas: boards and pieces have been unearthed in graves and settlements from Ireland and Scotland to Iceland, Norway and the river towns of old Rus. Unlike chess, Hnefatafl is gloriously asymmetric: one player commands a small band of defenders shielding their king, while the other leads an army twice the size, trying to close an iron ring around him. This version uses the popular 11×11 Copenhagen-style layout. Play a friend on one screen, or take either side against the computer and earn ranking points.

The goal — two different missions

Hnefatafl is asymmetric, so each side plays for a different prize. The attackers (dark red, 24 pieces) win by capturing the king — closing on him from all four orthogonal sides. The defenders (light blue, 12 pieces plus the king) win the instant the king steps onto any of the four marked corner squares. There is no negotiated draw: one hunt or the other succeeds. The attackers always move first.

The board and starting position

The game is played on an 11×11 board with the Copenhagen-style starting layout. The king begins on the central throne square, ringed by his twelve defenders in a cross formation. The twenty-four attackers start in four groups of six at the middle of each board edge. Five special squares are marked with runes: the throne in the centre and the four corner squares — only the king may ever stand on them. The last move is outlined in amber, and when you pick up a piece every square it can reach is highlighted.

Rules of play

• All pieces — attackers, defenders and the king alike — move like a rook in chess: any number of empty squares horizontally or vertically. No piece may jump over another, and there is no diagonal movement.
• Restricted squares: only the king may land on the throne or on the four corners. In this version the empty throne also blocks the path of ordinary pieces — only the king may pass across the centre square or return to it. (Some tafl rule sets let pieces slide over the empty throne; we use the simpler, stricter variant, so plan your routes around the middle.)
• Custodian capture: you capture an enemy piece by sandwiching it between two of your own pieces along a row or column. A marked hostile square can serve as one half of the sandwich — the four corners are hostile to every piece, and the empty throne is hostile to both sides (it stops being hostile while the king stands on it). The king is “armed” and may take part in captures like any defender.
• Captures happen only as a result of the mover’s move. Several enemy pieces can be pinched by a single move — one on each side of your landing square — but you may safely move your own piece INTO a gap between two enemies; it is not captured.
• Capturing the king: the king is never taken like an ordinary piece. The attackers must surround him on all four orthogonal sides with attackers or hostile squares. A king standing beside the empty throne therefore needs only three attackers — the throne counts as the fourth wall. A king on the board edge cannot be captured at all, because the edge never counts as a wall.
• The king escapes — and the defenders win — the moment he lands on any of the four corner squares. An unguarded open row or column leading to a corner is a deadly threat: with two open escape routes at once, the attackers cannot block both.
• A player who has no legal move on their turn loses immediately. If a move brings back the exact same position (pieces and side to move) for the third time, the player who made that repeating move loses. (The tournament “encirclement”, shieldwall and exit-fort rules of full Copenhagen Hnefatafl are not used in this version.)

Winning the game

Most games end in one of the two classic ways: the attackers weld a closed ring of four walls around the king, or the king slips through a gap and touches a corner. Watch the whole board — a capture on one wing can suddenly open a file straight into a corner, and a single overlooked move can decide the game. Because captures need two pieces (or a piece and a hostile square), trades matter differently to each side: the attackers begin with twice as many pieces, so the defenders should usually be happy to swap one-for-one. In the two-player game the Undo button takes back the last move if a finger slips.

Playing the computer (ranked)

In “Hnefatafl vs Computer” you choose your side — hunt the king as the attackers, or shepherd him to safety as the defenders — and one of three difficulty levels. Easy plays loosely and makes deliberate mistakes so newcomers can win. Normal looks ahead and punishes careless moves. Expert searches deeper: as the defender it drives the king toward open corners, and as the attacker it blocks escape routes and tightens the net. The computer thinks entirely on your device, so it works offline. Beat it to earn ranking points — Easy +10, Normal +30, Expert +100 — and sign in to put your best result on the leaderboard.

Strategy tips

• As the attackers, think in walls, not single pieces. Your first job is to build an unbroken ring outside the defenders and shrink it slowly. Seal each corner with an L-shaped pair of pieces before you commit to the hunt in the middle.
• Do not chase the king piece-by-piece — he moves as fast as you do. Cut off whole rows and columns instead, and only close in once his escape lines are gone. Beware of gaps behind you: a single open file to a corner undoes twenty moves of siege work.
• Use the hostile squares. A defender standing next to a corner or the empty throne can be captured with a single attacker, and the throne counts as a wall when you trap the king beside it — three attackers instead of four.
• As the defenders, open lines early. Move defenders off the central cross so the king has clear rook paths, and remember that the king may re-cross the throne square while ordinary pieces must go around — the middle of the board is his private highway.
• Aim to threaten two corners at once. If the king reaches a square from which two different corners are each one clear move away, the attackers can only block one of them. Rushing the king out too early, though, hands the attackers a target — clear his path first.
• Trade freely. You start outnumbered two-to-one, but every one-for-one exchange makes the attackers’ ring thinner. Use custodian pinches against the throne and corner squares, and let the armed king join the fight when it is safe — he cannot be captured while he stands on the board edge.

Frequently asked questions