"Hnefatafl & Brandub board games" Topic

Does anyone play either Hnefatafl or Brandub (ancient Viking boardgames)?

Haven't heard of them. How do they play?

Yes. Several versions of hneftafl.

In general, the objective of hneftafl is to either (1) get your king from the center of the board to escape through an edge, or (2) capture your opponent's king. It is an asymmetric game – one side is is the king, the other the attackers. The king gets a set of soldiers around him and the attackers get a few in each corner. Players alternate turns; pieces move like rooks. You capture an opposing piece by surrounding it (two sides, soldier/attakcer, four king). There are different sized boards and some ariants have different some special rules.

A little more to it than that. But that's the general idea.

Of the Tafl family of games, Brandub has the smallest game board and the fewest number of game pieces. Its name in Gaelic means "Black Raven" and was played in Ireland at least a thousand years ago.
Brandubh is played on a game board of 7 x 7 squares, with a marked center square and four marked corner squares. There are 13 game pieces, a light colored King and his four defenders and eight dark colored attackers.
A game consists of two matches, in the first match one player is the light color and the other player is the dark color. In the second match the players reverse colors.
The dark pieces (attackers) are laying siege to the light pieces (defender's throne, center square), their goal is to capture the King. The light pieces (defenders) must break the siege and get their King to safety (one of the four marked corner squares).
At the start of the game, the pieces are laid out in the form of an orthogonal cross, with the King on the marked center square, his four defenders are adjacent to him and the eight attackers completing the arms of the cross up to the edge of the game board.

Other Tafl games have 9, 11 or 13 squares and more game pieces.

If you checkout MISCELLANEOUS MARKETPLACE MARKET BOARD, you'll see that I make and sell both leather game boards with glass, wooden or antler game pieces and folding wooden game boards with glass, wooden or antler game pieces.

I have a wooden Tafl set I bought years ago at the Museum Store. It features 16 attackers, 8 defenders, and the king, on a 9 x 9 grid. I've played it numerous times. Despite their numerical superiority, I've found that is *very* difficult for the attackers to win.

For the record Dragon magazine included a version of Hnaeftafl in an issue, calling it "King's Table." Theirs was the larger board with more pieces, but the rules are the same. It was included in the Best of Dragon Games boxed set. I have that one, but haven't ever played it, preferring the smaller Tafl set up (which makes for a quicker game, IMO).