Tablut

Download Tablut

If you've ever played games like Othello, Nine Men's Morris or chess, you'll be familiar with some of the concepts in Tablut. The game is a variant of the Norse and Icelandic board games, Tafl and Hnefatafl. Game play is set on an 18x18 square board with two opposing sides. The object is for one side to wage an attack on the king of the other side before the king fortifies itself in the corner of the board. All pieces are limited to moving in a straight line. The side making the attack has no king and is given considerably more pieces than the defending side because, unlike chess, the king is capable of movement in all directions. For the attacker to win, the king must be surrounded by attacking pieces on all four sides before making it to safety in the corner of the board. It's surprisingly easy to pickup the basics of the game, although I'm finding it quite hard to actually defeat any computer opponents as the attacker. Defending is a much simpler affair, even with the seeming advantage of more attacking pieces. Competition takes place against online opponents or against the computer in a sort of World Series of Tablut against computer players of varying skill.