When both players are aware of the longer term strategies, the game becomes more even. The attackers, however, need to look at long term strategy, carefully positioning themselves to gradually form the blockade and close in upon the king. The king's side relies on short-term tactics, taking advantage of opportunities for escape, or for weakening the attackers' blockade. Beginners might say that the king has too easy a time, but this is not necessarily so. How does it play? At first, it plays remarkably well. Attackers and defenders may be captured by surrounding them between an enemy and a marked corner square, so the corners cannot be easily blocked by eight attackers sitting beside them. If he sits beside the central square, he would be invulnerable, so the rules allow him to be captured by surrounding him on three sides, if the fourth side is the central square. The king himself must be surrounded on four sides by enemies. The corner and central squares, however, may be occupied only by the king.Ĭapture is also as described above, with a few variations. This includes the king, who can stride across the board as quickly as any other piece. Movement of the pieces is as above described, like a chess rook. They are also vulnerable when sat next to these squares, as we shall shortly see. In this game the king escapes the field of battle through the marked corner squares, and to prevent the exits being easily blocked, his enemies may not land on these squares (nor may his friends, for that matter). The defenders are positioned close around the king, in a diamond formation, while the attackers hug the four edges of the board, in four "T" shaped formations. It provides 37 pieces: a king, twelve defenders and twenty-four attackers. The Viking Game adopts a board of eleven squares by eleven, like the 12th century board found at Trondheim, in Norway. As those players over the last thousand years left us with incomplete information, the variations within this framework are many, much like the national variations in chess and draughts. Generally, pieces move in straight, orthogonal lines, like a rook in chess, and a piece is captured by surrounding it with two enemies. The king must escape from the field of battle, while his enemies try to capture him. Distributed around the edges of the board are twice their number of enemies. In hnefatafl a king sits at the centre of a square board, with a number of his men around him. The most common theme, not unexpectedly, is a Viking theme, hence the name of the particular set I am looking at now. Being of that era, it is without a strong theme, though its mechanics are not so contrived as to prevent a theme being easily pasted on to it. Hnefatafl, for those who have not seen it before, is a game created somewhere in Scandinavia, some time in the first millennium. I am unaware what series of happy coincidences might have induced them to become one of the foremost manufacturers of this particular game. History Craft are not primarily a maker of games, but are more involved in moulded plastics. I am talking about The Viking Game, made by History Craft Ltd. The first is a set that I have owned for a number of years, and from the pictures shown on this site, a lot of other people seem to have it also. I intend, then, to post occasional reviews of the sets available, as and when I can obtain them. While I will not presume to attempt objective criticism of a game over a thousand years older than I am, it would still be useful to review some versions of the game that are on the market now, and some versions that, being recently printed, are still available to those who know where to look for them. The Viking Game Reviewed | Hnefatafl: the Game of the Vikings Hnefatafl: the Game of the Vikings
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