Ard-Ri

Alternate Names

Ard-Ri translates from Scottish as “High King”.

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Tafl 7x7 board, eight white defender counters, one white king counter and sixteen attacker black counters are required for play.

History

This game is known from only a few vague Scottish references. It is similar to and probably descended from the Norse game Hnefatafl or one of the other Tafl games. It is certainly played in Scotland today and by some accounts, it is a Medieval game that never went extinct in Scotland, but there seems to be little evidence for this. Most historians believe that the modern game is, at best, a modern reconstruction from older sources, and at worse a wholly modern game that was never historically played in in Scotland and only devised in the 20th century based on boards known from other locales. It is unique from other Tafl games in the large array of pieces that commence the game on board, covering more than 50% of the board at start.

Objective

Ard-Ri is certainly similar to other Tafl games and the reconstructed play of it follows that of other Tafl games. In all Tafl games, it is nearly universally accepted that the objective of the "attacker" player, with the larger force, is to capture the king and the objective of the defender is to allow for the king to escape. Even the most definite ideas concerning Tafl games, however, will eventually have some doubt cast on them by a reconstruction. Here, one of the primary questions that arise is: Where does the king escape to? Most reconstructions say that the king has escaped once it has attained any cell at the edge of the board. Sometimes this is stated as escaping "off of the board", but this is just a matter of semantics because a piece that has attained an edge square could not be impeded from further advancement off board. (Unless, of course, the reconstruction being played only allows the king a single orthogonal move per turn, rather than the generally accepted move of the rook in Orthochess. In which case the attacker would have one last chance to capture the king before it escapes off board.) There are, however, many ideas that the king should be made to escape to a corner cell. Evidence for this comes from many existing historical boards which have special markings at the corners. These specially marked squares may also designate a place that a piece may be captured against or be for simple decoration.

Questions may also arise as to how the king is captured. It is generally accepted that the king is captured exactly as other counters are captured, via double custodianship. Also known as sandwiching, this just means that if a counter has two opposing counters on either side of it, so that all three of them are now in an orthogonal line with the odd counter in the center, the central odd counter is then captured and removed from the board for the rest of the game. Again, however, some dissent arises. This dissent, however, may only arise from misinterpretations of Linnaeus' account of the related game Tablut or from misunderstandings by Linnaeus himself. It is easy to find 20th century descriptions (Murray, Bell, et al.) of this Sami Tafl game, stating that the king was captured by quadruple custodianship, or being surrounded on all four sides by opposing pieces. It is easy to see, however, that this can make the objective of the attackers very difficult to nearly impossible. It is increasingly common to interpret Tablut rules and Linnaeus' description of them as meaning that a king is captured by quadruple custodianship only when it is still at the central square (throne or "konakis") and also by triple custodianship, being surrounded by three opposing counters where the fourth vacant side is the konakis. Interestingly, this also suggests that a king can not re-enter the throne or konakis once it has left. I would personally suggest using simple double custodianship capture for all pieces in all Tafl games. This not only seems logical, but is also simple.

Play

In most Tafl games, all pieces move any distance orthogonally (like the rook in Orthochess), provided that all cells passed over are vacant. This is nearly universal with only a few exceptions and Ard-Ri is often considered candidate for applying this exception: a challenging and slower-paced game can be played, in particular when using the smaller 7x7 board, by only allowing single orthogonal moves, one cell at a time in any orthogonal direction to a neighboring and vacant cell. Sometimes this slower movement is applied to the king only. Other exceptions to this rule consider the central square off limits to the attackers or all counters, even including the king once it has left its throne. Others consider the corner squares or other specially marked squares to be off-limits to defender counters, and sometimes they are places against which a defender counter can be captured.

Capture by double custodianship as a rule has seen very little disagreement. Most of the exceptions to this have already been discussed above, i.e. the king being captured by quadruple custodianship at the konakis and triple custodianship by the konakis. Reconstructions have, at times, not allowed the king any capturing moves. The questions that arise that would need to be addressed in a Tafl Official Rulebook, concern compulsory capture, and capture at the edges and corners of the board. My personal suggestion is to allow L-shaped double custodianship capture at the corners and not to allow capture by single opposing counter for pieces at the edges. I would also not suggest a compulsory capture rule, for either side.

Linnaeus described a rule stating that if the king should ever have a path of escape, the defender player must call out "raichi", to notify his opponent. If the king has two routes of escape, the defender wins the game as there is no way for the opponent to block both routes. In this case, the defender calls out "tuichu". Although this may be helpful for balancing the play for better odds to the attacker, it seems likely that this rule represents a later borrowing from Chess and may not have been used historically (compare to "check" and "checkmate"). This calling out rule is necessarily left in game play for Tablut but is typically left out of reconstructions for other Tafl games.

Deciding which player has the first move is one of the first questions to resolve. Historical sources provide little or no information as to this, but most reconstructions seem to favor the attacker having the first move. After all, he is the attacker.

Strategy

Variations

Many consider the Tafl board particularly over-crowded at the start, especially compared to other Tafl games and because of this it may seem logical to reduce the number of pieces at start to something more similar to reconstructions of Brandubh.

The known Tafl games are described here under the names Ard-Ri, Brandubh, Ficheall, Tablut, Hnefatafl, Tawlbwrdd, and Alea Evangelii. Ficheall, however, is likely to not be a Tafl game, as there are historical documents stating that the opposing sides in this game are of equal number, something unheard of in a Tafl game. "Ficheall" is today simply used as a generic term for "board game" and may have been a term applying to different kinds of games in the past.

Sources