Brandubh
Alternate Names
The older Irish spelling of the game was Brandub, meaning Black Raven. It has also been spelled Bran dubh.
No. of Players
Two
Equipment
A Brandubh board, eight black counters, four white counters, and one specially marked or distinguished white "Branán", or chief, counter are required for play. Played with dice?
History
The game of Brandubh is mentioned frequently in the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), a legendary tale from early Irish literature.
Balinderry Gaming Board Image by page author James J. Bond housed at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin (2015-07-22)
From the National Museum of Ireland webpage: http://www.museum.ie/Archaeology/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/Viking-Ireland/The-Ballinderry-gaming-board
This gaming board, made from yew wood, is laid out in a grid of peg holes with the centre and corner holes marked off with circular arcs. It would have been used for the Viking war game Hnefatafl, the object of which is to drive the King piece into one of the corners. The board was discovered during the 1932 excavations at Ballinderry crannog, a rural site occupied from the late 9th to 11th centuries. This site appears to be the homestead of noble of some standing, possibly even a king, judging by the quality and number of finds.
The board is roughly square, has forty-nine holes and is ornamented around the edges with projecting heads (probably handles) and eight panels of carved interlace decoration. Two panels have plain five- and six-strand interlace and two at opposite corners have ring-chain interlace in the Scandinavian Borre style. This art style used to be associated particularly with the Isle of Man and it was once thought that the gaming board must have originated there. More recently this style has also been shown to occur on Irish metalwork and it is probably more likely that the board was made in Ireland – most likely in Dublin.
Similar, though simpler boards were found during the Dublin excavations. They tend to be of a draught-board form with some cancelled squares and were used with a variety of flat-based, domed, conical or discoidal gaming pieces, made of bone, antler, jet/lignite, stone and wood, which were also found during the excavations.
Although scholars have argued whether this an example of "Fidchell," "Brandubh", (both games mentioned in early Irish texts) they generally agree it is probably related to Scandinavian "Tafl" games. Here, this board is also treated as a possible Scandinavian jump and capture game, Halatafl.
Objective
Brandubh is certainly similar to other Tafl games and the reconstructed play of it follows that of other Tafl games. As 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
Strategy
Variations
Several opening positions, some with larger numbers of counters, have been described for the play of Brandubh.
Sources