Halatafl

Alternate Names

No. of Players

Two

Equipment

A Halatafl board and twenty-two each of black and white counters are required for play. Counters are promoted in this game and a method to denote this will be required. The counters may be stackable, adding one to represent promotion, or have one side that is specially marked that can be turned up when the counter is promoted.

History

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.

Objective

Play

There are many reconstructions of this game and, as I stated above, the one described here is by no means the only one or the official one. The version described here plays very similar to modern Checkers. If this description of Halatafl play were found to be somewhat correct, it may be logical that Halatafl is at least partially ancestral to Checkers.

Counters are placed at all the intersections except the middle one and the four corners, as above. Turns alternate between players. On their turn, a player may move one of their counters orthogonally forward (towards the opponent's side of the board), sideways, or along one of the diagonals on the board, always to a necessarily vacant and adjacent position. Counters may not move diagonally, except in a forward direction along the designated diagonals on the board, and may not retreat towards their side of the board. Note that a counter located in the central cell of the board could move into any of five positions from here, provided that they are vacant.

Alternatively on their turn, a player may make a short jump over an opponent’s counter in a straight line to a vacant intersection adjacent to the counter being jumped. Jumps, like standard moves, are orthogonally forward or sideways except when made along the diagonal lines on the board and can never be made in reverse direction. Counters are captured by being jumped over and are then removed from the board. Double or multiple captures in one move are permitted and direction may be changed after each enemy counter has been jumped, provided that the direction is always forward or sideways. On any turn that it is possible to take an opponent’s counter, it is compulsory to do so. If a player does not make the compulsory capture on their turn by failing to notice it, their opponent may then huff (remove) that counter as a bonus before their next move.

Each player has two corner positions on their side of the board. I will call these corner positions thrones. A player may never move one of their counters into a throne on their side of the board, but they may land there temporarily as part of a multiple jump and capture move. As they exit the throne as part of this jump move, they may jump and capture an opposing counter on any of the three adjacent positions, including the one on the diagonal line. A counter that lands on a throne on the opposing side of the board becomes promoted to a more powerful king and may commence using the powers of the king on their next turn. Promotion may be signified by turning the counter over to a specially marked opposite side or by stacking an additional counter on top of it. Kings move and capture as normal counters, but may do so in any direction. Kings may also move and rest in any of the thrones on the board, including their own.

Strategy

Variations

The reconstruction given here may be unique in allowing counters to become promoted at the thrones (corner cells). Other reconstructions may make the objective to simply attain one or both of the thrones on the opposite side of the board to end and win the game.

Various reconstructions without promotions allow counters to capture and/or move in any direction. Others only allow strictly orthogonal movements and disregard the diagonal lines of the board. This may be considered, but I cannot fathom why the lines were present on ancient boards if they were not to be used. It seems to me that the diagonal movements offer a unique strategy that is not often seen in other jump and capture games.

Variations without promotion or variations with objectives to capture all of an opponent's counters (including my reconstruction) may seem be overly prolonged or drawish at the endgame and occasionally rules have allowed for a player to claim victory by being the first to reduce their opponent's counters to five or less. Another method I have devised for speeding up the endgame entails another level of promotion for counters after they become kings. A counter, having been promoted to a king at one of the opponent's thrones may then return to land in one of their own thrones and become promoted to an emperor. An emperor has all the moves of a king in their power but may also move orthogonally or along the diagonal lines through any number of vacant positions in one turn. The move of the emperor is similar to rook in Chess, but capture is still by the short jump. For example, an newly crowned emperor that has attained one of its own corner thrones may, on its immediate next turn, travel along either edge of the board all the way to another corner or along the diagonal line to the opposite corner, provided that there are no counters, friendly or opponent's, impeding the route. An emperor may be denoted by a triple stack of counters.

Sources