On the Play of Tafl
-------------------

Unto the Excellent and Wyse Aquel, and hys Graceous Baroness Johanna,
does Justin, call'd Ace de Calais, send these Greetings.

Word has come to mee that yr upcoming celebrations shal be of earlier
times, and that You seke the games of days gone for this day. I thus
write to you of the game of Tafl, known little now but once thought
in suche repute even as the Playe of Chesse. It was play'd by Saxones
of former times, and by the Swedes and the English and even Welshmen.
It is a game of simple rules, but whose playe taketh muche study to
master truly.

And the Playe of Tafl is upon a squared board muche as that of Chesse;
yet thys board is not checkered, nor of the even eight squares of that
game, but of Odde numbers as, .vii.ix.xi. or e'en .xix. spaces.  And
though the board and count of the men may be of many numbers, yet the
principle of playe remains the same through all.

The playe is that of a Siege, with the smaller armie of the dark
defending Kynge, and the larger whyte force that besiegeth him.  The
number of the men changeth with the size of the field, but in all
formes there are twice as manie attackers as defenders.  And as the
siege, the players strive for different Purposes. That of the dark
player is to escape hys Kinge, whilst that of the white is to catch
the Kynge.

Alle of the men, white as black and Kyng just as pawn, may move
as the Rooke in Chesse. That is, eache man maye run as far up
or down or sideways as he hath clear, stopping only when he
encounters another man or when he so chooses before.

Yet the capture is not made as that of Chesse, where the man jumps
upon hys enemy. Rather, it taketh two men to take an Enemie, and they
capture by surrounding him. They must be two men that come opposite
each other around theyr target. That is, if one man be below the
target, and the other come above him; or, yf one be to hys right, and
another comes to the left; yet surrounding hym slantways taketh him
naught. And when a man is so surrounded by hys enemies, he is taken by
them, and cannot be returned to the field. Yet a man maye run and land
in the midst of hys enemies in safety; as, hee maye lande with one to
hys left and one to the right and yet not be captured.

The Kynge begins in his Citadel, in the very midst of the board, and
Hys space is reserved to him alone; no others man stand upon it,
although they may run across it. He moves as hys men and maye helpe to
catch the enemie, yet hee cannot be so caught. To catch the Kynge,
four of the Whyte men must surround him on all sydes.

And as the central space can shelter none save the Kynge, it
is counted as an enemy for capture; as, if a whyte man has the
Citadel to his left, and an enemy moves to his right, he is
snared; for if this were not so, the Kyng could sit beside the
Citadel all the day and never be caught, as no enemy could
land behind hym there.

The Besieged Kyng seeks only escape, and hys escape is to leave the
field; if he should reache an edge of the board, whether it is top,
bottom, or side, he is accounted to have won the game from hys
attackers. And some playe that, yf the Kynge moves to have a single
path to the edge, the player calleth "Check" as in the playe of
Chesse, for he shal win if the enemy blocketh him not; and yf he hath
two pathes to the edges, he calleth "Mate", for the game is won in
that moment.

Thys game is easier for the besieged Kyng than for the attackers, for
the Kyng needs but escape, and capturing hym requireth subtlety and
cunning. And thus, it is generally accounted wise to playe as whyte
once and then blacke, that both players shal have equal chance.

I commend thys game to Yr study, as it was call'd the Game of Kings
in those anceunt times, and is a game of nobility. I shal write to
you again wyth other games as You shal require. Yr servant, thys
16 of Janvier in the yeere 1600, Justin duC.

Endnotes
--------

Okay, this one's a cheat; it is quite unlikely that Justin would have
known anything about the Tafl family of games, since it had mostly
died out by his time. But it's a fine game, and well worth
learning. The above description is based entirely on secondary and
tertiary sources, particularly HJR Murray's "History of Board Games
Other Than Chess" and David Parlett's "Oxford History of Board Games".

Tafl (pronounced "tabl" in Iceland and "tafl" elsewhere, I gather) is
a family of games popular in northern Europe in the Middle Ages; it
was largely supplanted by Chess after the millennium, and gradually
died out over the next 600 years or so. There is a bit of conjecture
involved in its reconstruction, since no really complete period
descriptions exist; the reconstruction here is essentially the
consensus view, based on the assumption that all of the
apparently-related games share very common rules. You will see
variants from time to time; for example, some speculate that smaller
boards may have required the King to get to the corners, because the
corners of some boards are specially marked. There isn't really enough
evidence at this time to resolve these questions with confidence, but
these rules should be close to correct.

The game went under many names in the different cultures. The later
Scandanavian game was called hnefetafl; the Welsh game was known as
Tawlbrwdd; the large 19 x 19 game was described as "Alea Evangelii",
the Gospel game. Other names are possible, but there are some
ambiguities about whether certain names refer to this game or some
other.

I have generally played with a slight variation, that the attacker
wins if the defender has no legal moves. Looking at my sources,
however, I don't find any basis for that, so it may be an addition
to the period game.

		-- Justin