How to Play Hnefatafl

Hnefatafl is a game of unequal forces. One player defends a king trying to break out to freedom; the other commands a larger army trying to trap him. The two sides play by entirely different goals, which gives the game its distinctive tension. The rules below describe the popular 11×11 board variant.

The Objective

The two players pursue opposite aims. The defender must guide the king to safety at the edge of the board. The attacker must surround and capture the king before he escapes. There is no shared victory condition — every move serves one of these two races.

Setup

Play takes place on an 11×11 grid. The king begins on the central square, called the throne. Around him stand his 12 defenders, arranged in a cross or diamond formation in the middle of the board.

The 24 attackers — twice the defenders’ number — are positioned in four groups, one along the middle of each edge of the board, pointing inward toward the king. The attacking side moves first; players then alternate turns.

How Pieces Move

Every piece, including the king, moves exactly like a rook in chess: any number of empty squares in a straight line, along a row or a column. Pieces may not move diagonally, and they may not jump over other pieces.

The throne and the four corner squares are restricted: only the king may land on them. Other pieces may pass over the empty throne but cannot stop on it.

Capturing

Pieces are captured by flanking, not by landing on the enemy. To capture an ordinary piece, you must occupy the two squares on either side of it — both above and below, or both to its left and right — sandwiching it along a row or column. The captured piece is removed immediately.

A piece is only captured when an opponent moves into the trapping position. A piece may safely move into the gap between two enemies on its own turn. The corner squares (and often the empty throne) count as hostile, meaning they can stand in for one of the two flanking pieces.

Winning

The defender wins if the king reaches one of the four corner squares — he has escaped.

The attacker wins by capturing the king. The king is taken only when surrounded on all four sides by attackers (or by a hostile square such as the throne). Near the throne and along the board’s edges, fewer attackers are needed, so the defender must guard the king’s flight carefully as the ring closes in.