My Danish ancestors must have played this game for hours and enjoyed it. It seems like a simple enough game and i will learn how to play it. Where can i play against the computer?
I have just release my App version for iPad and iPhone (The Viking Game) which can play many different variants of these Tafl Games. It features the strongest A.I. Player yet developed to play these games, and features board sizes from 9 x 9, up to the 15 x 15 board found at Coppergate in York.. I think people should reconsider playing corner escape rules, as the historically documented edge escape rules provide a much more evenly matched game, and is a lot more strategic.
One of the things that I find interesting about this game is that it's asymmetric. Asymmetric but balanced. I got to thinking: are there any *sports* which are asymmetric yet balanced? The only thing I can think of is baseball, where one team sends up one guy at a time to try to score, and the other team uses nine guys to stop him. But the two teams teams switch back and forth. It's all I've got, though. I'm going to ask around.
Sailor Barsoom Nice observation. Cricket would be another one: Two batters at a time, defending a wicket, try to score runs against 11 fielders. When all the batters are out, they change sides. The only other sport that comes to mind is Curling, as while one team slides the stone, the other team is armed with brooms!
Sean Gibb Curling, yes! It gets made fun of a lot, but I found that I actually like it a bit. Cricket I don't know much about at all, but I can look it up. Thanks.
I know there are different variations, but I thought the king could only be moved 3 spaces, and was not allowed to be used for captures. Also, I didn't see any unit exchanges.
Go is also a very interesting game. It developed in china and became very popular in Japan. It's the oldest board game still played. It's approximately 4000 years old.
@EricSchwin22 On the contrary, I think the Sten Helmfrid/Schmittberger rules (playing to the corner) used in this video is OVER-rated and incredibly stupid. It has made a laughing stock out the game. The game is an embarrassment. It is playing to the edge that is underrated. Corner play is a joke.
Needed to correct my wording: "that escape to the corners with a weaponless king is extremely unbalanced" ...should be escape to the "edge" not "corners"
NorseAmerica published their rules in 2008, well after many of the "expert" articles on the internet had perpetuated the myth of what set of rules are playable.
Escape to the corners, hostile corners, and king capture rules came into being from writers on the internet who wrote "articles" on tafl and made themselves look like experts, all the while spreading the myth that escape to the corners with a weaponless king is extremely unbalanced. But among seasoned players, that assertion is demonstrably false.
Walkerlinkous, Escape to the corners, hostile corners, and king captures are all *modern additions* to the rules. Carl von Linne documented the Sami playing tafl in the 18th cent. Robert ap Ifan documented tafl in the 16th. HJR Murray and RC Bell documented the game rules in the early and mid twentieth century. And the famous Riksutställningar re-enactment was from 1972. *None* of these had corner escape/hostile corner/king capture rules.
"seems a little lazy to try and change the game to fit your play style rather then changing your play style to fit the game." I can tell by this statement that you believe the rules you got from this manufacturer (the importer company NorseAmerica) are truly the "official" rules. While NorseAmerica has labelled their directions as "The official NorseAmerica rules", there are no set standard of "official" rules (which is why they interjected *"NorseAmerica"* after "official").That's *theirs*
"The sides are a little uneven, but not so mutch that the game becomes unwinnable." A little? 12 captures to 4? The king took part in 9 out of the 12 captures for white. Four black pieces MUST surround the king at the four cardinal points in order for black to win. At no time in your video did black have more than 2 near the king. Why? Because with a king that captures, almost every piece black puts near the king will be captured. But black has no other way to try and win!
"I don't think it makes sense that the king would go into battle unarmed," Nor does it make any sense that it takes twice as many men to kill a king than one of his men, nor that soldiers can only move orthoganally in straight lines on a battlefield, nor that it always takes two men to kill one, nor about a dozen other things that don't make sense in real life. The point is not to have a 100% accurate re-enactment. The discussion is what game rules make for the most playable game.
The rules in this video make it too easy for the king to win (king captures like any other piece and corners are hostile). Escape to the edge with a "weaponless" king makes for a much better game.
