Hnefatafl | Hacker News Reader

Hnefatafl

en.wikipedia.org

181 pointsrobin_reala45 comments

I learned about tafl from a program called "Zillions of Games" which was a board game playing system from the early 00s. Had a custom rules engine where you could teach it to play any kind of board game with perfect information, and all kinds of current and historical games were implemented, including tafl.

Apparently it was abandoned in 2005 or so but somebody is trying to make an updated version: https://github.com/david-pfx/AmzPlayer

Inspired “Thud” in discworld:

https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Thud_(game)

Never actually played any of these games, but I’ve always appreciated the story that the setups tell, it seems so much more real-world than chess somehow. Like we must imagine that it was pretty rare for two perfectly matched armies to meet on the field of battle for an honorable fight until one side’s leader was captured. But I’m sure there were plenty instances where the local chief or ruler of some sort pissed off everybody in his hall, looked at his loyal guards and said “Ok my dudes, let’s get me out of here.”

And the variants shown on Wikipedia tell how universal a story it is… it is like you have in kings, princes, and chieftains in halls big and small, which they’d suddenly not like to be in.

> it seems so much more real-world than chess somehow. Like we must imagine that it was pretty rare for two perfectly matched armies to meet on the field of battle for an honorable fight until one side’s leader was captured

A thing that kept me frustrated as a child: What's a bishop doing in the battlefield and how come he has infinite range?

Then I started playing AoE2...

Apparently in the historical Indian version, the non-noble units were infantry, cavalry, chariots, and elephants, which makes a bit more sense.

Edit: a funny note, “rook” appears to come from the Persian word for chariot. Which makes a whole lot more sense than the little bird that shares the English name.

Thanks for bringing this up, it motivated me to read most of the Wikipedia article.

I agree - unlike perfectly symmetric battlefield of chess, the story of a larger force surrounding a smaller force defending a key leader is something that did and does happen all the time.

Personally, I never felt that much drawn into chess, or other classical board games, or video games with rock-paper-scissor mechanics, precisely because of the symmetry. I understand that it does crystallize the logical puzzle / challenge of the game, but at the same time, I've always found asymmetric games much more enjoyable to play. I suspect it's because they allowed me to delude myself that I can apply some real-world tactical into it, instead of actually getting good at the game. But hey, I enjoyed (and still do) this delusion as a casual player.

It is pretty abstract still, but I wonder if it could we a way to get a young heir thinking about small-unit tactics while bored in some Nordic winter.

I’m Icelandic and I always thought that playing Hnefatafl was a expression for fighting, since it directly translates to “Fist Chess”

I thought it was Chess Boxing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing)

when I first saw that headline, before clicking I spent a couple minutes trying to complete the phrase "___ ___ ___ ___ ___ thing as free lunch"

thanks, heinlein

Yep! Plus, the first two words must be Hacker News.

Headlines nonetheless echo famous adages, thus automatic "free lunch"

I love when miscommunication creates an entirely new game; gridiron football (e.g. Canadian and American Football) was created from Rugby due to scrums being unfair in North America, so a system of downs was introduced.

What do you mean by scrums being unfair? If you have any sources you'd recommend on this, it sounds interesting.

Replying to remind myself to check back on this - I'm also interested!

If you click on the timestamp of a HN comment, you navigate to a link specific to the comment.

From there you can add the comment to your HN favourites by clicking on “favourite”.

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Thank you - though, that would require me to build "checking my favourites" into a regular routine to remember to look for replies (and, more than that, I'd need metadata or brainpower-expenditure to distinguish "this is a comment I favourited because I want to check for replies" from "this is a comment I favourited to refer back to later"), whereas this approach "just works" with my (all-too-regular :( ) habit of checking replies-to-my-comments.

Though if this is considered a particularly irritatingly selfish behaviour, I'd consider stopping! I don't _think_ it particularly negatively affects anyone, but I'm willing to hear otherwise.

I think it is frowned upon a little bit because notes about wanting to check back later do not contribute to the conversation. But I think occasionally making those kinds of comments is ok, as long as the vast majority of comments that a user makes is contributing.

Fair, thanks! Implicit in my "I don't _think_ it particularly negatively affects anyone" was "I don't believe that seeing occasional non-contributive comments are a strong negative effect", but you're right to call it out explicitly.

I find those sorts of comments irritating. Why not just keep the comment open in a tab, and check back on it when you have a chance? Is it necessary to spam the discussion?

Basically, Walter Camp thought scrums hid the ball.

> English players form solid masses of men in a scrummage and engage in a desperate kicking and pushing match until the ball pops out unexpectedly somewhere, leaving the struggling mass ignorant of its whereabouts, still kicking blindly where they think the ball may be.

Further reading: http://www.tony-collins.org/rugbyreloaded/2015/6/16/the-walt...

This amuses me way more than it should. I'm just picturing a scrummage getting so chaotic that nobody notices for a good minute.

Isn't this exactly why the work methodology we're predominantly forced to use in this industry is called "scrum"?

Further, further reading: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/502784a984ae2d2eef450...

TL;DR: In the mid 19th century Scrums did kind of suck (the possessor did not release the ball, sending the ball backwards was controversial, and it was twenty-a-side, so it was a mass of bodies just trying to move the ball towards opposite sides). Britain Rugby eventually responded to this, but in a different way compared to Canada and the US.

The US difference was largely impacted by a single college's preference for playing eleven-a-side, which opened the game up even more than the fifteen-a-side that was adopted in Britain.

There was a DOS version (https://www.mobygames.com/game/kings-table-the-legend-of-rag...) that added legendary pieces with special powers and unique moves. Too bad that mode didn't catch on.

My grandparents bought me this game at the Viking Museum in York, England back in the early 1990s. It sat on a shelf for 30 years and then I took it out with my 10yo son last summer and actually played the game. It's really fun! Reminds me of Go.

It's funny that this pops up now, as I discovered the existence of the game(s) only 2 weeks ago, and made a rough computer version for myself.

A good site that presents many possible rule variants and their balance: http://aagenielsen.dk/overview.php

I have built a couple of these boards now, and I still have no one who will play with me.

I would be very interested to hear from actual tafl players. The asymmetry makes it look very interesting.

It really is

There are a couple games online (web games) taht can be played against a very simple ai, and it is quite the blast

There are some tlaf games on steam as well that also have got functional ai

I got introduced to it at the "World Hnefatafl Championships" that happened to be on when I once visited Sutton Hoo. That sounds grander than it was...

Game is quick to learn but good fun. Gave my brother in law a set this Christmas.

I play very casually, mostly on the Android app. There is also http://aagenielsen.dk/hnefatafl_online.php which seems to have the most "serious" community but I think the UI might be older than the game itself.

There are many different variants around, with different levels of balance. When I started playing I picked a variant and thought I would try to "specialise" in that one, but to be honest there aren't enough players around to do that, so you tend to just play whatever variant you can get a game in.

Generally in a tournament each set of opponents would play each other twice, once as each side. I'm not sure about aagenielsen.dk, but the way it works on the Android app is that if each player wins one game, the ultimate winner is the one who won in fewer turns. I don't think that's a great system but I guess it's the best one there is for elimination-style tournaments.

Most things I've read suggest that the defenders (white) generally have an advantage, but personally I seem to play better as attacker (black). Possibly just a sign that I am a novice!

Played a fair amount as a kid. It's fun, but you definitely need to play with folks who don't care too much about losing, as the difficulty for the capturing team is quite a bit higher than the running side. Works best if you can play at least two games, flipping who's playing which side.

Oh I knew the word seemed familiar. I first heard about it in this scrapwood challenge about making a Hnefatafl board with piece set: https://youtu.be/iiHlAa131NI?t=1022

Absolutely fascinating wiki link, thanks!

I've found this video pretty enlightening to quickly grok the goal and tactics of one of the Tafl games:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=axzd_MM1rJ0

Ah, sweet nostalgia - Someone gave me a set when I was a child, though it was just called Viking game. Easy to play, and nice pieces - we loved it!

Saw a neat implementation of this game in Flutter:

https://medium.com/@eibaan_54644/hnefatafl-for-flutter-42c05...

This was one of the free games that came with a NeXT pizza box.

I know that GNU chess was part of a NeXTstep install (and it’s still there in macOS), but have never seen a hnefatafl app. Do you have a link?

There's an X11 version of hnefatafl at https://gitlab.com/soderlund/hnefatafl - while this probably could be made to compile on NeXTstep (e.g., using the CubX X11 server), I don't think this was officially provided with the OS?

Are you referring to my game Ragnarok? (I sold 200 copies back in the day)

One of these - Tablut - is featured in the video game Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord. You can play against NPCs.

Named by a cat walking over the keyboard.

Norse was a very breathy language, hence all the h's and f's.

BTW, the Old Norse word for strength was "megin". Which word looks like a cat stepped over a keyboard: "megin" or the one with "str" and "ngth"?

I didn't mean to bash on a specific language, but was just pointing out how the name looks like random keypresses. Thanks to downvoters, I've now learned my place :)

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