Fetlar hnefatafl rules

The game in short

Eleven by eleven, twenty-four attackers against twelve defenders and a king. The attackers move first. The defenders win by getting the king to a corner; the attackers win by taking him. There is nothing else.

If you already know Copenhagen, the whole difference is subtraction. Delete the shieldwall, the edge fort and encirclement, and you are playing Fetlar.

Setting up

Files a to k, ranks 1 to 11. Throne at f6; corners a1, k1, a11 and k11. The array is the standard one, the same as Copenhagen.

• Attackers, twenty-four: d1, e1, f1, g1, h1, f2; d11, e11, f11, g11, h11, f10; a4, a5, a6, a7, a8, b6; k4, k5, k6, k7, k8, j6.
• Defenders, twelve: f4; e5, f5, g5; d6, e6, g6, h6; e7, f7, g7; f8.
• The king begins on the throne at f6.

Movement

All pieces slide along ranks and files any distance, like a rook, over empty squares only, and stop on an empty square. No diagonals, no jumps.

The throne and the four corners are for the king alone. Soldiers may cross the throne once the king has vacated it, but may not stop on it, and may not stop in a corner at all.

Capture

Custodial and active, exactly as in Copenhagen. Move a piece to trap an enemy soldier between it and another of your pieces along a rank or a file, and that soldier is removed. Moving voluntarily into a gap between two enemies is safe. A single move may capture on more than one side.

The empty corners are hostile to both sides and can serve as one half of any capture. So can the throne while it stands empty. While the king is on the throne, that square is hostile to the attackers only: the defenders may use it as a bracket against an attacker, the attackers may not use it against a defender.

The king is armed and takes part in captures like an ordinary defender.

Winning

There are only four results.

• The defenders win if the king reaches any of the four corner squares.
• The attackers win if they occupy all four squares orthogonally next to the king, counting a hostile square as one of them. A king on the edge of the board has only three neighbours and so cannot be taken there.
• The defenders win if the attackers have no legal move.
• The attackers win if the defenders have no legal move.

There is no win for building a fort, and none for sealing the defenders in. A defending player who has walled the king safely onto an edge still has to walk him to a corner to score the point, and an attacking player who has ringed the whole defending force still has to break in and take the king.

Repetition and the move limit

• The player about to bring about the same position for the third time must vary. A player who does not vary loses.
• A hundred moves without progress ends the game as a draw.

Sources

Everything on this page is written from scratch. These are the works it leans on, and what each one settles.

• The Fetlar Hnefatafl Panel rules

  The code written for the annual Fetlar tournament in Shetland. It settles the plain eleven by eleven game used here, and specifically the absence of the shieldwall, edge fort and encirclement endings.