Learn hnefatafl: a first game, and how to think about it

The rules of hnefatafl take five minutes. Knowing what to do with them takes longer, and the two sides need completely different advice. Start with the walkthrough, then read the half of the strategy section that applies to your chair.

Updated 5 September 2026

A first game, move by move

This is a Copenhagen game on an eleven by eleven board: twenty-four attackers around the rim, twelve defenders and their king packed in a cross at the centre, king on the throne at f6. Files run a to k from the left, ranks 1 to 11 from the attackers’ side. Set the pieces out and play it through.

Before the first move, notice something about the starting position: four of the twelve defenders — the ones directly touching the king at e6, f5, g6 and f7 — have no legal move at all. They are boxed in by their own side. The defenders’ first job is not to attack anything. It is to unpack.

Copenhagen, 11x11: the first fourteen moves

A: f2-b2The attackers begin. The lone man in front of the southern block slides along the second rank to b2, where he watches both the b-file and the second rank in the corner’s quarter. The men standing on the first rank and on the a-file have not stirred, and they must not: those two lines are the only roads into the a1 corner.
D: d6-d3The defenders unpack. The west arm of the cross runs down the d-file into open ground. It does two things at once: it frees e6, which frees the king behind it, and it puts a defender inside the attackers’ half where they cannot ignore him.
A: d1-d2An attacker steps up behind the intruder. The defender on d3 now has an attacker directly below him, so the attackers threaten to bring a second man to d4 and take him with a sandwich down the file.
D: f4-d4The defenders plug the square the attackers wanted. The southern arm of the cross slides across to d4, protecting d3 by occupying the only square that could complete the sandwich, and building a two-man wall on the d-file.
A: a4-c4The attackers come at the wall from the side. From c4 they threaten to put a man on e4 and take d4 across the rank. Note the cost of the move: the a-file has lost a guard, and the road up the western edge is one man thinner than it was.
D: e5-e4The defenders plug again, and the plug is also a gain. The wall is now three men across the fourth rank and the d-file, and moving e5 has freed another of the king’s neighbours.
A: e1-e3The attackers press. From e3 they threaten to run a man along the fifth rank to e5, which would catch the defender on e4 between e3 and e5. It is a natural-looking move and it is the losing kind of natural: the first rank now has nothing at all west of f1.
D: f5-f3The punishment. The defender drops down the f-file to f3, and the attacker on e3 is caught between him and the defender already standing on d3. First blood to the defenders, and the piece that made the capture has also opened the file directly below the king.
A: c4-c2The attackers stop attacking and repair. Sliding the man from c4 down to c2 gives them three in a row on the second rank at b2, c2 and d2, a low wall across the three files that lead down to the open western end of the first rank.
D: g5-g3The defenders widen the front. A second arm of the cross drops to the third rank, so the defenders now hold d3, f3 and g3 and the attackers have to worry about the whole southern side rather than one file.
A: j6-j3The attackers remember the other half of the board. Everything so far has happened in the south-west; the eastern outrider comes down to j3 to cover the approaches to the k1 corner before the defenders think of going that way.
D: f6-f5The king finally steps off the throne, onto the square his own man vacated four moves ago. He now has the whole fifth rank to run on, which is exactly what the defenders want — and it is also a mistake, for the reason the next move shows.
A: b6-d6The throne is empty now, and an empty throne is hostile to both sides. The defender still sitting on e6 is caught between the arriving attacker on d6 and the empty throne behind him, and off he comes. Material is level again, and the attackers have a man planted in the middle of the defenders’ camp.
D: d4-d5The defenders turn on the intruder. From d5 they threaten to bring the man on e7 across to d7, which would trap the attacker on d6 between two defenders. The opening is over: the ring is dented, the king is out of his box, and both sides have work to do.

How to think, on each side

Nothing in this section applies to both chairs. Read the half you are playing, then read the other half to know what your opponent is trying to do to you.

Playing the attackers. You have twice the men and none of the winning moves. You cannot win by trading; you win by building a ring and keeping it whole.

Build a ring, not a crowd. Your men should stand on a continuous perimeter with no gaps a king could slide through. A pile of attackers on one side of the board is worth less than an even ring.
Guard the corner approaches above all else. In the corner-escape codes, the king can only enter a corner along the edge rank or the edge file leading to it. Those four pairs of lines are the whole game. Never vacate one without asking what now stands in the way.
Watch the diagonal roads. A king who reaches a square like c3 is two moves from a1 by two different routes, and you can only block one of them per turn. Treat the squares on the diagonals running out from each corner as the real front line.
Move the outer men first. The pieces at the ends of your blocks can travel a long way without opening a hole. The pieces sitting on the edge rank and edge file are corner guards and should be the last to leave.
Take defenders when it is free, not when it costs shape. Every defender you remove is one less brick in an edge fort, but a capture that pulls you out of position hands the king a road.

Playing the defenders. You have half the men and all of the winning moves. Time is on the attackers’ side, so passive play loses even when nothing is being captured.

Unpack early. Your inner four men cannot move until the outer ones do, and a king with no free line is a king with no plan. Get the cross moving on the first few turns.
Break the ring while it is still forming. The attackers begin in four blocks with gaps between them. Those gaps close over the first ten moves or so, and a defender pushed through one of them early is worth far more than the same man pushed through later.
Keep the king mobile, not exposed. What matters is the number of long empty lines he can travel along. A king with two clear files is dangerous; a king with none is a hostage even if nothing is attacking him.
Threaten two corners at once. This is the winning idea in every corner-escape code. If your king has a route to a1 and a route to a11, the attackers must block both this turn and can only block one. Manoeuvre to create that fork and everything else follows.
Use your king. He is armed. In a crowded position an armed king is an extra attacking piece, and attackers who forget that lose men to him.
Count before you trade. You have twelve men and they have twenty-four. An even trade is proportionally twice as bad for you, unless it opens a line you actually need.

The mistakes everybody makes first

These are the errors that decide most beginners’ games. Four of them belong to one side, one belongs to both.

Attackers: spreading too thin: Twenty-four men look like a lot until you try to ring an eleven by eleven board with them. A ring one man deep with a two-square gap in it is not a ring. Keep the perimeter tight enough to be continuous, and let the defenders come to you rather than reaching for them.
Attackers: opening a corner road: The commonest losing move in the game is an attacker leaving the edge rank or the edge file that leads into a corner, because that man had a job and you had not noticed what it was. Before every move, look at the four corners and ask what would happen if the king appeared on the line.
Defenders: shuffling without a plan: Moving men back and forth inside your own camp feels safe and loses slowly. Every defender turn should either open a line for the king, break a piece of the ring, or set up a capture. If it does none of those, find another move.
Both sides: forgetting that stepping between two enemies is safe: Capture is active. A square with an enemy on either side is not a trap; it is often the best square on the board, because it is one your opponent cannot use against you. Beginners avoid these squares for months, and it costs them tempo every game.
Both sides: forgetting the hostile squares: The empty corners and the empty throne do the work of a piece. Players lose men to a single attacker or defender arriving next to them, because they counted enemy pieces instead of counting brackets. The throne is the worst offender, because it changes state the moment the king steps off it.

Tafl words

tafl: The Norse word for a board or a board game, used now as the family name for all of these games at once.
hnefatafl: The best-known member of the family, and the usual name for the large board game. Read roughly as the board game of the fist or of the king-piece.
hnefi: The king-piece itself: the single defending piece whose escape or capture ends the game. Usually made taller or wider than the soldiers so it can be told apart at a glance.
throne: The middle square, where the king starts. Only he may end a move there. In most codes it is a hostile square when empty, and other pieces may slide across it once he has gone.
konakis: The Sami name for the throne in tablut, from Linnaeus’ notes. It behaves like a throne: king only, hostile when empty, crossable by anyone.
corner: One of the four extreme squares. In Copenhagen, Fetlar, brandubh and Ard Ri these are the king’s goal, they are hostile when empty, and only he may enter them. In tawlbwrdd and tablut they are ordinary squares.
custodial capture: Capture by trapping rather than by taking. A soldier caught between two enemy pieces along a rank or a file is removed from the board.
active capture: The rule that a sandwich only counts when the capturing player creates it by moving. A piece that walks into an existing gap between two enemies is safe.
hostile square: A square that acts as one half of a sandwich even though no piece is standing on it. The empty corners and the empty throne are the hostile squares in tafl.
sandwich: The informal name for the capturing pattern: enemy, victim, enemy, in a straight orthogonal line, with the far end supplied either by a piece or by a hostile square.
armed king: A king who counts as an ordinary piece when making captures, so an attacker can be trapped between the king and a defender. Every code on this site uses an armed king.
ring: The attackers’ perimeter. Keeping it unbroken is the attacking side’s whole strategy; getting through it is the defending side’s.
shieldwall: A Copenhagen capture in which a whole row of enemy pieces standing along an edge is bracketed at both ends and swept off together.
edge fort: A Copenhagen win for the defenders: the king stands on the edge inside a wall of his own men that the attackers cannot break, and he still has somewhere to move inside it.
exit fort: Another name for the same idea, emphasising that the shape must be one the attackers can never open — a fort with a door the defenders control rather than a wall they are trapped behind.
encirclement: A Copenhagen win for the attackers: their ring is so complete that no defender, king included, can reach any square on the edge of the board.
tablut: The Sami nine by nine game recorded by Linnaeus in 1732, in which the king escapes to any edge square.
brandubh: The small Irish seven by seven game, eight attackers against four defenders and a king, with corner escape.
tawlbwrdd: The Welsh game, known from Robert ap Ifan’s drawing of 1587, played here on eleven by eleven with plain corners and escape to any edge square.