Walk the king to freedom or close the siege around him — an unevenly matched Norse board-game duel.
Hnefatafl is a Viking siege game, and it is deliberately asymmetric. One side defends a king and his guards; the other side, twice as numerous, hunts him. Every piece moves in straight lines like a rook, with no jumping.
Hnefatafl was the great board game of the Norse world. Part of the older Germanic 'tafl' family, it was played across Scandinavia, Iceland and the British Isles from around the 4th century AD through the Viking Age, and it turns up again and again in the sagas. Its lopsided duel — a king and his guard trying to break past a larger besieging force — gradually gave way to chess after the 11th and 12th centuries. Its rules survive only in fragments, reconstructed from archaeology and an 18th-century account of a Sámi cousin called tablut.
Hnefatafl is a traditional Norse strategy game of unequal forces, a hunt between a cornered king and a surrounding host. This is an original, free browser build with selectable sides, three CPU levels, pass-and-play, and online matches — no download or sign-up.