Tafl: The Game of Kings
The game is played on a square board of 9 X 9 squares.
There are 16 black pieces and 9 white pieces. The black pieces are identical and all the white pieces are identical except for one piece which is the king. There are five gold squares. The middle square is gold and the four corner squares are gold. We have colored the squares on which the pieces start the game in the illustration above. The red squares are where the black pieces start and the dark blue squares are where the white pieces start with the king occupying the middle gold square. Traditionally the black pieces were called the Russians and the white pieces were called the Swedes.
The Game starts after lots are drawn to see who moves first.
* Each piece moves like the rook in chess, i.e. able to move any number of squares horizontally or vertically as long as there is no piece blocking the path.
* No piece may move over another piece.
* Each player moves one piece per turn.
No piece may move to the gold squares except for the king. Any piece may move through the middle gold square but may not stop there.
The object of the game is different depending on which side the player takes. If you are playing the Swedes (white pieces) your object is for your king to escape to one of the 4 gold corner squares. If the Swede king reaches any of the four corner gold squares the game is over. If the Swede king is captured the game is over.
If you are playing the Russians (black pieces) you object is to prevent the Swedish king's escape and capture him.
Pieces are captured by surrounding a piece on two sides either horizontally or vertically by two opposing pieces. The following are examples of a capture.
King moves from d5 to d2 to capture black.
Black moves from a6 to c6 and captures white.
Surrounding a piece on two sides diagonally does not capture it. The following moves are not a capture.
A piece may move between two other pieces without being captured. The following is not a capture. However if black moved from c2 to c1 then back to c2 again and the white piece was still there then that would be a capture.
Using the gold squares to capture
You can use the gold squares to capture. Since the gold squares cannot be entered except by the king they act as piece for the purposes of a capture. For example if you have a Swede piece next to a gold square and a Russian piece moved on the other side of the Swede horizontally or vertically then the Russian piece would capture the Swede.
However, in the example above, if the king occupied the middle gold square then black would not have captured white.
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