
The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture - bcaulfield
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-hnefatafl-viking-board-game
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mrec
It's an interesting game, mostly because unlike most modern games it's
massively asymmetrical. Goals, strategies and attitudes are very different for
the two players, and despite the numerical lopsidedness in pieces it's _much_
easier to win as the defender, and a slow cautious style is much more
important for the attacker.

See Fetlar Hnefatafl for a modern codification of the (very vague) historical
rules:

[http://tafl.cyningstan.com/page/88/fetlar-
hnefatafl](http://tafl.cyningstan.com/page/88/fetlar-hnefatafl)

~~~
DrHuman
I actually wrote a toy app recently following the Fetlar rules as a React
exercise:

[https://htafl.herokuapp.com/](https://htafl.herokuapp.com/)

Not sure how it renders across machines but it looks ok on my Mac.

~~~
mrec
Yeah, I did the same (VanillaJS) a couple of years back, and started thinking
about implementing a computer opponent, but it's _really_ not clear what the
evaluation function should be.

~~~
formalsystem
You need only codify the victory and loss conditions to build an AI using
standard Reinforcement learning algorithms. Feel free to message me if you
want more detail on how this would work. We should be able to hammer something
out in less than a day.

~~~
mrec
Thanks for the pointer, but I'm afraid I have zero knowledge of ML and
wouldn't be any help.

I have to say I'm a _bit_ sceptical that this approach can work purely based
on win/loss conditions - an attacker victory in particular can often take
hundreds of moves in Tafl games.

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cjslep
How many modern games are two-player asymmetrical? I only know of Android:
Netrunner.

I hope we can continue learning more concrete rules for the ancient version of
this game. It would be nice to have its history understood like chess'.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Steve Jackson Games first title was _Ogre_, a tactics game that pit an entire
army against a single super unit.

Mr. Jack is another reasonably popular modern one.

The asymmetric tag on Board Game Geek is probably a good place to start.
[https://boardgamegeek.com/tag/asymmetric/page/1](https://boardgamegeek.com/tag/asymmetric/page/1)

~~~
harlanlewis
Love board game geek. A little buried on that page is a link to ranked list of
asymmetric games: [https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/82677/asymmetric-
games](https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/82677/asymmetric-games)

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YeGoblynQueenne
Hnefatafl (and possibly other, similar games) inspired a fictional game played
in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, _Going Postal_ and _Thud!_. From
wikipedia:

 _The game, supposedly called in Dwarfish "Hnaflbaflwhiflsnifltafl" (a
reference to the Viking game Hnefatafl which it resembles), represents the
famous "Battle of Koom Valley" between dwarfs and trolls.

The game was first directly referenced in Going Postal, being played by
Vetinari, and became a central concept in the immediate sequel Thud!. (...)

Terry Pratchett devised a fictional history of how Thud was invented similar
to the Shahnama theory of the origins of chess. In short, the clever dwarf who
invented the game was asked by his king to name his reward. The answer was
that he wanted his board filled with gold: One small gold piece on the first
square, two pieces on the second, four pieces on the third, etc. Needless to
say, this is more than all the gold of the Disc combined. The king then got
angry and threatened to kill the dwarf who was 'too drhg'hgin clever by half'.
The inventor then hastily changed his reward to 'as much gold as he could
carry', whereupon the king agreed and simply broke one of his arms._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_of_the_Discworld#Thud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_of_the_Discworld#Thud)

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jonhendry18
There was a game called "Ragnarok" for the NeXT, which I believe was a version
of this.

