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 Hnefatafl
is an ancient Viking game which involves playing white against black on
a 9x9 (or some other size, depending on which variant) chess/checker-board.
The objective of the game if you are white is to try to get your king to
escape to the corner or edge squares of the board (depending on which variant
of the game you are playing). The objective, as black, is naturally to
capture the white king. Pieces move like rooks in chess. Captures are usually
accomplished by surrounding a would-be victim on two sides with two of
your own pieces.
So, why would you want to know about a long-dead game which was crushed by the onset of chess? Well, because my PGSS 1998 Team Project is to build an artificial Viking brain incarnate to play Hnefatafl! Sorry if that was anticlimactic. Anyways, the cool part is that we get to spend the government's hard-earned (hah!) tax money to use a humongous massively parallel CRAY T3E. That's 512 alpha 300/450 megahertz processors, my goodness gracious, I feel like I could just pop! Well, actually, it's been a blast learning how to program in parallel under th leadership of the famous Starfleet Captain Kirk Yenerall. Check out our lab manual, get a feel of how yummy and chubby it all is... So. If you just can't wait to rub your brain into some of this Hnefatafl stuff, just click on the following blue patterns: http://www.stratogems.com/Alcatraz.html http://viking.no/e/life/egames.htm http://hem.passagen.se/susbrom/TABLUT.HTM http://www.camberwell5.demon.co.uk/hnefatafl.htm http://www.greywolves.org/airut/tafl.html http://www.gamecabinet.com/history/Hnef.html
http://www.nucleus.com/~npl/ http://www.tarahill.com/instruct.html http://www.expomedia.se/tablut/eng/
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