Tablut

How to play Tablut

Not from the book. The rules are those Linnaeus wrote down in his Lapland diary in 1732 — the one record of a tafl game with its rules — read through the modern translations, with the gaps filled as marked below.

From Linnaeus

• A board of nine by nine. The king stands on the castle in the middle, his eight Swedes round him in a cross. Sixteen Muscovites stand in four groups of four at the middle of each edge.
• Every piece moves like a rook: any number of empty squares along a line, never diagonally, never over another piece.
• A piece is taken when the enemy closes it in between two of his own on opposite sides, along a line. A piece may itself move in between two enemies and stand there.
• Only the king may stand on the castle. The empty castle counts as an enemy for everyone: a piece pinned between it and an enemy is taken.
• The king is taken on the castle by four Muscovites, beside it by three with the castle as the fourth side, and elsewhere by two on opposite sides.
• The king wins by reaching any square on the edge. When he has an open line to the edge the player calls «raichi»; with two lines «tuichu», and he cannot be stopped.

My choices

• The Muscovites move first; Linnaeus does not say who does.
• The castle: pieces may pass through it when it is empty, and the king may return to it — the one point the translations disagree on.
• With the king on the castle, the Swedes may take a Muscovite against it, since the king joins in; the Muscovites may take a Swede against it only when the king is already hemmed in on the three other sides. The king takes part in captures like any Swede.
• The same position for the third time is a draw, as are a hundred moves without a capture; a side that cannot move has lost.
• The machine looks two or three moves ahead: the men, the king's open lines, the Muscovites next to him, and his distance to an edge.

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