My thoughts on the game of Tafl.

So a little while back we played the board game known as Tafl. In it's core game play mechanics it is a lot like a small mixture of chess and checkers. It's an ancient strategy board game from Vikings, and went everywhere they travelled.

You play the game as so, the Black pieces have to stop the queen piece, or in  the version we played the Red piece from either reaching the edge of the board or the corners, depending on the version we choose. The White pieces are used to claim and clear paths for the queen/red piece to get to the edge or corner of the game board and win. you take pieces by having one of each colour aside the other, for example: Black moves next to a White piece, White then moves one of their pieces up next to the Black in a line and claims the Black piece in the middle.

I ended up playing both to edges and corners. The version of corners I found more interesting, only because I managed to break the game within a couple of moments. We played by the basic standard rules of just getting the queen/red piece to the corner would mean White would win. So I found that by moving every Black piece to each side of each corner, which can be done in 8 turns can "pocket" out the White player, as he is now unable to make those pieces move and can't take them out of the game. I was told after breaking the game and my oppentant quitting, that there is a version where the corners are represented by White, which in turn would ruin the evil lock down strategy I made.

Then I played to edges, which seems impossible for the Black player to win. I nearly lost most of my White pieces when me and my oppentant switched colours but managed to make my oppentant to forget about the queen/red piece and ended up winning by using a White piece as bait.

Overall a fun game, made more fun that I managed to make a lock down.