Gamehelptablut

Description

Tablut is an abstract tactical game for 2 players.

It is played on a 9 per 9 tiled board. There are 16 black pawns, called Muscovites, 8 white pawns, the Swedes, and a special white pawn, the Swedish king.

Players take turns, moving a single pawn of their color each time.

The initial setup looks like this:

Objective of the game

For the player with the black pawns, the Muscovites, the goal is to make encircle the king in order to capture him.

For the player with the white pawns, the Swedes, the goal his to bring the king on any tile of the corner of the board.

Moves

All pawns move like the tower in chess: horizontally or vertically of any number of tiles.

Konakis

The king starting positions are Konakis: Only the king may occupy the konakis and the corner squares.

Other pieces may pass through the konakis when it is unoccupied, but may not stop there.

Captures

A pawn is captured, and hence removed from the board, when surrounded by 2 enemy pawns on opposite neighbour tiles :

However, a pawn willingly moving between 2 enemy pawns does not get captured.

The king is special in regard to capture: 2 Muscovites are not enough to eliminate him, he must be encircled on all his 4 neighbour tiles, or with 3 Muscovites and konakis or Edge or with 2 Muscovites, one Edge and a corner.

        

The king may not participate in captures.

Variant: King in the rim

Like all tafl games, tablut has many variants.

In this variant, the goal of the king is now to reach the rim. All the Muscovites and the king start on Konakis. Only the throne can be cross by the pawn, other konakis are inaccessible except if the pawn is on connected Konakis. The king can go the throne konakis.