harley: Thanks Harley!

Fwiffo: As from our other conversation I'll bring one of my suggestions here to see what other people think...

This one is based on Brandubh, as played in Ireland in the tenth century. What we know from literary sources and archaeology is that the game was played with a king (branan) and his four men against eight enemies. The most common board size found in Ireland is 7x7, with markings on the centre and the four corners. Poetry tells us that the central square on the board is "Tara", and is one of the "five noble squares fitting for the branan". This, together with the rules of movement and capture we're familiar with from tablut and other related games, is just about enough to put together a working variant:

1. The pieces are laid out on the board in the shape of a cross, with the king in the centre, his four defenders around him, and the attackers forming the outer arms of the cross.

2. The attackers move first, and all pieces move like a chess rook, as in tablut. Only the king can occupy the centre square or the four marked corners.

3. The pieces are captured by surrounding them on two opposite sides, as in tablut. The king, though, is also captured this way. A piece sitting next to a corner square can be captured by placing a piece on the other side of him, so that he's caught between an enemy and the corner square. The central square is different and can't be used in this way.

4. To win, the king must reach a corner square. He loses if he is captured as described in rule 3 above.

This is almost the same as the game Brandubh implemented in Zillions of Games. But that game favours the king too much, so I've adopted the layout from E. MacWhite's 1946 article on Early Irish Games, and allowed the king to be captured on only two sides as in tawlbwrdd. The result seems to be quite a balanced game. It's quite a bit quicker than our tablut, and is more about short term tactics than long term strategy, so it makes quite a good coffee table game. I just need to make myself a set!