Thanks for the reply. The problem is that what is known of the rules of tablut comes from one diary entry of Carl Linne during a brief stay with Sami people in the mountains of Sweden. Naturally, in that time, he wouldn't have come across every situation that can occur and some situations wouldn't have come to his attention precisely because the Sami players would be familiar with the rules. Tablut and similar type games have existed from around 2000 years ago so I think we can be confident that fully satisfactory rules also existed. There is no reason to believe that repeating position is legal and constitutes a draw. There's a tendency for people with a chess background to feel that chess is a species of senior game and to make decisions about rules in quite different games by observing chess, there's no justification for this. Among other considerations chess is a game plagued by draws and it would be better, under the influence of other games, to remove the draws from chess. In an earlier discussion on this page stalemate was being discussed yet even in chess stalemate doesn't make sense, the king is as dead as if checkmated. I accept the logic that the king (in tablut) can move onto a surrounded square next to the centre but if the king can not then leave that square because black occupies the opposing adjacent square and white has no other pieces that can move then, it seems obvious to me, this is a white loss (Linne even says that white loses when the king has no power of movement), likewise if white has several pieces left and black surrounds them such that none can move it is clearly a black win according to the spirit of the rules. These are rare situations that it's usually possible to avoid by taking care with the move order but it would still be nice to have something in the rules. Repetition, on the other hand, is not rare, in fact in almost ever game black has to not only try to win but also has to avoid the possibility of repetition. As black has no mechanism to force a repetition, white doesn't need to pay any attention to the possibility. This in itself is unsatisfactory, further, I suspect that white may be able to acheive repetition by force from the outset, if such is the case then it makes no sense to allow repetition. My suggestion is that repeating moves with continuous threats to the edge should be a loss for white. There exists an organisation called the Tafl Gild, they have some bizarre aims to be brought about by a resurrection of Viking culture primarily their version of tablut. Although I dont agree with their general interpretation of the rules of Linne and think their variant is a rather poor game I do recognise that they have one of the largest bodies of contemporary playing experience (the same can now be said of BrainKing) and it is noteworthy that they have elected for repetition to be a loss for white.