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Tafl Games

Chess-Family War Games

Tafl games are a family of ancient Northern European board games, played on a checkered or grid board with two unequal sides, in which one player commands a king piece and its defenders starting from the center and the other commands a larger force of attackers trying to capture the king before it can escape to the board's edge. Tafl games were played across Scandinavia, the British Isles and other Norse-influenced regions from at least the early medieval period until being displaced by chess in popularity, and archaeological finds of tafl boards and pieces are recorded across a wide area of Northern Europe. The best-attested member of the family is the game known as Hnefatafl.

Facts
Sport
Game Type (category)
Board Game 1
Game Type (category)
Strategy Game 1
Originating Region
Northern Europe 1
Game Type
Abstract strategy board game 1
Classification
Player Count
Two-Player 1
Connections

Associated With

Chess, Games

Tafl games were played across Scandinavia, the British Isles and other Norse-influenced regions from at least the early medieval period until being displaced in popularity by chess, per the tafl-games entity's own record.

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Tafl games, Wikipedia
  • Lead paragraph, sentence on where tafl was played
    played in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Britain, Ireland, and Sápmi
  • Lead paragraph, first sentence
    family of ancient Northern European strategy board games
  • Infobox, players field
    2
  • entity record, description lead (player-count)
    Tafl games are a family of ancient Northern European board games, played on a checkered or grid board with two unequal sides, in which one player commands a king piece and its defenders starting from the center and the other commands a larger force of attackers trying to capture the king before it can escape to the board's edge. Tafl games were played across Scandinavia, the British Isle
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