Tablut

How to play Tablut

The Sámi played tablut in Lapland; Carl Linnaeus saw the game on his journey there in 1732.

The rules

• The board is nine squares by nine. The king starts on the castle, the square in the middle, with his eight Swedes round him in a cross. The sixteen Muscovites stand in four groups of four at the middle of each edge.
• The Muscovites move first; then the players take turns.
• Every piece, the king too, moves like a rook in chess: as many empty squares as you like along a row or a column. Never diagonally, never over another piece.
• You capture an enemy piece by closing it in between two of your own on opposite sides, along a row or a column. Only the moving side captures: a piece may safely step in between two enemies. The king helps capture like any Swede.
• Only the king may stop on the castle. When it is empty, any piece may pass over it, and the king may go back to it.
• The empty castle is hostile to everyone: a piece caught between it and an enemy is taken. With the king on it, the Swedes may still capture a Muscovite against it; the Muscovites may capture a Swede against it only when the king is already surrounded on his other three sides.
• The king is taken by four Muscovites round him on the castle, by three when he stands next to it (the castle making the fourth side), and anywhere else by two on opposite sides.
• The Swedes win when the king reaches any square on the edge. With one open line to the edge the player calls «raichi»; with two, «tuichu», and he cannot be stopped. The Muscovites win by taking the king.

In this version

• The same position for the third time is a draw, and so are a hundred moves without a capture. A player who cannot move has lost.
• The machine looks two or three moves ahead, weighing the pieces, the king's open lines, the Muscovites beside him and his distance to an edge.

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