peer2peergames

Brandubh

The Irish game of the tafl family, and the smallest: a board of seven squares by seven and thirteen pieces. The two of you do not have the same pieces and do not want the same thing. One has a king and four defenders and wins by getting the king to a corner. The other has eight attackers and wins by capturing him first.

Play Brandubh Leaderboard

The two sides

  1. The defenders have the king and four defenders. They win the moment the king stands on any of the four corners.
  2. The attackers have eight pieces. They win by capturing the king.
  3. The attackers move first. Which of you attacks is decided by the game's seed, and the page says which side you have in the line above the board, on every move.

The board

  1. Seven squares by seven. The square in the middle is the throne and the four squares at the ends of the board are the corners. All five are marked, whether or not a piece stands on them.
  2. The king starts on the throne with a defender on each of his four sides. The attackers start in four pairs, two at the middle of each edge, so the thirteen pieces make a cross.

How a piece moves

  1. Every piece, the king included, moves in a straight line along a row or a column, as far as you like. It cannot move diagonally, cannot jump another piece and cannot land on one.
  2. Only the king may stop on a corner.
  3. No piece may stop on the throne. That includes the king once he has left it: he cannot go back.
  4. Any piece may pass over the throne while it is empty, on its way to a square beyond it.

How a piece is captured

  1. You capture a piece by moving so that it is caught between two of yours, one on each side of it, in a line along a row or a column. It comes off the board. Diagonals do not count.
  2. Only the piece that has just moved captures. So you may move a piece in between two enemy pieces and it is safe there: they did not close on it, it walked in.
  3. One move can capture more than one piece. If the piece you move closes on two or three enemy pieces at once, in different directions, it takes all of them.
  4. A corner counts as an enemy to both sides. A piece standing next to a corner is captured by a single enemy on its other side.
  5. So does the throne while it is empty. A piece standing next to the empty throne is captured by a single enemy on its other side.
  6. The king captures like any defender: he can be the piece that moves in, and he can be the piece on the far side.
  7. Nothing is captured against the edge of the board.

How the king is captured

  1. Anywhere on the open board the king is captured exactly as any other piece is, between two attackers, or between one attacker and a corner.
  2. When he stands on a square beside the throne, it takes three attackers, one on each of his other three sides.
  3. When he is on the throne, it takes four attackers, one on every side.

How a game ends

  1. The king reaches a corner: the defenders win.
  2. The king is captured: the attackers win.
  3. Every attacker is captured: the defenders win.
  4. The same position comes round for the third time with the same side to move: a draw. The page warns you when a position has come round twice.
  5. The side to move has no piece that can move: a draw.
  6. THIS SITE ALSO DRAWS A GAME THAT WILL NOT END. If four hundred moves are played, counting both sides, the game is a draw. That is a rule of this site and not of the game: attackers who seal off all four corners can otherwise sit there for ever.
  7. Either of you may offer a draw, and the other may accept it or play on. A game also ends if somebody resigns, or if a move deadline passes without a move.

Reading a move

  1. Columns are lettered a to g from the left and rows are numbered 1 to 7 from the bottom, so the throne is d4 and the corners are a1, a7, g1 and g7.
  2. A move is written as the square a piece left and the square it reached, d1-c1. The king's moves begin with K. An x and a square after the move, as in c4-c7xb7, is a piece captured on that square.

Nobody wrote the rules of Brandubh down. What survives is a few boards and some lines of verse that give the number of pieces and the king's corners. The rules here are the reconstruction by Aage Nielsen as published at tafl.cyningstan.com, and where that text is silent this site has decided: that a piece may walk in between two enemies unharmed, that one move may capture up to three, that a piece may pass over the empty throne, that a position must come round a third time and not a second to draw, that attackers with no piece left have lost, and the limit of four hundred moves. Other sets of rules for Brandubh exist and are just as good.

Brandubh terms

the throne
the middle square, d4, where the king starts; nobody may stop on it, and empty it helps to capture
a corner
one of the four squares at the ends of the board; only the king may stand on one, and reaching one wins
an attacker
one of the eight pieces that start on the edges and try to capture the king
a defender
one of the four pieces that start beside the king and are on his side

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from one minute to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.