Ireland · c. 700 AD · 7×7 board
Brandubh is one of the tafl games — Irish and Norse board games where one side defends a king and the other hunts him. It's named in Irish poetry a thousand years before chess reached the island, which makes it one of the oldest strategy games still playable today.
One player controls the king and four defenders; the other controls eight attackers. Every piece slides like a rook — any distance in a straight line, with nothing to jump over. Only the king may stand on a corner square or the empty throne at the centre; everyone else can pass through the throne but never stop there.
A piece is captured when an opponent's move pins it between two hostile squares — two enemy pieces, or an enemy piece and a corner, or an enemy piece and the empty throne. Walking into that trap yourself is always safe; only the move that closes the trap captures.
The king is tougher to pin down: he needs three hostile sides closed around him before he falls, and only the move that closes the third side counts.
The defending side wins by walking the king into any corner of the board. The attacking side wins by trapping the king or by leaving the defenders with no legal move at all. If seventy moves pass with no capture, the game ends in a draw.
Brandubh sits at two points on the six-station ladder — once as the opening test, once near the end as the harder rematch — and it's also free to practice at five difficulty levels, from a forgiving opponent that blunders often to one that plays close to perfectly.
Whatever you play here counts toward your Game IQ — a private score built from how your moves compare to the best one actually available, not just whether you won. See how hard the AI really is →
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