1. Tablut is played on an 11-by-11 square board. The middle of the board is marked as the castle.

2. The defending player selects 1 BEAD to be the King, and 8 BEADs of a different colour to be the defenders.

3. The King starts in the castle and the 8 defenders in the squares marked on the board surrounding the King, two directly above, two directly below, and two on either side.

4. The attacker selects 12 BEADs of any colour and places them on the 12 marked squares around the edges of the board; 3 BEADs in the middle of each outer row and a BEAD on the middle square of the second row.

5. The attacking player starts.

1. In turns, players move a BEAD horizontally or vertically any number of empty squares.

2. BEADs cannot land on, or jump over, another piece on the board.

3. No BEAD can land on the central square, the castle, this includes the King BEAD once it has left the square.

4. A player captures their opponent’s BEAD by surrounding it on two opposite sides.

5. The attacker captures the King BEAD by surrounding it on all four sides.

6. The King BEAD can be captured next to the castle if the BEAD is surrounded by the attacker on the remaining three sides.

7. A BEAD can be captured when it is between an opponent’s BEAD and the empty castle.

8. Once the King BEAD leaves the castle, the BEAD moves and can be used to capture like any other BEAD.

9. Captured BEADs are removed from the board.

1. To win the game, the defender must move the King BEAD to any square on the outside edge of the board.

2. To win the game, the attacker must capture the King BEAD.

3. The game is a draw if a position is repeated, a player cannot move, or if the players otherwise agree.

1. One of the first accounts of Tablut was recorded by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1732. Unknown to Linnaeus, this was a version of a game that had been played in his homeland centuries before called Hnefatafl. The game must have been passed to the Saami people of Lapland by the Norwegians or the Swedes in mediaeval times, as chess had displaced it in those countries shortly after the 13th century.

2. Linnaeus took records of the game in Latin. He left out only a few details, for example, who made the first move. Some rules were included by example, rather than by direct statements. Also, some rules were apparently exceptions to others, but were not directly stated as such, making them look like contradictions. All this made translation and interpretation difficult.

3. This led to a faulty English translation, which appeared in 1811 as the first publication of the rules. Nearly 2 centuries later, Linnaeus's early work was made available online, allowing anyone to see the original Latin rules for themselves. This resolved many problems, and showed that with the exception of a few details, Linnaeus had recorded a balanced and playable game.