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While chess had displaced tafl in most other places,
in 1587 Robert ap Ifan wrote a description of a game
called tawlbwrdd, which was still played in Wales at
that time. He also drew the empty board, shown below.
Nobody seems to know why the tenth row isn't shaded,
and most assume the drawing is incomplete.
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The last historical instance of tafl was recorded by
Linnaeus in 1732, while he was on a tour of Lapland.
He left us a set of rules for a game called tablut,
which are lacking only a few particulars, and also
left drawings of the board and pieces which have
inspired the reconstruction above. It is from these
rules that most of our knowledge of tafl comes, and
when variants are reconstructed for which little
evidence survives, rules are often borrowed from
Linnaeus's account to fill in the gaps.
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