Fox games

The game is known by many names around the world,[1] including Fox and geese in Britain, Renard et les poules in France, Lupo e pecore in Italy, Fuchs und Gänse (or Fuchs und Henne) in Germany, Schaap en wolf in the Netherlands, riebantablu in Sápmi, Rävspel in Sweden, Refskák in Iceland, Ratón y gatos in Spain, Lis i gęsi in Poland, Vlci a ovce in Slovakia, Volk i ovtsy in Russia and Bagh-chal in Nepal.

As in Grettis saga, rävspelet (modern Swedish for "the Fox game") is still played with holes and pegs.

Like the original game, tafl, the objective is for the defender (sheep) to reach a certain destination on the board, the square of nine holes marked with red, and it is the attacker's (the foxes) objective to stop the defender from reaching it.

The foxes are placed in the corners on the bottom of the red square (the paddock), whereas the sheep are placed on the opposite side of the board.

[citation needed] In this version the objective of reaching a certain location has been removed and instead it all comes down to capturing each other's pieces.

It is not mandatory for the fox to capture the opponent's pieces, and there are no restraints on the defender's (the geese's) movements.

This version (also called "wolf and sheep", "hounds and hare", or "devil and tailors") is played on an 8×8 chessboard.

Perfect play will result in a "hounds" victory, even if the fox is allowed to choose any starting square and to pass his turn once during the game, as demonstrated in Winning Ways.

The game was documented by Henry Parker in Ancient Ceylon: An Account of the Aborigines and of Part of the Early Civilisation (1909).

The cattle are further restricted in their movements because they may only move one space in the forward diagonal direction in a turn onto a vacant square.

Parker mentions that the game is not played in the interior villages of Sri Lanka.