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Hidden History: The Fantasy Game of Tak [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-25

The board game Tak (pronounced to rhyme with “back”) originally appeared as a prop in the fantasy/scifi book series The Kingkiller Chronicle, and was then brought to life in the real world.

"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.

A 5x5 Tak playing board and game pieces

History

In 1994, aspiring author Patrick Rothfuss began work on his first book, a scifi/fantasy story which was originally titled The Song of Flame and Thunder. After entering a portion of the manuscript into a “Writers of the Future” contest in 2002 and winning, Rothfuss obtained a literary agent and began shopping his manuscript around to publishers. It eventually went to DAW Books, who re-titled it The Name of the Wind to avoid confusion with the immensely-popular Song of Fire and Ice series (which would lead to the HBO colossus Game of Thrones).

Set in a fantasy world of magic, Rothfuss’s story revolves around a character named Kvothe, who was once a powerful warrior/wizard known as the “Kingkiller”, but, after unintentionally starting a war, is now living an anonymous life under a fake name as an ordinary inn-keeper. In the book, Kvothe narrates his life story to a scribe (and the reader).

Published in 2007, The Name of the Wind was successful enough to warrant a sequel, titled The Wise Man’s Fear, which was subsequently published in 2011. Together the two books have won several awards and have sold over 10 million copies. The third book in the trilogy, titled The Doors of Stone, has not yet been released, but Rothfuss has published a novella and several short stories which are set within the Kingkiller universe. There has also reportedly been a movie project that has been stuck in Development Hell for several years now.

In The Wise Man’s Fear, Rothfuss described a fictional board game often played by the patrons in Kvothe’s tavern, called “Tak” (referred to as “a beautiful game”). This caught the interest of James Ernest, a game designer in Seattle, and in 2016 the two began talks about producing a real-life version of the fictional game. Ernest was running a small company called Cheapass Games, which had an unusual business model: assuming that most board game enthusiasts already had common components like dice, grid boards and tokens, Cheapass sold game sets that contained only the printed rules and whatever manufactured components were uniquely needed for that particular game, and, as the name suggests, sold them online for cheap. Many of these games were “print-and-play”, which means they were made available for download as a PDF file which could be printed out and assembled for play, and patrons were either charged a nominal price or were able to download it for free and were asked to donate a dollar or two if they liked the game.

Working with Rothfuss, Ernest came up with a ruleset for a workable real-life version of Tak and published it through Cheapass Games. It became popular among print-and-play enthusiasts who had read the book series, and the ruleset was soon all over the Internet. (Over time, however, several different sets of “official rules” have been issued. I’ve picked the one here that I have play-tested.)

The commercial versions from Cheapass have gone out of print, but Cheapass was merged with Greater Than Games a few years ago, which then put out a new boxed version of Tak. Today the game is apparently available from Greater Than only as pieces.

But Tak remains popular today among the 3d printer community, since the game consists of components that can be easily made at home on a 3d printer. The pieces can also be easily improvised from found materials.



Equipment

To play Tak you will need:

A game board. There are various versions of this, ranging from a 3x3 grid to 4x4 to 5x5 to 6x6. Some boards are arranged so that the square spaces make a 5x5 grid and the intersecting lines make a 6x6 grid. I have also seen a board consisting of just 5 squares arranged in a cross. The game rules are the same for all of them, and the larger the game board is the more pieces you will need and the longer the game will take to play.

Game pieces. There are two types of game pieces for each player, called “flatstones” and “capstones”, and these vary in number according to the size of the board you are playing on. On a 3x3 board, each Player has 10 flatstones and no capstone. On a 4x4 board, each player has 15 flatstones and no capstone. On a 5x5 board each player has 21 flatstones and 1 capstone, and on a 6x6 board each player has 30 flatstones and 1 capstone. (The 5x5 version seems to be the most popular, and it is the smallest board that uses a capstone.) The flatstones are thick enough so that they can be stood up on edge, a configuration which is referred to in the ruleset as a “standing stone”. Flatstone game pieces can also be made from square pieces of wood, while capstones can be improvised with checkers or bingo/poker chips or even small smooth stones.

A flatstone

A standing stone

A stack, with a capstone on top

To Play

Tak is a two-player abstract strategy game. The rules are pretty simple, but the strategy can get very subtle and complex. In the classic characterization given by board game players, it is said to be “easy to play, but hard to play well”.

A game of Tak

The game starts with an empty board. Player One then places one of his opponent’s flatstones on any square on the board, and Player Two then does the same. Turns then alternate between Players, with each Player either placing one of their own stones onto the board or moving a stone or stack on the board that he controls. The object of the game is to complete a path or road leading from one edge of the gameboard all the way over to its opposite edge.

Game stones can be placed on the board in one of two configurations. Stones that are placed flat on the board are “flatstones”. These can be placed on any empty board space, but they cannot be placed on top of another flatstone—they have to be moved there. (See the rules below for moving pieces.)

Flatstones that are placed edge-up on the board are “standing stones”. These function as a wall or a barrier—other pieces cannot move through or on top of them, and the Player’s winning path cannot contain any standing stones.

The second variety of stones are the capstones. These can initially be placed onto any empty space, and then can be moved on top of another piece or stack of pieces, whether controlled by you or by your opponent. Capstones cannot have another piece placed on top of them and they cannot be passed by a stack. They also have the ability to flatten any standing stone they are moved upon, whether yours or your opponent’s, into a flatstone. They are the most powerful pieces on the board.

Stacks result when a stone is moved onto the same space as a flatstone, whether one’s own or the other Player’s. The new stone is placed on top to form a stack, and the Player whose stone is on top of the stack controls that entire stack. If a stack is topped by a standing stone or a capstone, however, no other stones may be placed on top of that stack (with the exception of a capstone, which can flatten a standing stone).

During a Player’s turn, instead of placing a new stone one can choose to move one of one’s own stones (or a stack that is controlled by that Player) that is already on the board. Single stones (whether flat, or standing, or a capstone) can move one space either vertically or horizontally on the board, but not diagonally. They can be moved to another empty space, or they can be moved onto an occupied space (either yours or your opponent’s) to make or add to a stack. There is no limit to the number of pieces that can go into a single stack.

Stacks may also be moved, but there are some restrictions to this. The number of pieces a Player can move from the top of the stack is limited according to the size of the board: 3 pieces on a 3-square board, 4 pieces on a 4-square board, 5 pieces on a 5-square, and 6 on a 6-square. This is known as the “carrying limit”. To move a stack (or part of a stack) one space, the Player simply takes the stack (or any part of it up to the carrying limit, keeping all the stones in order) and moves it one space horizontally or vertically (but not diagonally), just like a normal stone.

To move a stack (or part of a stack) more than one space, the Player decides how many spaces he wants to move it, then picks up a number of stones from the top of the stack (any number from one up to the carrying limit), keeping them in the same order. The Player then drops these pieces from the bottom of the stack onto each of the spaces along his move, placing his own final portion of the stack (or piece if only one is left) in the desired square. The Player can drop any number of pieces on each of these squares, provided he has enough to reach the end of his move with at least one piece (and he must drop at least one stone in each square that he moves through). For example, if the Player’s limit is five pieces (on a 5x5 board) and he wants to move three spaces with five pieces, he can drop two pieces in each of the first two squares and then drop his final piece on the third, or one piece in each of the first two squares and all three remaining pieces onto the third square, or any combination in between. Or he might choose to take just three pieces from the stack and drop one piece onto each square.

If any of the squares making up this move are already occupied by a single piece or a stack, the color of the new piece that is dropped on top by this move now determines who controls each of those new stacks. (So you want to plan your move carefully to avoid creating an advantage for your opponent, and to give yourself control of as many spaces as possible with your color on top.)

The stack move must be in a straight line without any turns or diagonals. The move cannot go through or over any standing stones or capstones, or any stacks topped by them, whether yours or the opponent’s: however, if your final piece of the moving stack is a capstone and it lands on a standing stone or a stack topped by one, it can flatten it and occupy that space as a new stack. (To flatten a standing stone the capstone must be alone when it lands on that space—it cannot itself still be part of a stack.)

The game ends when a Player is able to complete a path or road leading from one edge of the gameboard all the way over to its opposite edge. This pathway need not be all in a straight line, but it cannot contain any diagonals, and must consist entirely of spaces controlled by a Player’s flatstones or capstone, without any standing stones anywhere along the path.

A win: the silver path stretches from one edge of the board to another

If one Player runs out of stones or if all the spaces on the board are filled, without anyone being able to make a complete path, the winner is the Player who controls the most squares on the game board with a flatstone. (Spaces controlled by standing stones and capstones are not counted towards this number.)

Since the Player who moves first has a slight advantage in the game, the losing Player of each game gets to move first in the next game.

In 2021, Tak was adopted by the Mind Sports Olympiad, and as a result a point system was created for competitive matches, which counts points based upon things such as forming a successful path and how many unplayed pieces each Player has remaining at the end of the game. In a match there will be two games, with each Player getting the opportunity to move first.

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