Forced Capture Hnefatafl

TL;DR

Forced Capture Hnefatafl is a new combinatorial game where players are compelled to make capturing moves, and it is proven to be PSPACE-hard, advancing understanding of its computational complexity.

Contribution

This paper introduces a new variant of Hnefatafl with forced captures and establishes its PSPACE-hardness through a reduction from Constraint Logic.

Findings

The game is PSPACE-hard.

It is a partizan, loopy combinatorial game.

Progress towards classifying proper Hnefatafl.

Abstract

We define a new, partizan, loopy combinatorial game, Forced-Capture Hnefatafl, similar to Hnefatafl, except that players are forced to make capturing moves when available. We show that this game is PSPACE-hard using a reduction from Constraint Logic, making progress towards classifying proper Hnefatafl.