Step-by-Step: Making a Viking Board Game
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On Thursday, the kids and I enjoyed putting together a Viking board game, Hneftatfl. It’s a game of strategy whose game play reminds me of chess. Find out how to play with complete directions and variations. can be found. Here’s how we made the board:
Supplies needed to make a Viking board game
- 12 X 12 inch piece of thick cardboard (the top or bottom of a pizza box would be excellent)
- ruler
- pencil
- Sharpie marker
- playing pieces
How to make a Viking board game
Step 1: Draw a 1/2 inch boarder around the edges of the cardboard square. Then, mark off 1-inch squares in a grid pattern within the boarder. (Warning: some of the following images my be disturbing to readers who expect an adult with a ruler to be able to make a grid of perfect 1-inch squares. The double lines are where I tried to straighten up the originals.)
Step 2: Trace over the pencil marks with the Sharpie marker. Then, erase all pencil marks.
Step 3: Color in each of the four corner squares, the starting squares for each side, and the king’s throne squares. I wrote in the letter indicating what color each of the squares should be (Y=yellow, R=red, B=blue) so that the kids would know what color the key squares should be. Then, they could color the remaining squares – or not – however they wanted.
Step 4: Grab some playing pieces and have fun! We used a set of plastic game pieces that I bought several years ago at a local teacher supply store and counting bears.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
On a completely different twist, I saw a really neat project on display at a high school where my daughter had a swim meet one week-end. After making the grid exactly like the one that was made for your game board, designs were made using bright colors. The designs were really cool and the art projects looked great.
Samantha
How cool! 🙂
I bought this game from a specialized board game place many years ago for my husband. When we studied the vikings I remembered that we had it and pulled it out. It is a fun game. I LOVE that you made this, and I’m sure it’s that much more special! : )