Kestrel's Hall

Free board games in the browser. Play alone against the house right away, or start a table and send friends the link. No accounts, no adverts, no timers, and nothing sold.

New here? Wiz-War is the friendliest place to start, and a game can be over in minutes. Dip is the long game.

Wiz-War

Steal treasure. Blast through walls. Outwit your friends.

2 to 6 players, or solo against the automaton

An unofficial rebuild of Tom Jolly's 1993 board game

Play Wiz-War → wizwar.kestrelsnest.social
Four turns of a Waving Hands duel: each row a turn, each hand drawn in its gesture, and a spell named under the gesture that finished it.

Waving Hands

Wizards duel with their hands, and the right run of gestures is a spell.

2 to 12 players, or solo against a rival wizard

Richard Bartle's pencil-and-paper duel, 1977

Play Waving Hands → hands.kestrelsnest.social
A hnefatafl board at the start of a game: the king on the throne, defenders around him, attackers on the four edges.

Hnefatafl

The Viking board game of a king breaking for safety and a ring of attackers closing in.

2 players, or solo against the housecarl

The Norse tafl game, by the Copenhagen rules or Linnaeus's 1732 Tablut

Play Hnefatafl → tafl.kestrelsnest.social
Dip's map of Europe at the opening: the seven powers' armies and fleets on their home centers, each power's lands in its color.

Dip

Seven powers share one map, and none of them has to keep its word. Other maps seat five or ten.

2 to 10 players, depending on the map, or solo against the house's envoys

An unofficial rebuild of Allan B. Calhamer's 1959 Diplomacy

Play Dip → dip.kestrelsnest.social

How a table works

  • Start a table and you get a four-letter code and a link. Send it to a friend, and begin once they sit down.
  • No one home? Every game can seat the house, whether an automaton, a housecarl, a rival wizard or an envoy, so you can play right away on your own.
  • Nothing to sign up for. Your browser holds your seat. Come back in the same browser and the game is where you left it. On another device, use Transfer seat in any game to carry your seat over with four words.
  • Watchers welcome. Anyone with the link can sit in the Peanut Gallery and, if the host allows, join the table talk.
  • Something went wrong? Every table has a report button that reaches the keeper with the exact moment attached.

The keeper

Eric Wagoner

I am Eric, and I keep these tables from Athens, Georgia. These are games I have loved at a real table, rebuilt so friends can play them from wherever they are, with the door left open for anyone who wanders in.

Send word to eric@ericwagoner.com, @kestrelsnest.social on Bluesky, or @eric@toots.kestrelsnest.social on Mastodon. I roost at blog.kestrelsnest.social.

The hosting

The games are free and will stay free. They run on small servers that cost a few dollars a month, and anyone who wants to chip in toward the hosting can do so at ko-fi.com/kestrelsnest. Every game stays whole either way.