How to play: Mancala

My first contact with this game family was made in French, and under the name "Awélé”. Those were the days of the magazine Jeux & Stratégie. And of the book of Franços Pingaud, bought at "L ' Impensé Radical", in the heart of Paris, just across Jardin du Luxembourg, in the number 1 of Rue de Médicis. The bookstore, dedicated to strategy, no longer lives there.

Among the many versions and variants, board shapes and sizes, I'm going to use the one then proposed by Pingaud, for this sowing and harvesting game, played by two.

Material 

• board game consisting of two rows of 6 carved  spaces;
• 48 pieces, which I will call seeds.  

If you do not own one of these sets, improvise, do it yourself:

• with marbles, beads, bearings or other parts, for the seeds; 
• with small cups, glasses or other containers, for the spaces;
• in wood or clay, if you have the skills;
• with small holes dug in the sand, if you are at the beach!

Objective

• to harvest more seeds than your opponent. 

Game setup

• place the game board between the players, each facing one of the 6-space rows;
• put 4 seeds in each space;
• draw lots for the starting player.

Sowing 

• the player in turn chooses a space, on his side of the board, containing seeds;
• he grabs them all;
• he distributes them, one for each of the following spaces, in an anticlockwise direction;
• seeds can be placed in the opponent's spaces;

• you may go around sowing for one or more laps, if there are seeds enough in the starting space;
• starting space space must remain empty for the turn and therefore, one has to “jump” over it after each turn, and continue the sowing in the following spaces;
• there is no limit for the number of seeds in each space.

Harvesting

• one can only harvest after the sowing, and in spaces on the opponent side; 
• start to check the situation of the last sown space in the turn;
• if it has less than two or more than three seeds no harvest takes place and the game turn ends;
• if it has two or three seeds, those are collected and placed in a pile next to the board, for the final scoring; 
• in such a case, the analysis process is repeated for the immediately preceding space;
• again, if it also contains two or three seeds, they are harvested as well; 
• and so on, until reaching a space where no harvest can take place;

• example of a "single" harvest: the player on the "low" side reaps two seeds:

• example of "sequential" harvest: the player on the "low" side reaps 2 + 3 + 2 seeds:

Game ending

• by starvation, i.e., when the player who must sow does not have any seed in his side of the board; in such a  case, not being able to play, he reaps all the remaining seeds on the opponent side! 
• example: the player on the "low” side moves his last two seeds; regardless of the choice of the player on the “top” side, he will not be able to place seeds at the bottom; therefore, in the next turn, the player on the "low" side is starved and reaps the 6 remaining seeds;

• by stalemate, when the number of seeds on the board is too small and it is not possible to harvest anymore;
• example: in this position you can endlessly move around, since each player is able to feed the opponent, thus avoiding hunger, but being unable to reap;

• it is also possible to end the game when a player has already reaped the majority of the seeds, i.e. 25, ensuring victory; to better learn the game I recommend, however, that you continue to play until one of the other two scenarios arise.

And now, let's play!