mancala/wori/wari rules
jkap...@news.delphi.com
Object: Get as many stones into your big bin (mancala) as possible.
Set Up: With the board between you and your opponent, fill all of the
small bins with the same number of stones (a recommended starting number
is 3 or 4 with more advanced players up to 7).
Play: The 1st player picks up the stones in any of his bins (the ones on
his side of the board) and sows them, one at a time, in a
counter-clockwise direction around the board, including his own mancala,
but not his opponents. If the last stone placed is in his own mancala,
then he gets another turn. If the last stone is placed in an empty bin
on his side of the board he captures all the stones in his opponents bin
directly opposite. All captured stones plus the capturing stone are
place in the player's mancala. If the bin opposite is empty, then that
players turn is over and no captures are made. Once a player touches the
stones, he must play them. Players are not allowed to touvh the stones
to count them.
Winning: Play ends when one of the players runs out of stones in his
small bins. When this happens, his opponent gets to place all remaining
stones in his small bins in his mancala (it is not always wise to be the
first player out of stones). The player with the most stones in his big
bin wins.
Note: There are many variations of the game of mancala and this is only
one of them.
Diagram: () o o o o o o ()
() o o o o o o () <--- big bins (mancala)
^
|
Small bins
As I said, start out with 3 or 4 stones per bin and work your way up.
The game I have says the maximim no. of tones per bin is 6, but I think
that 7 is a better number. Any way, have fun!
Jonathan
jkap...@delphi.com
Mark D. Spiller
Hi -
I am looking for the rules of a game named mancala, also
known as wori or wari.
It is an african board game that uses a board with multiple hollowed
out pockets, which are filled with stones. Two players move
the stones around, and so on... (I am not clear on the rules,
on reason I am looking for them :).
Someone I know was telling me about the version of the game that
he had bought, and the rules he described sounded slightly different
from the ones that I remembered, so I am actually looking for
rules as well as variations...
Thanks for any info that anyone can offer...
Mark D. Spiller
m...@ic.eecs.berkeley.edu
(please email any responses)
Philip Masters
m...@rich.EECS.Berkeley.EDU "Mark D. Spiller" writes:
> I am looking for the rules of a game named mancala, also
> known as wori or wari.
>
> It is an african board game that uses a board with multiple hollowed
> out pockets, which are filled with stones. Two players move
> the stones around, and so on... (I am not clear on the rules,
> on reason I am looking for them :).
Could you at least place a summary of anything you get back here? It's
not that I'm a big board game nut, but I keep hearing about this game as
one of the four archetypal categories of board game - and I wish I could
quote the other three off hand; I think they may be "chase" (as in
backgammon or the Royal Game of Ur), "battle" (as in chess or drafts), and
one other ("position"? "race"? somebody help!). So I'm a little curious.
--
Phil Masters
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None learned the art of archery from me | Useless is a wonderful milk-yield
Who did not make me, in the end, | From a cow which kicks the pail over
the target | - Hadrat Muinudin Chishti
- Saadi of Shiraz |
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Brendan Mahony
I think there are near infinite sets of rules, but here are the rules
for a commercial version sold in Australia.
Board consists of two rows of 4 ``bowls'' plus one extra bowl at either end.
The game starts with 4 markers in each of the 8 main bowls.
Each player is associated with one row of 4 bowls.
Each move consists of picking up all the markers in one bowl on your
side and placing one marker in each subsequent (anti-clockwise) bowl
(including those at each end).
Players alternate moves.
If the last marker placed is in an end bowl the player may move again
immediately.
Once a marker is in an end bowl it can never be moved again, so the game
must terminate.
The winner is the first player to have no markers in his/her bowls.
A fun game that can easily be played with rocks and circles drawn in the dirt.
The move again feature adds to the intellectual challenge by allowing
sequences of moves that result ``sudden'' victory from repeated extra moves.
Edward Jackman
*WARI* is easily the most common. It is played with
slight variations in number of holes and number of stones
in many countries.
Wari is the version of Mancala I've seen most often
played in my travels, and it is the version most often
given in the many books on games I've read.
The board is 2x6 holes. The six holes next to you are
yours; the other six belong to your opponent. To start
with, there are 4 stones in each hole. There may or may
not be a larger 'store' for the players to store their
captured stones. If not, just set the captured stones aside.
The Starting Position
Four stones in each of f e d c b a <---Labels
your opponents holes, ---> 4 4 4 4 4 4
and in your holes. ---> 4 4 4 4 4 4
A B C D E F <---Labels
Players take turns 'sowing' the stones taken from one of
their own holes. That is, she or he lifts all the stones
from one of the holes and drops them one at a time, counter-
clockwise in the holes around the board. If there are 12 or
more stones in the hole, skip the hole you lifted the stones
from. (You have a choice of at most 6 different moves each
turn in this version!)
For example, if on your first move you choose hole 'E', the
resulting position would be:
f e d c b a
4 4 4 5 5 5
4 4 4 4 - 5
A B C D E F
If the *last* stone lands in your own hole, or in an opponents
hole that is empty or has 3 or more stones, you do not capture
any stones, and your turn ends.
If the *last* stone lands in one of your opponents holes and
brings the total stones in that hole to 2 or 3, you capture all
the stones in that last hole AND, in addition, all preceding
holes in an unbroken sequence on the opponents side of the board
that now contain 2 or 3 stones are also captured. (You only
capture stones on your opponents side of the board.) This
method of capture is referred to as "capturing by 2's and 3's."
For example, if it You could move and capture the
is your turn and from 'D,' stones in 'a' and
the board looked 'b', leaving the
like this: board like this:
f e d c b a f e d c b a f e d c b a
1 1 2 3 1 1 1 1 2 3 2 2 1 1 2 3 - -
- - - 4 7 2 - - - - 8 3 - - - - 8 3
A B C D E F A B C D E F A B C D E F
Or, from the same You could move and capture the
position, from 'E', stones in d, e,
and f. too many.
f e d c b a f e d c b a f e d c b a
1 1 2 3 1 1 2 2 3 4 2 2 - - - 4 2 2
- - - 4 7 2 - - - 4 - 3 - - - 4 - 3
A B C D E F A B C D E F A B C D E F
Or, if you managed You could only and capture the
to get yourself in- move from 'F': stones in b, c,
to this position: d, e and f! too many.
f e d c b a f e d c b a f e d c b a
1 - 1 - 1 2 3 2 3 2 3 4 - - - - - 4
- - - - - 17 1 1 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 1 1 -
A B C D E F A B C D E F A B C D E F
If it is your turn and all your opponents holes are empty,
you must play into them if you can. But if you can't the
game is over and you get all the stones left on the board.
If you capture all your opponents remaining stones,
leaving him or her nothing to play, the game is over, and
you get all the remaining stones.
If you capture more than half of all the stones, you win.
If neither of you can capture more than half and the other
stones are just going round and round with no progress, it
is a draw -- whether you both have the same number of captured
stones or not.
Common variations change the number of holes or number of
stones used. Also, some change the number required for capture
from 2's and 3's -- e.g. 2's and 4's, 1's and 3's, 2's and 3's
and 4's, etc. (This completely changes the strategy.) Other
variations give more scope for skill by allowing the player
to sow clockwise or counter-clockwise by choice. Other games
allow you to capture holes in addition to the stones in them.
Many Mancala games are played with *Multiple Laps*. For
instance, the games described by Mark Basset and Jonathan
Kapleau in this thread are nearly identical to a multiple lap
game we played as kids. The only additional rule is that if
your last stone lands in ANY non-empty hole, on your side or
your opponents side, you continue your turn by picking up
all the stones in THAT hole and continuing sowing. Your turn
only ends when your last stone ends up in an empty hole.
Each time you pick up the stones from a hole is a LAP, hence
the term multiple lap. (A more common variation is to sow
only to the holes, not to the stores as Mark describes.
This completely changes the game.)
Multiple lap games are really confusing in the beginning.
(I don't know if it is an accepted variation, but we would
allow the player to sow either direction on every lap, greatly
increasing the number of moves to choose from per turn.)
I believe the games that Mark and Jonathon describe, Wari and
their close variations are the most often played and written
about, at least as far as I've seen in the US and the Caribbean.
Again, I recommend tracking down a copy of *Mancala Games* if
you want to play the more complicated 3 and 4 row games.
And if anybody wants to play any version at all by email, just
send me your chosen rules and the board position after your
first move.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* Edward Jackman *
* ejac...@delphi.com *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
markb
>Could you at least place a summary of anything you get back here? It's
>not that I'm a big board game nut, but I keep hearing about this game as
>one of the four archetypal categories of board game - and I wish I could
>quote the other three off hand; I think they may be "chase" (as in
>backgammon or the Royal Game of Ur), "battle" (as in chess or drafts), and
>one other ("position"? "race"? somebody help!). So I'm a little curious.
The fourth category is surely "Position" and covers all the n-in-a-row games,
e.g. Nine Man's Morris and the like. Mancala is itself a sort of cross between
position and battle games, but undoubtedly deserves its own category just
because of the huge range of variants it covers.
Questions on the Mancala family keep coming up, if this group has a FAQ
Mancala should certainly be put on it.
Here's my description of the game "Kalah", one of the easier games of
the Mancala family.
The board is a 2 x 6 array of holes. One player sits by one of the
long edges of the board, the other player sits opposite. Each player
also has a "bank", or large hole, situated at the right hand end
of their side of the board.
Picture:
BANK O O O O O O
O O O O O O BANK
To start the game: put 4 "stones" (beads, counters, dried beans, dung pellets)
into each of the 12 holes of the board.
To end the game: game ends when the player to move has no
legal move left.
To win the game: have the most stones in your bank when
the game is over.
To play the game: players alternate moves, and there is only one type
of move, as follows.
Take all of the stones out of one the holes on your side of the board,
and "sow" them round the board in an anticlockwise direction.
So you put one of the stones you took in the hole to the right of
the one you took them from, you put another in the hole to
the right of that, and so on. Should you get to the end of your side
of the board and still have some stones left to sow, you put a stone in
your bank; then the next stone goes in the right-hand hole on your
opponent's side of the board. After that you proceed right-to-left through
your opponent's holes, and so on until you've sown all the stones
that you took.
Try this on a real board, it's a lot simpler to understand than to explain!
Special rules:
You never put a stone in your opponent's bank, always skip over this when
sowing stones.
If when sowing you "orbit" the board and come back to the hole you started
from, you skip over that too, i.e. the hole you emptied at the beginning of
the move will still be empty at the end of it.
If the last stone of a sowing goes in your own bank, you get another go.
If the last stone of a sowing goes in an empty hole on your side of the
board you capture all the stones in your opponent's hole opposite. These
go straight to your bank.
You must always leave your opponent with a move, if possible.
That's it!
Beginners might like to play the game with less stones per hole
in the starting position. Play a couple of games with one stone per hole (!),
then with two, then with three. You will then appreciate what is so
cunning about the choice of four per hole in the standard game.
Advanced players start with six stones in each hole!
Mark Bassett
Disclaimer: There are no opinions in this message
Bill Taylor
Edward Jackman <ejac...@delphi.com> writes:
|> If it is your turn and all your opponents holes are empty,
|> you must play into them if you can. But if you can't the
|> game is over and you get all the stones left on the board.
|>
|> If you capture all your opponents remaining stones,
|> leaving him or her nothing to play, the game is over, and
|> you get all the remaining stones.
I wonder if this is quite what you meant? All the previous descriptions I've
read agree with paragraph 1, but not quite with paragraph 2. That is, the
usual rule is: that ANY move that leaves no stones on the opponent's side of
the board is illegal, UNLESS no other moves are available, in which case you
make your empty-side-leaving move and win all the remaining stones.
The second query is one for which I've seen various alternatives...
|> If you capture more than half of all the stones, you win.
|> If neither of you can capture more than half and the other
|> stones are just going round and round with no progress, it
|> is a draw -- whether you both have the same number of captured
|> stones or not.
One variation I've played is that any stones left traversing the board
endlessly are split between the players, (which may involve half-stones), and
then count up as before. This leads to fewer draws, which IMHO is a good thing.
Another variation I've read of (also with fewer draws) was from Murray's
"Board Games of the World" which gave the remnant stones to whichever player
most often had them on his side during the circulation.
e.g. - - - - 1 - with South to play; the stones circulate until they
1 - - 1 - - come back to this position again. Almost all the time
there are 2 on the south side and one on north. So
South would get two and North one, before the final count.
This last version seems "fairest" to me, but is more difficult to program
a referee-program for, and more difficult to word an accurate rule elegantly.
So I suggest the former variation is better for actual play; but either is
better than Edward Jackman's variant, because of drawn-game numbers.
|>And if anybody wants to play any version at all by email, just
|>send me your chosen rules and the board position after your first move.
Will do! Can't wait for a game. Cheers.
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Bill Taylor w...@math.canterbury.ac.nz
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Just coming into print now... volume I: "The Even Primes"
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