Mancala 1

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I have this Mancala board which was bequeathed to me on request by a cordial gent at EGO some months ago. I didn't know what it was, I just liked the little bowls and though it would be spiffy for storing wargame markers for, say OCS.

Now, I know it's actually it's own game, and is widely played in Africa. In fact, Mancala and a multitude of variations on its theme have been played in Africa for centuries, perhaps millenia.

Hence, it behooves me to learn the game.

I only have the board, not the "seeds" (actual or otherwise) traditionally used for pieces, so I'm using 6 mm red and green dice to mark the cups. Here's what the start of the game looks like:

Mancala Game 1.

Technically, the color of the pieces is irrelevant. It's of interest to me because I want to see where the pieces end up when the game is over.

So let's play. The rules are easy, and so available on line it's not worth linking to any.

Mancala Game 1 end

It turns out red ran out of pieces first, but I collected all of the pieces in green's row for counting, hence both rows show empty despite the game ending with a few pieces in green's row

The two photos were taken from the same side, so it looks like green wins 26 to red's 22.

And that's all there is to it.


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