Back to game

Statistics of won games
white	44083 (63.43 %)
black	23093 (33.23 %)
Draws	2313 (3.32 %)

Mancala

Mancala is actually a family of similar games, not just a specific game name. However, the BrainKing's version is called Mancala for a simplicity.

Start position and game object

The game is played on the 6 x 2 board (with two home areas at the board sides) and every hole contains 4 beads at the start. The next picture shows the initial position:



The game object is to get more points than the opponent by moving beads to the home area or capturing the opponent's ones.

How to move the pieces

The player, who is to make a move, clicks on a hole (from the row which is closer to him) containing at least one bead. This action will take all beads from the selected hole and place them one by one to the next holes, counter clockwise. The player's home area (at the right side of the board from his point of view) is used in this bead separation as well and when a bead is placed there, the player gets 1 point. The player cannot place the beads to the opponent's home area. The following picture shows an example of the first move - the player has removed all 4 beads from the marked hole, placed 1 bead to the 4 next fields (including the home area) and received 1 point:



If the last bead (of the current move) is placed to the home area, the player continues to select another non-empty hole. The next picture displays such a move - the first hole selection (the one which contains a green bead now) placed the last bead to the home area, so the player emptied the second hole (the one which is empty now):



How to capture the pieces

If the last bead (of the current move) is placed to an empty hole (on the player's side), all beads at the same column of the opposite row are captured and placed to the player's home area. The next picture shows a capturing move - before and after::



How to finish the game

The game is finished if one of the players cannot make a legal move - there are no beads in his row. When it happens, all beads which remains at the opponent's holes are added to the opponent's score. The player with the higher number of points wins the game.
Play this game

See also: Tablut, Tank Battle, Halma 8x8, Halma 10x10, Amazons, Jarmo, Froglet, Jungle, Anti Froglet, Sphere Froglet, Ludo, Breakthrough, Assimilation, Ataxx, Cheversi, Dice Poker, Triple Dice Poker, Frog Finder, Logik, Mancala, Frog Legs, Dice Poker 6D, Triple Dice Poker 6D, Big Jungle, Knight Fight, Camelot, Cam