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Mancala: How to Make Your Own and How to Play!!

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My son came home from school this week excited about playing a game called Mancala during indoor recess. I had never heard of it before so when I looked it up on Amazon, I was shocked at what came up. I guess I was expecting a board game of some type and not the cool thing that it was. What I love about this game is that while it may take just a couple minutes to learn, it can take awhile to master it and to discover all the strategies of how to win. Typical of a game like chess.

There are a few different type of gameboards you can buy. There is one that folds if you plan on traveling with it a lot or want easy storage. The one that I frequently saw in videos and had the best reviews for quality was this Mancala Board. Overall you’ll spend $9-$20 on either of them so it’s not that pricey of an investment to play.

Since my son was eager to play I decided to make a homemade one for us so he could teach me. Talk about the tables being turned while the young teaches the old! In order to play, each player needs a 6-sided cup area and a mancala, which is just a larger area to drop your “seeds.” We used marbles for the seeds, half an egg carton for the cups and a rectangle Ziploc container on each side. The egg carton holes worked out great until every once in awhile one of us would hoard our marbles and they’d overfill. You could always use dried beans, sunflower seeds…really anything you have that is small.

One of the best videos I’ve found on how to explain how to play Mancala would be this one on YouTube. But after you watch that, I recommend some shorter ones that teach you some of the strategies such as:

*Ideal Opening Sequence for Mancala
*Rules of Raiding
*Rules of Looping
*Rules of Stuffing
*Rules of Hoarding

The rules are pretty basic. Be careful of the YouTube videos that you watch as some will teach you wrong or an alternate way to play.

1) Each player has one side with 6 cups and the Mancala on the end. In each cup, you need to put 4 seeds. (total of 48 for the game board.) You do not put anything in the mancalas on the end when you set it up. One player goes first and grabs the “seeds” from one of their cups and begins to sow them counter-clockwise.. If they pass their own Mancala, they drop a seed in it and then loop around, continuing to play counter-clockwise dropping them in their opponent’s cup until all the seeds are sown. If you reach your opponent’s Mancala, you skip it and do not drop in a seed.

2) If the last seed you sow lands in your own Mancala, you get an extra turn.

3) If the last seed you sow lands in an empty cup on your side, if there are seeds in your opponent’s cup across from you, you get to capture all the seeds in your opponent’s cup plus the seed on your side that was originally dropped in that empty cup.

4) The game ends when one player has no seeds on their side. If the other player still has seeds in their cups, they can pick those up and put them in their mancala. Then both players count the seeds in their mancalas. The player with the most seeds wins.

These are the true basics. I’m just learning it myself so you’ll need to watch the videos to fully understand it.

So look around your house for some things to make your own Mancala and try out something new this week! Be careful not to get too addicted! 🙂 Want to make it frugal and a craft? Go on a nature walk and pick up little pebbles to paint for your seeds.

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