Mancala

Works fully offline Games

One of the world's oldest board games. Sow seeds around the board, land in your store for an extra turn, and capture your opponent's seeds to end up with the most.

You0
Computer0
W–L–D0–0–0

Your turn.

How to Play

  1. Your six pits are along the bottom and your store is on the right. Your opponent's pits are along the top, with their store on the left.
  2. On your turn, pick one of your pits. Its seeds are sown one at a time into the following pits, anticlockwise, including your own store but skipping your opponent's.
  3. If your last seed lands in your store, you get another turn.
  4. If your last seed lands in an empty pit on your side and the pit opposite has seeds, you capture them all, plus your last seed, into your store.
  5. When either side runs out of seeds, each player adds the seeds left on their side to their store. Most seeds wins.

Tips & Strategy

  • At the start, the pit that drops its last seed exactly into your store gives you a free extra turn.
  • Chain extra turns together: play the pits closest to your store first.
  • Watch for empty pits on your opponent's side facing your big pits. That's where captures come from.
  • Hoarding seeds in your rightmost pit can be useful near the end, because they stay on your side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Kalah, the most widely played version: six pits a side, four seeds per pit (or six for a longer game), extra turns, and captures from the opposite pit.

Easy looks one move ahead and sometimes picks a weaker move on purpose. Medium looks a few moves ahead. Hard searches as deep as it can in under a second and is tough to beat.

Yes. Choose Two players and take turns on the same device. The bottom row belongs to Player 1.

Mancala games have been played across Africa and the Middle East for well over a thousand years. Kalah, the version here, was published in the United States in the 1940s.

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