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Oware (in Akan language) - a traditional game from Ghana, Africa, is a Mancala (Manquala) game.
There is a wide ranged class of games called Mancala (Manquala) games. Often the term Sowing Games is used, too.
The term Mancala (also Manqala, Mankala) is derived from the Arabic term naqalah with its meaning to move an object. These class of games are well known worldwide. Nonetheless rules, structure of fields on board and even number of players strongly varies from game to game depending on geographic location, language and culture. Such that eventually the same game plus rules set could be found under a different name, too. Still the origin seem to be quite clear for specific types at least.
As a common aspect of these Mancala games the basic rules set on each player's turn is quite equal. A turn usually is performed by picking up the whole amount of tokens available on a chosen container on board first. Then this picked up set of mostly one single sort of game tokens is distributed following a path on board formed by such containers holding the tokens.
Distribution on a player's turn is called sowing. Thus these corresponding games are known as Sowing Games, too.
The containers are often being named fields, trou (in French), pits, holes, depressions, houses or bowls. Some games come with different types of such containers. Mostly an additional non standard type of container is just used for holding tokens representing the current player's score. The score is reflected by the amount of tokens contained. These larger size bowls might be named stores or simply Mancalas. If such stores do not exist then tokens might simply be scored by removal from game play staying offboard for the rest of the game.
Typically the tokens are represented by some game pieces like seeds, beads, beans, nuts, stones, cowry shells, or any sort of counters. Most Mancala games use undifferentiated tokens.
In case of a fixed sowing path the bowls can be indentified or ordered by a simple index numbering. You might find terminology like a player's side or ranks or rows belonging to a player. In that case the player is allowed to start his turns by picking up all tokens from any non empty bowl being controlled by himself.
The rules currently realized in this software project are commonly known as Oware, Awari, Wari, Awélé, Awalé, Aualé, Ayò depending on the geographic origin and language spoken (Ghana, Yoruba, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Cabo Verde, plus other regions). These rules will be described inside the Oware application as well.
This Oware implementation uses a game board with 12 bowls in total - consisting of 2 rows having 6 bowls each. Initially each bowl holds 4 Bonduc seeds.
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| Initial board position in Oware, 12 bowls containing 4 Caesalpinia Bonduc seeds each, one player starts turns in lower row ranged from bowl 1 to bowl 6, other player starts turns in upper row ranged from bowl 7 to 12. Own work, Oliver Merkel,  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |
Players' turn alternates between the two players. The player starts own sowing turns from any non empty bowl of his choice in the row next to his own side. Still he will sow on the other player's row, too. Sowing is performed with exactly one seed per bowl following the consecutive bowls in counter clockwise direction (in a circular sowing path if reaching bowl 12 then continue on bowl 1 if necessary). In case the sowing will reach the chosen starting bowl of the turn again then this bowl is skipped each time. Such that this bowl will remain empty in the end of this player's turn.
A player will score (also called harvesting) on sowing the last seed of his turn into an opponent's bowl holding 2 or 3 seeds including the last seed sown. This is done by taking these seeds out of game play and scoring these. In case of previous direct adjacent bowls (in clockwise direction) being opponent's bowls, too, holding 2 or 3 seeds, these are taken away being scored as well. Reaching any other bowl without any seed, just one seed or four or more seeds will end the scoring even if any further opponent's bowls are containing 2 or 3 seeds not being directly adjacent.
Taking and scoring all remaining seeds of the opponent's row completely at once is strictly forbidden and the player will lose immediately. Even if the player gets the majority of total seeds this way the player will lose immediately. Thus after scoring at least one seed must be left over on the opponent's row.
Assumed the opponent ends his turn removing the last seed on his row by himself: The opponent's move is totally valid and game continues. In such a case then a player is not allowed to end his turn without a remaining seed for the opponent's turn if avoidable. Such that the player is forced to prefer any move that gives at least one seed being sown in an opponent's bowl then. In case this is not possible the game ends, the remaining seeds on board will not be scored and the player with the higher score wins.
By mutual agreement players can end the game, too, at any time. In that case each player scores the remaining seeds on the own row. The player scoring higher wins.
Such that the game could end as a draw on equal scores.
If you are looking forward to getting a typical Oware game (Ghana) then the chance is quite high that the board shall be made of Sese (Esese, Osese) wood carved manually. Such handcrafted Oware sets are available in simple travel editions made of two similar half boards that can be folded to hold the game tokens securely then. Often these boards come along with decorative crafted and carved traditional themed patterns or motifs. Typical tokens could be nickernuts. These are tropical seeds of a shrub called Bonduc (Latin, botanical: Caesalpinia bonduc). Bonduc seeds are widely used for traditional African jewellery due to it's clay alike precious look and can be found as a medical ingredient as well. Such that there is a good chance of getting a spare set of Bonduc seeds if for some reason yours get incomplete.
The more puristic travel edition could be to simply form some pits on a sandy beach and use any type of tokens you prefer of course. This solution is quite traditional, too.
Surely some priceless unique or antique Oware sets up to the size of a whole table can be found. Watch out and find some of these gems using your preferred web search engine.
- http://www.awale.info/
- http://s.helan.free.fr/awale/
- The international Oware Society is located at
- Mailing Address: OWS, 6 Kiloh Court, Meyrick Road, London, SW11 2EE.
- http://www.oware.org/