There is a quite nifty (well, in my opinion, at least) shortcut for figuring out whether it's good to start or not. You are not supposed to brute-force the game. (Not really a) Hint, lifted from the comment section: The Mancala board base image is from Brooklyn Museum, released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Will you go first, or should you let your opponent start? You have won the coin toss, so you get to choose: You have challenged your friend to this game, and you are starting from the position shown in the picture: one marble in bowls 1 and 2 each, rest of the bowls empty. Take from 1 would also be legal in the starting position, but since there are no empty bowls immediately following it (bowl 2 already has a marble), no new marbles could be added, and the other player would immediately win with Take from 2. The player to take the last marble wins.įor example, in the picture's position, Take from 2 and add to 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 would be a legal move, resulting in a total of 6 marbles being on the board.optionally, add a new marble to any number of consecutive empty bowls with numbers immediately following the bowl from which the marble was taken.On a turn, the player must take one marble from the board, and.There are 12 numbered bowls, some with a marble in them, some empty. There are two players, taking alternating turns.Until someone comes up with a better name, it's called Marble Mancala.
I would like to introduce an ancient African board game I've just invented.