Ali Guli Mane Mancala

Fun Mancala Game from South India

Ali Guli Mane is a mancala game native to South India. The concept is sowing and reaping. The board consists of 14 pits, 7 belonging to each of the two players. The object of the game is collect more pieces than your opponent.

During a turn, a player picks up the counters of one of their holes at their discretion and distributes them counter-clockwise into the following holes one by one. After the last piece has been dropped into a hole, the contents of the following hole are picked up and distributed, continuing counter-clockwise, one by one.

The move is over when the hole following the last piece dropped is empty. This is called 'Saada'. If the hole following the empty hole contains pieces, these pieces, as well as any pieces in the hole opposite to this ones, are captured and are taken off the game board and placed in front of the player as their winnings.

A unique feature of this game is that after a player successfully 'reaps' at the end of a Saada, they are able to play another round, selecting from one of their own 7 holes as a starting point. After either a Saada without reaping or the second Saada altogether, the play moves to the opposing player. Play continues until all of the pieces are captured, with the winner of the round being the player with the most total pieces. A player must move unless they have no pieces.

After completing the round, play continues with each player filling up their pits with their winnings from the previous round. A pit contains 5 pieces, so if a player has a total of less than 35 pieces, there will holes that are not able to be filled. These holes are marked with a stick or twig to indicate that they are no longer in play. These pits are skipped over in the subsequent round. The game is finished when one player does not have enough pieces to fill even one hole (4 or less).

This app allows modifications to the game rules: The number of Saada's before switching turns can be changed from 1 to 4 and the amount of pieces in each pit can be modified. The way the game ends, either by all of the pieces on the board being collected or when one player has no pieces in front of them to play with is also an option. A computer opponent for Player 2 can be turned on or off if a single player game is desired.