WARI

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Variation Of The Mancala Game Without Home Base Wells
In a slightly more complicated "capture version" of the mancala game, you actually capture your opponent's seeds. The first person to capture 25 or more seeds wins. Like Island Wari, counterclockwise moves may include placing seeds in the home base (with an extra turn if your last seed of a move ends up in your home base) OR the home base wells may be omitted. Since the version of mancala discussed in this article does not include home base wells, only moves among your 6 wells (A, B, C, D, E and F) and among your opponent's 6 wells (A', B', C', D', E' and F') will be mentioned. In the following illustrations the home base wells will be omitted.

4 seeds are placed in each of the 12 wells to start the game. No home base wells are shown.

4 seeds are picked up from your well C and placed one each in your wells D, E
and F, and your opponent's A'.

4 seeds are picked up from your opponent's well E' and placed one each in your
opponent's well F' and your wells A, B and C.

In this capture version of mancala the moves are counterclockwise as in Island Wari, except there are no seeds placed in the home base wells since these wells are absent from the board. If your last seed ends up in your opponent's well resulting in a total of 2 or 3 seeds, you capture all the seeds in that well. [I.e. If your opponent's well already has 1 or 2 seeds and your last seed goes into that well resulting in a total of 2 or 3 seeds.] If your Wari board contains home base wells you can place the captured seeds in your home base. A capture also includes consecutive previous wells on your opponent's side which contain a total of 2 or 3 seeds. Remember that if you move a well (on your side) with enough seeds to go completely around the board (12 or more), the original well is skipped and left empty. The following illustrations will explain how to capture your opponent's seeds. Let's start with a board containing the following configuration of seeds:

A possible seed configuration after a number of moves between two novice players.

Now let's pick up all the 9 seeds in your well B and place one in your wells C, D, E and F, and one in your opponent's A', B', C', D' and E' resulting in the next board configuration:

9 seeds in your well B are picked up and placed one each in your wells C, D, E and F,
and in your opponent's A', B', C', D' and E'.

Because your last seed makes a total of 3 seeds in your opponent's well E' you may capture these 3 seeds. You may also capture the adjacent (consecutive) 3 seeds in your opponent's wells D', C', B' and A' as shown in the next illustration:

Since each of your opponent's wells A', B', C', D' and E' contain a total of 3 seeds,
you may capture all of these giving you a total of 15 seeds.

So you have already captured 15 of your opponent's seeds and you only need 10 more seeds (a total of 25) to win the game.

DOS Version Of WARI. This program works well on old PC running in DOS mode.
Windows 7 requires the XP emulator only available with Windows 7 Professional.

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