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The pits are evenly divided among the players, and each pit starts with the same number of pebbles: four in each pit for the two-player game, five for three players, or six for four players. A move consists of taking the pebbles from one of your pits and sowing them, one per pit, around the board: counterclockwise in the two-player game, or in your choice of direction for more than two players. (Why not allow choice of direction in the two-player game, I wonder?) If there are more than 11 pebbles being sown, the source pit is skipped, so it will always be empty at the end of the move. If the last pebble falls into an enemy pit containing one or two pebbles (not counting the capturing pebble), its contents (including the capturing pebble) are removed from the board and stored by the capturing player. If the previous pebble also fell into an enemy pit with one or two pebbles, these too are captured, and so on until a pit is reached where no capture is made. The game continues until two players in succession can no longer play, or in the two-player game until one player can no longer play, or until the players agree that no further captures are possible. The player who has captured the most pebbles wins. That is the “basic” game of Oh-Wah-Ree, which would hardly stand out from the scores of mancala variations that have been played for centuries. But “Grand Oh-Wah-Ree,” presented in the rules as a variation, presents Randolph’s new idea: the pits themselves are subject to capture! In this version, whenever a player captures pebbles he also captures the pit that contained them, replacing the marble that marked its ownership with a marble of his own. Then only the capturing player has the right to sow from that pit, until and unless another player captures it again. Pits change ownership frequently. When the game ends the winner is the player with the largest number of pits, or in case of a tie, the largest number of pebbles. The idea of capturing territory as well as loot is an intriguing one and could be explored further. One could experiment with rule changes like differentiating the conditions for pit-capture from those of pebble-capture: for example a pit might be capturable only if it contains exactly one marble (though the pebbles could still be captured if it contains two marbles). Oh-Wah-Ree is frequently available on eBay. As far as I know it is no longer published, though one could improvise equipment easily enough. |
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